[center][h3]Lost at C[/h3]
Midna’s [@DracoLunaris], Roland’s [@Archmage MC]
[b]Word Count:[/b]3640 +4 [/center]

When Midna went on defense, the Consul did too. He hopped away, then used Scapegoat again for an extra spurt of backward movement. He glanced up at her huge, inert mech. It had yet to take action, and thanks to the various AoE attacks from both Karen and Tycoon, it was taking a pounding. After a brief moment, he seemed to understand. “Ah, I see. Now that’s a side effect that didn’t come on the bottle.” 

Indeed, even as he realized the ploy, the pilotless machine was already sinking back into the twilight realm, the princess unable to sustain the summoning of the sized up titan for more than a few moments.

Though Roland’s ability to rapidly switch weapons impressed him, C felt no need to test their mettle by clashing. Instead he used Steady Aim, gripping his pistol with both hands as he locked onto Midna’s legatus again. With Mephisto’s gasp seeping in through her broken mask, now looked like a good time to try again. His bullet couldn’t hit her Beast Legion, which meant it would pass right through, and if he took out her wolfos that would work, too. This time he fired, canceled his stance into reload, then resumed his stance after reloading one round to fire again. Shooting like this fully optimized his resources, allowing him to keep blasting away at max accuracy and power until his concentration waned.

Aware of this possibility now, however, Midna had made a non reactive plan, and brought up her one lower arms to block her upper one that was holding the legatus. The bullet ripped into the limbs, shattering the entirely replaceable magic, the only cost of which was causing her to drop the gun she’d been holding with them. She struck it with her knee as she kept moving forwards, bouncing it away and into a portal.

A second bullet came in, a second arm was sacrificed, and then her beast legion struck back for her. Not with claws, but by running a lap of the Consul as Midna closed in close enough for it to do so, wrapping the chain he kept trying to break around him.  

[color=Aquamarine]”Let’s see you get out of this one, you slippery moblin”[/color] Midna taunted, before attempting to deliver another igniting axe blow to her foe. 

Roland had used Midna’s distraction to fade back into the smoke, using his silent movement to get around and strike once Midna opened up with an axe shot of her own. Roland struck C with his lance, using the extra range to strike even sooner, before swapping to his daggers to rush him down. 

For his part, C seemed focused on Midna, and he evidently knew something she didn’t. “Hehe, well, if you ins-!” Then the Astral Chain closed on him with a jerk, cutting him off. The Twilight Princess had no trouble bringing her axe down on his head in a puff of flame, and his rabbit-eared helmet practically exploded into halves to reveal a visage topped by small horns and a mop of gray hair, accompanied by an almost cartoonish [i]bonk[/i]. His x-shaped shades (worn beneath the helmet) flew from his face, which turned to one of dismay as his eyes [url=https://i.redd.it/1mr6wvm6p15c1.gif]rolled like slot machines[/url], sounds included. Once Roland stabbed him with his lance and dashed in with his daggers, his rolling eyes stopped on two [url=https://i.imgur.com/vRt7yLr.png]blue symbols[/url].

Immediately an omnidirectional wave of blue energy exploded outward from his position, freeing C and lifting him up into the air with a [url=https://i.imgur.com/LzU5Bio.png]stylish pose[/url]. The Burst did no damage, but it did knock his foes away and floor them. When the Consul landed again, he flicked his hand and made a new pair of shades appear from thin air, which he donned with a grin. “Now we’re cooking!” He drew his gun, but as he twirled it for effect copies of the gun flew out of it and littered the ground around him. When he noticed this, C looked bewildered, lifted his shades to give the pistol a better look. “Wait, what?” Doing so meant that he also noticed the early warning signs of Tycoon’s Artificial Gravity. “Ugh, guess it’s about that time.” Rather than attack, he hurried toward a particular point on the arena, some purpose in mind.

Getting back up from the ground, Roland saw the signs of some big attack coming as well from Tycoon, having had enough of getting shot at by Blazermate’s sentry gun. Well, it was doing something that concerned C, so Roland decided that getting next to and dealing with him would be the best idea. Either to stop his plans, or to be in the same protected area he was in. Plus he could get a few more clashes in on his new… weird form with his sword.

[color=Aquamarine]”Wha, where, how?”[/color] Minda asked, very confused about everything that had just gone down, as she picked herself and her axe up off the floor alongside her wolves, before glancing over at Tycoon and realizing it was doing … something. Something big.

[color=Aquamarine]”That can’t be good”[/color] she observed, as she unsummoned her wolfos so she didn’t have to worry about it getting caught in whatever was about to happen. She tossed her ax into the same portal before it closed, before hopping onto the back of her Beast Legion, and then spurred it into sprinting after C.

[color=Aquamarine]”I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m going to make it your problem not mine!”[/color] she declared as she formed her shadow hand and prepared to slap it down on top of him once she got in close enough.

Seeing Midna mount up, Roland decided to hitch a ride so he could start shooting C with his own gun as they rode towards him, pulling out his own pistols to shoot C with before he got in close to clash swords with him. [color=d7d7d7]”Not the weirdest thing I’ve done…”[/color] Roland said, looking at the… whole situation he was in right now.

C slid to a stop and turned on the Seekers as they bore down on him. The sight of Midna on an invisible steed and Roland piggybacking on her shoulders really threw him off. “Pfff, haha!” Of course, the wild shots in his general direction forced him to block, and the two reached him the next second. “Not bad. If this hero business doesn’t work out, you should join the circus.” Suddenly the miniature vortexes all around the arena grew much larger, blanketing almost the entire battlefield. But the spot the Consul parked himself in wasn’t a safe space–it was an intersection point where a whopping four different AoE markers overlapped. C grinned. “‘Cause this is gonna be funny.”

The next moment Tycoon’s Artificial Gravity descended, and the area filled with raging spacetime vortexes. Even the chip damage from blocking them might have been too much for C if he didn’t mitigate chip damage with Faultless Defense. Unfortunately, the others weren’t quite so lucky, including Mephisto. “Well now,” the Consul muttered as the attack subsided. “Guess who just sang his swan song.”

As for Roland, Midna, and her Legion all that reminded them of where they had been was a little crack in the air. A crack that expanded open, and out of which black particles descended, reforming the trio as Midna warped them back down from Arahabaki. As soon as the Legion’s claws hit the steel floor, it continued its charge towards C as if it had never stopped.

Roland hadn’t expected to be pulled through time and space so… violently yet gently to dodge that massive attack, he had gotten ready to try to get into a defensive stance instead much like C. But no, Midna had his back while C had tanked all of that and gotten 4 stacks of Vulnerability Up. 

“Huh.” C sounded mildly surprised. He hadn’t really expected that his opponents would get caught in his trap using Artificial Gravity, since that would be a pretty ignoble way to go out, but he’d guessed wrong as to how they’d avoid it. Now, with only a brief delay, the two were on his case again. The sight of Midna riding nothing (not to mention Roland riding her) still amused him, but it also solidified his idea of what her invisible companion was. “You really do have a thing for wolves, eh?” Without any time to prepare, or an invincible reversal to bust loose with, the Consul resigned himself to defense behind a conjured barrier. 

[color=Aquamarine]”I have a dragon too!”[/color] Midna declared as her flygon burst from a portal and lunged forwards to deliver a one two swipe of dragon claw slashes while the princess lightly slowed her beast’s charge so that Roland could dismount and join in the fight. Which Roland did, doing an anime jump off of Midna to clash with C’s conjured barrier in an attempt to shatter it with his twin blades. This clash also leveled up his Emotion level, hitting emotion level 3 and gaining Learning, a puppet’s voice echoing “I’m keen to learn as usual. Would you like to see me learn?” as well as the EGO Aspiration. That EGO was a bit… risky to use.

“A dragonfly, maybe,” C grumbled as Midna called in the cavalry. “But if an apple can be a dragon, it hardly matters.” After that, he got locked down on defense. While no amount of whaling on the magical smiley face would destroy the Consul’s guard, the various attacks still did chip damage, amped up by Vulnerability. By now, C had lost (or spent) enough health that he couldn't just burn through his reserves wildly. “Oh, put a sock in it,” he told the mouthy puppet. This nonstop pressure from his opponents left him without many options. They weren't giving him any space to do much of anything that wouldn't just result in an immediate punish. 

“I know I'm one to talk, but this is pretty cheap,” he griped with a wince. “Guess I better turn things up a notch.” While still in blockstun, he performed a Yellow Roman Cancel. The short-range wave interrupted his foes’ attacks and staggered them just enough to leave nobody at advantage or disadvantage. “Time for rock, paper, scissors,” he told the Seekers, flipping out his gun. “Shoot!”

[color=Aquamarine]”Agreed”[/color] Midna said, having not engaged alongside Roland, but instead held back for a moment to rearm. Now, as man and beast were blasted aside, she hefted her Mutagen Shotgun, and squeezed the trigger in tandem with C, filling the air with enough lead that even she couldn’t miss.

Roland, seeing this mess, jumped out of the way to let the two have a shootout. He didn’t want to be in the middle of a firefight, that was for sure. 

The two blasted each other at almost the same time, C slightly faster due to his skill and smaller weapon, but Midna with a lot more force. Her shotgun threw the Consul backward to land on his back and roll over into his stomach. Then he faded out, a copy fading in simultaneously into a standing position above him. “Oof,” he muttered. “These debuffs are a real buzz killer.” He reached up above his head and snatched something out of the air. It seemed to be a little shield-shaped emblem, emblazoned with a black and orange spiral. C ripped it in half, then drew his pistol. “Now where were we?”

[d7d7d7]”How many times do we have to kill this guy?”[/color] Roland said, a bit annoyed with just what this C was doing. There was also the other option; they were fighting an illusion this whole time. Well, he could at least confirm the latter bit, although it was going to hurt a bit. Manifesting the EGO he had gotten, Roland donned Aspiration, looking like he and turned himself inside out with the arena turning into the inside of a chest cavity for 10 seconds thanks to the page wisps. And with that Roland let out a massive burst of energy blasting everything around him in a large AoE with the power of unending craving and aspiration, at the cost of half of his HP. This buffed Midna and any other allies near him for 10 seconds, while doing a massive amount of damage to all enemies hit. C would have a hard time blocking this move. 

When Roland transformed, C made a face at the sight of him. “Now you’re just being nasty.”

[color=Aquamarine]”What?”[/color] was Midna’s first confused reaction to this as she picked herself up from the floor where she’d been knocked down to by being shot, followed by observing that [color=Aquamarine]”well that’s disgusting”[/color] as she took the mess they were in and Roland had become for a brief moment.

Still, it was only for a moment before she got moving again. Predicting that C was going to try and block and no-sell whatever this big explosive attack was, she thrust her shadow hand forwards to grab C so she could then hurl him at the gross wall of whatever arena magic or pocket dimension they were in. Then she’d have Flygon land between them and him and give him a bub buzz for good measure.

The sight of a hand reaching out to grasp him prompted a reflexive response from C, but he misestimated what he was dealing with. His attempt to tech Midna’s throw failed, and the tenebrous fingers closed around him. “Oh, come on.” A split second later, he found himself tossed straight at the energy surge’s nightmarish epicenter, too fast for him to recover and block in the air. Roland’s eldritch outburst blew the Consul away, and once he hit the floor he tumbled before skidding to a halt. This time he lay there, groaning. “Ooh, got that one wrong.” When Midna’s Flygon landed next to him, he unceremoniously emptied his pistol into it, which immediately resulted in a handful of cactus needles. Then the gun clicked empty, and he allowed the hand to fall back down. Seemingly defeated, he stared listlessly at the ceiling. “Man. I really do suck at this.”

A moment after Midna tried [color=Aquamarine]”You gave it your best, and that’s all they can ask for?”[/color] vaguely hoping they could add him to the list of foes who had booked it. He didn’t deserve to live, in her mind, but she also did not want to learn how many more times he could play the fake body trick, so playing along it was.

Roland himself was recovering from using Aspiration, the page wisps changing the arena back to its normal state. [color=d7d7d7]”Phew, that one is a bit rough…”[/color] Roland said. Unlike Midna though, he wasn’t really humoring C, instead being on guard since he knew weirdos like him were up to something at all times. Especially if he had that same ‘moebius’ thing that the previous consul had.

C seemed to ignore Midna as he began to speak, his voice as coarse and conspiratorial as ever. “You know, until humans die, all they have is the process. And if you can’t enjoy the failures along the way, you’re really missing out. So here’s the question. If there was a set path you could follow to reach your final destination, that being death, without ever suffering failure, could you really call that path life?” He grinned as his head lolled to the side. “All that is to say, I’m feeling [i]very[/i] fulfilled right now. A happy…accident…” 

His body rippled, as if a shadow passed over it. When it faded, it wasn’t the body of the Consul laying there at all, but that of Akira Konoe, which quickly began to dissolve. As Midna and Roland stared at it, someone walked out from between them. “Of course, that begs one other question,” the voice belonged to C, and when he turned to face them, pointing finger guns at them both, he was wearing a devilish grin. “Are you my protagonists?”

Time seemed to freeze for a brief moment as he drew both his pistols, spinning them in his hands as he [url=https://i.imgur.com/MwB9Tpv.png]framed his head[/url]. He then pointed them sideways, [url=https://i.imgur.com/aFakuBJ.png]firing[/url] into a magic portal as time resumed. “Deus ex Machina!” A handful of portals manifested around Midna and Roland, and from all directions a fusillade of bullets blasted toward them. More portals would appear to trace their movements, making evasion almost impossible. After a couple seconds a final, much larger portal appeared overhead, and from it hurtled a supersized bullet bigger than an outhouse that plowed through the arena itself.

Roland pulled out his sword and began to parry the bullets fired at him from the various portals. He had to admit that he wasn’t as good as the blue sicko when it came to parrying gunfire. He wasn’t a slouch, and could deflect a fair amount of shots from himself and Midna as the two were near each other, but he couldn’t get them all. And once the big shot came, there was nothing to do but just avoid it entirely. There was no way he was parrying a shell that big. Only the blue sicko and the red mist could deal with something that big without specialized weapons. And even then, the latter did have that cool sword that split entire city blocks.

Midna did her part by, after realizing dodging wasn’t going to work, by opening a portal of her own. Out of it the paw, and only the paw, of her giant mecha-bear rose up, while next to it she summoned her warthog ATV. Putting their backs against these twin walls, they massively reduced the amount of space the portals could open in.fire at them through, letting her pull out and wrap her shadow hand over their heads to block bullets coming from above, while Roland focused on those coming through the remaining gap. 

Then when the big bullet came she whipped her shielding shadow hand up, slapping the shot in the side to try and direct it away from the way they chose to try and evade it, while dropping their cover back into the twilight realm.

When the bullet storm ended, and the last few spent casings clattered to the ground, C lowered his guns to get a look at his handiwork over the gunsmoke. Deus Ex Machina was no joke, and he’d definitely dealt some damage, but the two Seekers were still very much alive. “Well damn, looks like you might just be. Only a true protagonist could have that much plot armor.” Holstering his right-hand pistol, he span his left with a flourish. “How about…”

[b]”TIME!”[/b]

A disembodied voice echoed across the Consul’s corner of the arena. When he heard it, C’s shoulders drooped, an annoyed look on his face as he scratched his head. “Aw, really? Victory by timer scam? What a rip.” He squeezed off a near-instant shot, aimed at an nonspecific point in the air. It hit something invisible to his opponents and shattered it, leaving a hole like broken glass in the fabric of reality itself. With an exasperated sigh, he put away his other gun and shrugged. “Still, a win’s a win. If I’m being honest, I was hoping you’d win. Really breaks the monotony whenever you guys show up. Let’s do this again sometime, huh?” He grinned. “Who knows, maybe next time you can try beating me for real. Good luck figuring out how, hehe.”

[color=Aquamarine]”I… What just happened?”[/color] Midna asked, entirely bemused by C’s antics and, entirely unable to maintain any anger at him as a result of it, before deciding simply that  [color=Aquamarine]”You know what, I’ll take it.”[/color] 

C crossed his arms, looking over at Tycoon. Thanks to the efforts of Pit, Roxas, Zenkichi, and Susie, Midgar’s Guardian seemed to be suffering. “Still, I gotta wonder. Do you really know what you’re getting into? The consequences of your actions? There’s no way, right?” He glanced back at Midna and Roland. “If you did, though, heheh. Wouldn’t that be something.”

[color=Aquamarine]”You tell me?”[/color] Midna replied noncommittally as she took a moment to first catch her breath and then another reform her second pair of arms.

The Consul snickered. If she really expected him to give a straight answer by now, she should learn to temper her expectations. “Nah, go ahead and find out for yourself. And if you can’t get it, maybe that brainy angel lady can fill you in.” Without further ado, C turned to go. He skirted around the perimeter of the battlefield, ducking away from stray shots, as he headed for his parked car. Once he hopped in, the Consul turned as if to say something. Then he lifted up a [url=https://64.media.tumblr.com/e56693edd4085165ba27859e2adde6ea/83a4c799a528e094-28/s540x810/0417b0695720c0d53e1b05d30efeab195f372e98.gif]glass[/url] with a grin, swirled it, and took a drink. “Ahh. My favorite.”

[color=d7d7d7]”What the hell…”[/color] Roland said, utterly confused. Apparently this C was way crazier than he figured, or he could see some weird wing test, or WAS a test or… [color=d7d7d7]”Ok so… hes just…. Leaving? Well, I guess with how his powers work, I guess it makes as much sense as anything hes doing. These weirdos…”[/color] Roland said, sighing.

[color=Aquamarine]”If it means I don’t have to listen to him throw out a dozen more terms I have never heard of I’m not going to complain”[/color] Midna replied as she shook out her newly reformed limbs [color=Aquamarine]”I mean, what is plot armor?”[/color] 

[color=d7d7d7]”It’s a literary term for “your invincible due to plot” but why he was making quotes on writing is… well he is a weirdo.”[/color] Roland said, clarifying that for Midna, who supposed that was on brand with whatever C had been on about.