Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.
Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.
Once the laborious process of hauling the work-in-progress cheeses to their shelves to dry and age finally concluded, Gru and his crews of rats could finally take a well-earned break. Despite the masterful engineering of the Chuck Wagon, designed to maintain a consistent internal climate however extreme the conditions outside might be, there was only so much that insulation and heat shielding could do to mitigate the cruel alliance of scorching hot day without and arresting humidity within. Though his darlings could be reasonably comfortable up in the dry darkness of their attic, Gru found himself utterly unable to relax even in the Chuck Wagon’s dry compartment, even after a change of clothes to try and freshen up. A number of rats tried to help by fanning him, which was lovely and earned them some extra pellets, but the biggest source of discomfort was his own mind.
After needing to spend his bottom dollar to kickstart his business, he could now do nothing but wait and trust in his craft, which all things considered made the man rather anxious. As much as the secure confines of his vehicle comforted the cheesemonger in the face of an unknown and potentially hazardous culture, he knew that he desperately needed a change of scene. Somewhere shady and cool, with a strong drink to perk him up, would work wonders. Appetite was beginning to gnaw at his stomach as well. Having worked through the whole morning, Gru realized that lunchtime must be nigh. With Gadri long gone, however, he lacked any sort of guide who could make a foray into Buraq’s Clanhold less intimidating. To make matters worse, a profuse singing now echoed through the vast citadel. What was a man to do?
So Gru sat there in his chair for a while, listening to the unknown song. Before long it concluded, replaced by more typical goings-on outside his wagon, but still he continued to sweat and psych himself up for an adventure. In the course of his hesitation, however, he received a surprise in the form of three loud squeaks from the sentry rat on lookout duty by the door. He’d seen somebody coming through his peephole and sounded the alarm; two squeaks meant ‘friend’, but three meant ‘stranger’. The cheesemonger jumped to his feet, surrounded by scurrying rats. Gru scurried alongside them. “Just a moment!” His darlings vanished into their holes to hide in the walls, closing the little hatches behind him. Some piled into drawers or climbed into chests, while others just hid behind books and things. With nowhere else to go, thirty-two of them threw on little capes of white or black and went for the empty chess set on Gru’s desk, where they hurriedly adopted poses appropriate for bishops, rooks, and pawns. Gru dabbed at his face with a handkerchief, adjusted his hat, and stepped toward the door. By the time he opened it, there were no traces of any rats at all.
“Good morning, noble visitors,” he greeted his visitors, bowing deferentially, perhaps excessively. Better to be safe than sorry. Three Dinnin-dwarves stood before him. They were squat, broad, clad in loose clothing of evident quality and rich coloration, and their voluminous beards featured styles that looked similarly audacious but braided and bejeweled by different conventions. Not soldiers, as one might expect given the proximity of the nearby military encampment, but decently well-to-do citizens, perhaps of a merchant caste. Though their manner seemed stiffly formal, much like Gru’s own, their guarded expressions still betrayed the curiosity in their eyes, and a little amusement. The cheesemonger’s unusual appearance and clear eccentricities tended to provoke such a reaction, making him difficult to forget or dismiss offhand. First impressions, after all, were everything. “What can I do for you?”
For the briefest moment the dwarf in the center looked past him, taking in the Chuck Wagon’s interior at a glance, but he found nothing more than the furnishings of a wealthy tradesman. Not wanting to be impolite, he did not allow his gaze to linger, and quickly fixed it on Gru himself. Of the three strangers, this one appeared to be the broadest, endowed with the more impressive turban and a double-decker mustache that inspired a sense of unflappable authority. Maybe he saw some kinship in Gru’s triple-decker mustache, despite its comparative thinness.
“Please forgive our intrusion,” he began. “Welcome to Clanhold Buraq, newcomer. I am Argun, and these are Dilar and Ufuk. We represent the Dawnlight Opportunities Firm. Our business is the discovery and promotion of worthy ventures that otherwise wouldn’t be able to penetrate the tight-knit Clanhold market. This morning, we happened to receive reports of a great many rats running rampant around this area, and you yourself featured in these reports invariably. Naturally such sightings invite worries of pestilence and whatnot. We merely wanted to meet you and make sure that all is well.”
Gru barely heard the dwarves’ concerns about rats. Naturally, his rather unique entourage tended to spark such trepidations everywhere he went, and by now he possessed a wealth of experience when it came to defusing such situations. While most everyone harbored prejudices against his darlings, he never tired of extolling their virtues, and the cheesemonger could convince the average rodent-fearing skeptic in his sleep. What interested him more was these dwarves’ trade. Marketers, he realized immediately. That could be just what he needed to get his business off the ground in this market. Of course, there was no such thing as a free lunch, and his pessimism told him to expect a steep cut. That might just be the price of doing business, though. Realistically speaking, Gru knew he ought to be grateful that he got a visit from marketers instead of soldiers, here to arrest him for operating without some sort of license. He needed to act fast, get the preamble over with, and start forging this connection.
The cheesemonger clasped his hands and put on his most disarming smile. That wasn’t to say he wielded the good looks to inspire a sense of trustworthiness through the halo effect, but with a smile like this he could inspire a sense of pity through the implication that this inquiry was just the latest chapter of a long-suffering epic. “I see, of course. Please, allow me to reassure you. You’re hardly the first to bring such understandable concerns to my doorstep. In a sense, the reports you received were true. But the magnificent creatures your eyewitnesses beheld were no mere rats. They are not just my pets, but my employees and associates, bred of the finest stock imaginable and surpassingly intelligent. They can pour your tea, butter your bread, and perform tricks of such stupendous caliber that you’ll scarcely believe they’re not magic. And they’re not just brainy, but also unfailingly hygienic, and wonderfully affectionate.” Gru stepped aside from the doorway, sweeping a hand toward his wagon’s interior. “Perhaps you’d like a demonstration?”
The dwarves seemed impressed with the craft and speed of his speech. “You’re clearly no stranger to such inquiries,” Argun said, laughing through his nose. He clearly knew a sales pitch when he heard it, but if these rats were workers rather than commodities, he couldn’t help but wonder about their trade. He climbed the stairs somewhat ponderously and stepped inside. It might be warm in here, but at least it was out of the sun. His associates followed him, and by the time Ufuk closed the door behind them, Gru had already poured them tea. He kept his tea set in a padded chest just for occasions like this, never using it himself. Bought at a high price from maritime traders over a year ago, its soapstone featured an intriguing texture and gray-rust coloration.
“I must apologize for my meager accommodations,” Gru told his visitors. “My humble mobile home is woefully unsuited for entertaining guests.”
For the moment, Argun seemed more interested in the aromatic new cheeses on the shelves. He had no idea how many tiny, beady eyes were watching him at any given moment. “Not at all. In fact, this is quite exquisite for a mere wagon. Is this your product, here?”
Gru nodded enthusiastically, sweeping over to shower his cheeses with gesticulation and showmanship. “Correct, sir. Made fresh this morning, these high-quality cheeses must age before they can be eaten, but very soon they will be ready for consumption. Though the wealth of the Clanhold is vast indeed, I daresay that its venerable people have never tasted the like.”
Dilar nodded sagaciously, clearly interested. “I’ve never smelled anything like it myself.”
“And that is but a shadow of what is to come, once time had worked its magic,” Gru smiled. “And I do believe we may be able to make some magic happen together. As you might expect, I’m rather new here, and though I’m confident that my cheeses’ quality speaks for itself, that means little if nobody’s around to hear it. But before we talk business, I believe a demonstration is in order. Not just of my product, but of its producers.” He brought his guests over to his table, where he pulled out a chair before seating himself in the other. On the table lay his chess board, each piece already set up for a game. “I’m sure you know how to play?”
Argun plopped down, bushy brow raised at the suggestion that he might not. “Of course.” His eyes lay on the curious pieces, clearly not yet sure what he was looking at.
“Ah, but my house rules are slightly different. Observe.” Gru tapped the head of the white-cloaked pawn in front of his king, then tapped the square two spaces ahead. To his guests’ surprise, the pawn seemed to come to life, marching to the designated spot to stand with unflinching stillness, her tail coiled around her little feet. “See what I mean?”
Though taken aback for a moment by the realization that he’d been invited to play chess with live rats, Argun’s surprise turned to amusement. “Surpassingly intelligent, hmm? You weren’t joking, hohoho!” With an almost childlike eagerness he reached out, gently tapping one of the black-cloaked rats between his ears. Once directed, he marched forward to face Gru’s pawn, where they stared one another down with mock fierceness. “Clever. Well then, mister…?”
“Yarg,” Gru supplied.
“Mr. Yarg. You should know that even though this is not a Dinnin game, I have yet to be defeated. Rats or no rats, I have no intention of losing.”
The cheesemonger tipped his head in respect. “I expect nothing less. I’ll try not to make this too easy for you.”
Argun chuckled, adjusting his glasses. “Then let us begin.”
When Sandalphon shapeshifted into Heavenly Wings, Sam assumed some kind of explosion and cleared out in a hurry. When her brief moment of blindness concluded, Sandalphon realized that her opponent had erred on the side of caution and ceased his assault. To his credit, he’d made the right decision; her draconic form boasted impressive damage and flinch resistance. But the archangel couldn’t afford to just stand tall and survey the battlefield. She was on the clock, and needed to make this transformation count.
So Sandalphon took in everything at a glance. She glanced toward Roxas, who had called out her name. He lay on the floor at the base of Tycoon’s body as Susie fought to regain the gigantic machine’s attention and Pit assisted her. Since Sandalphon knew that her skills could heal him, she spared him no more than a split second. Much to her relief, Geralt was still standing, her raging flames ablaze as Midna and her minions backed her up against Nox. Sandalphon saw that the street fighters had moved in for round two against Karen, even managing to pin him down. That left Mephisto unattended to, but the duplicates would complicate any attempts to dispose of him. If Karin and Sakura had Karen in a bind, that was where Heavenly Wings’ strength was needed. Though prioritizing the enemy medic made sense in general, the chance to eliminate the enemy powerhouse could not be ignored.
Golden light radiated from Sandalphon’s outstretched wings as she cast Celestial Skewer. An eruption of holy water went off around her, splashing up six divine droplets that hovered in the air for a brief moment, then launched toward Karen in the form of javelin-like rays of light. While their damage got spread over a large area, it helped break the Septentrion’s Blastokinesis and rack up some damage. It also healed her allies by forty-two percent. When Sandalphon glanced back toward Roxas to see if he needed more attention, however, a heart-wrenching revelation awaited her: that she was too late once more. In the moment she’d taken her eyes off him, Sam had executed him, disabling him with a slash to the spine that soon extinguished his light through a lethal combination of blood loss and shock. Without a word, Sandalphon turned on his killer and attacked, creating divine screens that she launched at the nobody’s killer like weaponized walls of light in an effort to stamp him out.
While she fought, Pit turned his attention on Mephisto with a relentless barrage of prismatic palm strikes. He pragmatically targeted and eliminated all of the duplicates, battering the real medic repeatedly in the process. Mephisto switched between healing and returning fire, pushing through the pain to knit his injured flesh back together. Pit boasted much greater output and mobility, however, and after a moment the medic’s pistol clicked empty. But before Pit could finish the job, two things happened. First, Tycoon -with only one of its three original challengers still holding it down- threatened the entire battlefield with Artificial Gravity. A number of small, swirling dark spots appeared scattered across the battlefield. After exactly three seconds, they would swell to a much larger size, overlapping to such an extent that only a few small slivers of the arena remained uncovered. A scant second later, Tycoon dropped magical mortar strikes on all the targets, consuming almost the whole arena in spacetime-displacing vortexes capable of ripping almost anyone apart.
Second, Nox took note of what Pit was doing. He felt confident that he could take on these enemies, but having Mephisto around provided a comfortable margin for error. In his moment of distraction, Geralt landed a direct hit with a fireball, setting Nox alight. “Agh. So warm-hearted….” The next moment, he disappeared in a shower of purple dragon fire from above. Midna’s flygon swooped down as its master charged in behind him, while Geralt hurled two flares turned infernal by her outpour of wrath. Exhaling sharply, Nox released both sword and shield, then joined his hands in an interlocked sign. “...Stop.”
All around him, the battle froze in time, every combatant and projectile slowing to a complete standstill. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in deeply. “Who will it be, then?” He extended his hand toward Geralt, resummoning his pendulum sword. “You’ve certainly been bugging me, my hot-blooded friend…” He adjusted his arm in increments like the hand of a clock, ticking around from three o’ clock to Midna, and when it ticked into place at eight o’ clock his sword’s tip lay inches from her nose. “Beastmaster. Cut off the head, and the body dies. Looks like we have our answer.” He pulled his arm back and flung the sword, which slowed down the instant it left his grip and stopped an inch from her stomach. “So sorry. Looks like you’re number’s come up.”
He looked over at Sandalphon, then at all of the Artificial Gravity indicators on the floor. He then teleported, warped directly in front of Pit, and time resumed. Suddenly, the angel found himself face to face with the man who’d slain Goldlewis, his hand extended. Nox released a blast of blue energy, and as Pit flew back, he used his perspective to pantomime crushing Pit in his fist. At that moment, Tycoon’s attack completed, and one of the bolts dropped down on the angel. By that time Nox had warped Mephisto to safety, and after the blasts went off the Watchmaker resummoned sword and shield. “Je vous en prie.”
The boy slid a new magazine into his place and expressed his gratitude with a tap of his cane rather than a smile. “Don’t expect any thanks.”
Karen, Karin, and Sakura had all competed for a tiny safe space before Artificial Gravity went off, and as a result, all of them got hit. Sam would have made it if Sandalphon didn’t push him back into the blast zone with a divine wave, though Tycoon’s attack also struck her as a result. Zenkichi and Roland, who’d stepped back from their fights and been healed by Celestial Skewer, both escaped Artificial Gravity, while even if she made it to a safe zone Susie’s business suit was too big to not get clipped. Zenkichi and Roland converged on Karen, but bolstered by Mephisto’s healing, the Septentrion took them both on. After hurling explosive sparks at the detective with Pyrokinesis, Karen faked Roland out, knowing that the Fixer wanted to clash. He swerved out of the way of his attack, then made him see stars with a burning hammerfist to the jaw. The next second his other palm connected for an explosive blast that sent Roland head-first into the floor. Zenkichi struck him from behind, but to his surprise a Guardian Vision of a strangely-dressed woman appeared in a defensive stance to negate the blow. Even now, SAS seemed to be protecting him. He turned and faced off against Zenkichi, ultimately using Sclerokinesis to grab his foe’s greatsword in his hand, then melt through it with a pyrokinetic squeeze.
At the same time, Sam continued to fight Heavenly Wings, but the archangel seemed to shrug off his attacks. Gathering her divine power, Sandalphon lifted her hand and created a holy star above her. Her Celestial Castling rained down rays of light across the arena, inflicting Frostbite and Scorchrend on Sam, Karen, and Typhoon. Nox took aim and let fly a volley of energy blades. Though the projectiles didn’t damage Heavenly Wings, they did deplete the rest of her draconic energy, abruptly returning Sandalphon to human form. The next second the last couple blades sliced through her, severing two of the archangel’s limbs. She fell, her final Frost Lock going wide and bursting into icy mist near the Watchmaker. Then she lay on the ground as the battle continued, alive but catatonic, helpless, and losing too much blood.
Just then, Giovanna arrived to find herself in a hellscape, but there was no time to stand there gaping. The secret agent dashed in to assist as best she could.
If she’d been expecting some sort of enormous monstrosity, Nadia might have been disappointed, but after her encounter with the nightmarish Orphan of Kos on that impossible underground beach the feral knew just how little size mattered. The Guardian of the underground kingdom appeared to be a bug, very similar to the little knight she fought alongside in the Basement looks-wise, but much larger and utterly enthralled by the Infection. The way her instincts screamed when that pulsing orange light confronted her convinced her that this wasn’t just some diseased dreg, either. “Patient zero,” she muttered. Maybe even the source of the Infection, sealed away, but not nearly well enough. She couldn’t hazard a guess about much else, but the environmental storytelling painted a vivid picture. Up close the Hollow Knight’s unnatural howl made her flinch yet again, but with her claws at the ready after the warm-up against F’s infected minions, Nadia wasn’t about to back down.
Of course, mustering up determination was easy. There were few things that Nadia couldn’t psych herself up into mindlessly running toward. Fighting this wretched warrior was another matter. While it still towered over two feet above her, and probably couldn’t be combo’d, the Hollow Knight posed an altogether different problem thanks to its relative size. Though the Seekers could easily surround it, there was a very real possibility of them hitting -or just obstructing- one another. Meanwhile, the Hollow Knight could barely swing its nail without striking a would-be hero. Everyone would need to be careful in this frenetic dance of death. Still, at the end of the day, this was nothing new to Nadia. Within seconds, the cat burglar charged in to take the stage.
Employing much the same strategy that she did against the likes of Ten Piedad, Robin Goodfellow, and all the other oversized threats that she couldn’t scrap with properly, Nadia darted in and out, waiting for -and in some cases baiting- attacks so that she could whiff punish the Hollow Knight as it recovered from its massive attacks. Of course, her target didn’t just stand there and let the others whale on it; it launched around the room with surprising agility, punctuating every burst of speed with a skewering nail thrust or enormous slice. Its warp slash, grimly similar to Barnabee’s, was a nasty surprise. Nadia kept on her toes, evading when possible and blocking otherwise. The chip damage and blockstun the Hollow Knight could dish out was no joke, but being excessively safe with her dodge rolls and blood-propelled dashes meant that she’d end up too far away to deliver punishment.
Of course, fighting as a Seeker meant sharing the stage with the likes of Bowser and his gung-ho entourage. The Koopa Troop bombarded the Hollow Knight with the elements, which Nadia tried to turn into elemental reactions like Electrocharged and Overloaded, and Bowser himself used his prodigious side and strength to actually push the boss around. Sectonia kept her spells to herself for once but contributed through the use of enormous minions that could control space with their bulk and implicit threat. After boosting her allies through the magic of dance, Primrose bathed the Hollow Knight in darkness and flame, while Therion’s steel cut through sorcery and sickened flesh alike. He also tasted the warrior’s sword skills, which Nadia naturally proceeded to trigger herself. The Hollow Knight’s riposte hurt like hell, stinging more in one blow than anything Rumor Honeybottoms spat out, but Nadia had seen worse. Her agility and regeneration allowed her to weather the worst of the vessel’s fury, and she boosted her damage output with her Bait Launcher from a safe distance.
Before long it revealed more up its proverbial sleeves than swordfighting. “Yugh!” Nadia groaned when the Hollow Knight unveiled its weeping lesions, running for the hills as infected globules began to fill the air. Whether sprayed out or rained down, they fell in abundance, and even the feral couldn’t avoid them all before reaching Jesse’s shelter. Luckily for the Seekers, the diseased deluge mostly acted like a scaled-up variety of acid rain. Though a caustic shower would be horrible enough, the infection couldn’t worm its way into those possessed of higher minds that easily. Sectonia’s golden antlers, however, were not so fortunate. They proved highly susceptible to the Infection. When the infected rain stopped, both Jesse and Primrose bashed the vessel with the rocks they used as shields, and the fight continued.
Once Kamek did some research, he came to the conclusion that the Seekers had been misled. Dangerous as it was, the Hollow Knight that they now faced seemed to be no more than a front. Nadia threw the magikoopa look of disbelief after he announced that everyone would need to keep their opponent alive. “You’ve gotta be kitten me.” By now, the fight had already escalated. The Hollow Knight fought in a berserk rage, weaponizing the plague that eked ceaselessly from the core of its very being, and before long the Infection worked its dark magic on the golden antlers. “The hell!?” Nadia yowled, leaping away from a stone-cracking mace slam. “Toni, get your buggies under control! This is getting g-old fast!”
At least Sectonia’s Slow, combined with Primrose’s buffs, tipped the scales in the Seekers’ favor. Ganondorf attacked alongside his Phantom, and the two gave a lot better than they got. At the end of their exchange, the vessel pushed the warlord back, and Nadia moved in. “Nyaow it’s my turn!” She slid beneath its follow-up slash with Cat Slide, then transformed her legs with Fluffy Soft to extend them for a double tiger kick into the Hollow Knight’s torso. Her legs snapped back into place, and after getting into a handstand, the feral sprang with her arms to fly into the air. Drawing a boxcutter, she grabbed onto one of the monster’s horns as she fell, her amplified weight bending its head sideways as she dangled. “Steel your heart!” Nadia swiped at the pustule on the Hollow Knight’s mask for a moment, but it quickly grabbed her and tossed her into the air. “Whoa-oa-oa!” She narrowly split herself in half to avoid an overhead nail slam, but picking up the pieces would take a minute.
Moments later, the battle reached a fever pitch. After the Hollow Knight stabbed itself with its own nail repeatedly, it threw itself at the Seekers with everything it had, but their counteroffensive bore fruit. The vessel slumped down onto its knees, bent forward. “Now!” a familiar, young-sounding, high-pitched voice called out. From the direction of the Black Egg’s entrance, a bright blue lash flew out and struck the Hollow Knight, wrapping around its body. A dark shape shot toward it, which turned out to be the short Organization member from before. She whipped around the vessel’s horns and landed on its head, tugging on the evil-looking keyblade in her hands to wrench the vessel’s head upwards. A brilliant light shone from its forehead, radiant as the light of day. “What’re ya flippin’ waitin’ for?! Get in there, you mugs!”
Kamek had the Dreamcatcher ready. After he extended it toward the Hollow Knight’s head and waved it around, a crystalline substance quickly collected into a globe inside its crescent. Within a moment it was large enough, and once Kamek plucked the globe from the staff, he hurled it against the ground. It shattered, releasing a flash of unreal light, and the world around the Seekers disappeared.
When the light died down, they found themselves back in the dream world on a circular pillar, much like they had during the fight with Robin Goodfellow. Except this time, the peach-colored sea of clouds lay beneath them, interspersed with hornlike spires, and around them stretched a vast, twilight-orange sky. On the horizon shone the sun–except that wasn’t the sun, brilliant and baleful as it was. The incandescent beacon approached with astonishing speed, then resolved into an incredible shape. It was dazzling, but unmistakably alien. Just staring at it burned Nadia’s brain, much worse than the sensation she got from the eyes of the Hollow Knight. There could be no mistaking it: this almost angelic thing must be behind it all. The Seekers had found it, the light of madness that seeped out through dreams, consuming the reason, the consciousness, and finally the very self of bug and beast alike. It was beautiful, but deadly. Not just to the Seekers, but to civilization, to sentience itself.
Warning! Boss discovered! Thought-terminating Beatitude
The Radiance
It had to be stopped. And as the first rays of light blazed toward the Seekers, Nadia Fortune was ready.
Once the team of otherworlders split into smaller groups, they began to make more progress on their investigation through the forest. In an environment where all sorts of creatures kept a constant ear out for predators just to survive day to day, a large, noisy group tended to make more of a disturbance, and the wildlife shied away in response. Peace and quiet gave Lewa's powers of perception a chance to shine, allowing him better attune himself to the wilderness around him. It certainly helped that he'd gotten lucky with his assignment of teammate; Remilia, after all, moved by floating through the air. Her unique method of travel made no noise and left no trail, turning the Scarlet Devil into a whisper on the wind who could provide the experienced woodsman with an extra set of eyes but no accompanying drawbacks. Together the companions breezed through the trees, following the traces left by their quarry until their path reached its conclusion.
When he spotted the culprit, Lewa let out a low whistle of appreciation. Though he could draw a few parallels with rahi he knew, this beast deserves to be appreciated on its own merits. It features a shaggy, bristly coat of coarse, deep brown hair, a nondescript tuft of a tail, short but sturdy legs that terminated in stony-looking trotters, and an almost conical head tipped with a flat snout, itself flanked by natural weapons in the form of hefty tusks. Most impressive of all was its sheer size, giving the beast an imperial air of combined strength and majesty. Assuming that this beast must be relatively soft to the touch, Lewa couldn't help but imagine how comfortable lounging against the boar's belly would be.
Of course, the toa of air didn't want to disturb the creature, let alone provoke it. When not dealing with rahi made aggressive by the Makuta's infected kanohi, the simplest strategy was the most effective: leave it alone. As a rule, rahi weren't curious, and as long as one didn't impose on their territory one should have nothing to fear. In this case, though the animal's impressive scale and natural weapons suggested that it would be far from helpless in a fight, nothing about it said 'predator' to Lewa. Remilia confirmed as much, calling the 'boar' a herbivore. She then handed the metaphorical reigns over to Lewa, giving him a chance to do things his way, as promised. Lewa nodded in appreciation. His companion's biological knowledge was a welcome surprise, and he was glad to be given the benefit of the doubt. "I will do my best."
For a little while longer, though, Lewa just observed. He listened to the boar's snorts and grunts, watched it rummage around through the underbrush, and considered what he was trying to achieve. Given its size and likely impunity, this creature's proximity to the struggling humans presented an understandable threat. Between the two of them, he and Remilia needed to convince it to leave the area. That would be difficult even if the toa could truly communicate with it. Intimidation would be preferable to disposal if the beast could be intimidated. He would need to learn what it wanted to eat (and convince it that he wasn't a threat) to lure it elsewhere with food. Well, regardless, he couldn't just crouch here forever. It was time to make a move. Standing, Lewa began to approach, obviously but slowly. He made no sudden movements or attempts to hide. "Good morning, amazing rahi," he murmured, his tone low and non-threatening as he tried to get the beast used to his voice. "I am Lewa. I want to get to know you. See eye to eye." Though the boar probably couldn't recognize expressions, he still smiled as he inched closer, his posture natural and calm. "What are you up to? Digging up roots?"
Though Sandalphon participated in the initial conversation with Nox, she did not for a moment expect to convince the time mage of the error of his ways, nor to really understand where he was coming from. To an extent, she didn’t believe it necessary despite her proclivities for gathering data. In the end, he by his own admission sowed so much death and destruction not even for noble goals, but for selfish ones. Nox understood full well that his actions were evil, and for who knew how long bet everything on his success. Sandalphon was staring at the very embodiment of sunken cost. So she conversed with him just to goad him into trying to explain how his success would justify him, buying the team a little time as they repudiated him. The arrival of Nox’s team had thrown a lot more variables into her calculations, and the Seekers’ coordinator needed to prepare.
If the team had any chance of properly addressing the new threat, however, Goldlewis dashed it as he burst forward to lead the charge. This didn’t surprise Sandalphon inordinately, as she knew that the veteran preferred offense over defense, and that in warfare victory could be achieved by a swift and decisive blow. Unfortunately, his attempt at a blitzkrieg ended in disaster. Turning back all of time might be Nox’s goal, but it turned out that he could stop time here and now. When she saw the Pendulum Sword pierce the vital organs, Sandalphon took immediate action. She lifted her staff, conjuring divine screens that span around her as holy circuits wove themselves into being in a ring around her. This was all happening so fast, but if she could just cast her Angelic Wings miracle fast enough, she could restore enough health to bring Goldlewis back from the brink and cleanse his stopped time. But she was not fast enough. Nox expedited the process by extracting his target’s life, and by the time Angelic Wings radiated outward, Goldlewis was already dead. Sandalphon’s heart sank, horror gnawing at her soul from within. She’d not only failed to save him but also wasted her strongest miracle. It achieved only one thing: charging the remainder of her shapeshift gauge. The archangel’s grip tightened on her gunstaff. This was bad.
The sudden death prompted an immediate response, shifting gears from conversation to combat in an instant. Sakura charged forward, hopefully not to repeat the veteran’s mistake, and Karin followed her. Karen, however, sidetracked their revenge against Nox and kickstarted a fiery, fast-paced melee. At the same time, Geralt ignited herself with wrath, spreading the blazing wings of a new identity. A volley of arcing fireballs hurtled toward Mephisto and Nox like meteors, forcing them to adjust. As the singer backpedaled, the Watchmaker calmly skirted around the fire, then warped to a shielded Geralt to squash her flames with cold steel.
Despite his legendary quick draw, Sam was the last of the four off the mark, squaring up against Roland. Blazermate’s support came in the form of her new Armstrong striker just in the nick of time, backing the Fixer up with a dominating presence. A brief moment later, flashes of yellow lightning portended Karen’s turnabout against Karin and Sakura, forcing Zenkichi to intervene. Sandalphon forced herself to look past the eye-catching brawl toward Mephisto. He hung back, pistol at the ready in one half and his staff at the other. Her allies might not all know, but the archangel did. While the boy lacked the aggression of the others, he was no less dangerous, and perhaps the highest-priority target of all. “The boy is their medic,” she announced for those not present for the Reunion clash last night. Mephisto heard her and turned his icy gaze her way, but he only knew her as a sharpshooter. Once these intelligent opponents realized her role as a healer, Sandalphon would be at the top of their hit list as well. If she could headshot him before getting found out, there might be a path to victory.
That left just one opponent unaccounted for, though Sandalphon -standing with her back to it at the Seekers’ rear- was by no means unaware. Rather than open fire, she executed a dodge roll to evade Tycoon’s colossal swipe. The mountain of metal that was its arm passed within a few feet of her, the air displaced by its passage buffeting her hair and clothes. Tycoon scooted forward to advance, but by the time it geared up for another mechanical crush, Susie had arrived. Though her business suit looked like a toy in comparison, she pitted it against the Guardian bravely, and against all odds her mech actually withstood the punishment well. After a moment, though, Tycoon deployed pieces of itself to fly around the arena and unleash lasers that it froze in time. That was a problem, but Sandalphon hesitated to call it out. Fighting in the path of the lasers was flirting with danger, but any lapse in concentration against the other enemies could mean death.
Susie gave the Seekers a chance to focus on Nox’s team, at least for now. The Watchmaker himself was tackling Geralt, the biggest threat at the moment. As the Ardor Blossom, her ranged attacks couldn’t trigger a time stop, so she was uniquely well-suited for holding him off even as he pushed her back. Mephisto took potshots at Blazermate, and when Sam injured Roland, the Brazilian seized the chance to carve into the medabot’s back. Megido went off around Karen, and as the Septentrion disappeared Zenkichi grinned at his handiwork. When the dust cleared, Valjean’s magic seemed to have worked too well; no trace of Karen remained.
A split second later Karen reappeared, attacking out of Invisibility with a critical hit in the form of a stomp against the side of the detective’s knee. Zenkichi buckled, and Karen planted a fist in his ribs, then lifted both arms for a double hammer fist onto Zenkichi’s head. Sandalphon shot him in the back twice in quick succession, and when Roland charged in, Karen rounded on him for a trade of blows. Within moments the Fixer got pushed back again, and with the last of his Hypervelocity Karen took the chance for a follow-up on Blazermate. His Cryokinesis kept her locked down in exactly the wrong spot, and a moment later the Chekhov’s Gun fired. Once Tycoon’s laser consumed her, Blazermate was down for the count.
By that time, Sandalphon’s attention was elsewhere. Geralt had managed to stall Nox for a moment, burning him several times before a shattered Quen precipitated mounting slash wounds, but it would take more than that. After a moment, Nox switched tactics, banishing his Pendulum Sword to reply to her fireballs in kind. He held out his palm, the blue lens in its core powering up with an intensifying light and hum. Then a barrage of crescent-shaped projectiles shot forth, each about a foot in width, at a rate of three per second. They tracked Geralt as they flew, their absurd cutting power enough to sever limbs after only a couple hits. Sandalphon shot at Nox, causing his head to serve toward her in an unnatural fashion as the light of Tycoon’s Magitek Crossray lit up the battlefield. He turned his shots on her, only for the Archangel to teleport to Geralt’s side so that she could plant a Healing Field at her feet. It wasn’t much, and it limited the Witcher’s mobility if she hoped to heal with it, but with neither of her skills charged Sandalphon could do no better. When Nox’s gaze ratcheted toward the two of them, the archangel warped back to her original position, confounding Nox but leaving Geralt alone against him once more.
In the wake of the withering Magitek Crossray, Karen took drastic action. He activated Sclerokinesis, giving his body an indestructible rocklike texture, then slammed his fists into the ground. With his body impervious, one hundred percent of the amplified force went into the blow, enough to rock and destabilize the whole battlefield and unsteady the Seekers on the ground. Sandalphon used Vault to leap into the air, where she noted Blazermate’s fate, then switched to the Eye of Sol and took aim at Mephisto as she drifted down. Her shot took out his leg, but he gritted his teeth through the pain and brought down his staff for the first time. Immediately he, Nox, Karen, and Sam all healed for 25%, and as the medic rose, he lifted his pistol to return fire. “Can I get some goddamn assistance?” In reply, the last of Karen’s Duplication created four near-exact copies of Mephisto around him, turning the medic into a one-man firing squad who unleashed a barrage of gunshots into the Seekers. They then spread out, making it difficult to tell which Mephisto was real.
Out of the four foes, only Sam knew just how big a problem Sandalphon was. After the shockwave, he disengaged from his opponent and turned on the archangel as she landed, sheathing his sword. Expecting a lethal iaido slash, Sandalphon backed up, only for the cyborg to trigger his scabbard without his hand on his blade. His Murasama shot out like a projectile and struck Sandalphon in the eye. She reeled, seeing stars, unable to stop herself from clapping one hand to her face. After bouncing off her, the crimson katana flew into the air, and after Sam leaped up to catch it he descended in a splitting cleave. Eye squeezed shut, Sandalphon backpedaled, desperately trying to block. Sam’s blade fell just short of her body, but he did cut her gunstaff cleanly in half. “No...” Sandalphon stumbled, and with a shit-eating grin on his face Sam prepared to finish the job. Instead divine radiance welled up within the archangel, and after a moment she transformed in a burst of dazzling light. In order to survive, Sandalphon had become Heavenly Wings, a holy draconic angel that towered over friend and foe alike. Only Typhoon, standing at thirty feet compared to her sixteen, still eclipsed her.
But this was no time for exultation. This was a last resort in order to escape death’s door, but she’d put herself on a timer, and after her transformation expired the Seekers’ healing would end with her.
A long, low groan issued from Y as his head hung down, the chin of his featureless mask resting against his chest. The long, hair-like tentacles that extended from his head, which throughout the fight floated upward like the questing tendrils of an anemone, gently descended to splay out across the floor around him. With Hayato’s x-baton piercing -and protruding from- his chest, he couldn’t slump any farther down, but the Moebius couldn’t imagine getting much lower anyway.
”...Maybe S was right about you all,” he murmured, his voice weak but still resonant enough to be audible to all. ”You’re strong. Of that, there can be no doubt. But what…of the rest? Those not strong enough to seize their fates for themselves? That’s why…” He paused, groaning again. ”...Ah, nevermind. None of that matters now. I’ve lost. After everything, I failed to transcend Moebius. It seems even the Astral Plane is held thrall. I should have known.” A gasping laugh escaped Y as he struggled to raise his head, trying to look the Seekers in the eye. “S thought you might be the ones. But if…if even I couldn’t escape…the Endless Now…what chance have you?”
Then Y’s head dropped once again, and his body dissolved, not into ashes, but into light. And when those faint purple motes disappeared, not even a spirit remained. Hayato straightened up, taking a deep breath. Without another second’s delay he stowed his x-baton and set off on his own while the Seekers looked on, headed back the way he came. He’d evidently gotten what he came here for. The rest was up to them.
Leaning on her staff for support, Sandalphon watched just a moment longer to make sure that the Moebius was really gone. Once that tense moment passed her by, she lifted her staff and cast a long-overdue Angelic Praise. The divine radiance that flowed over her allies, warm and soothing as the waters of a hot spring, washed away their wounds and left them ready for more. After all, despite the extravagant spectacle to which they’d just bore witness, the Seekers knew that an even greater battle lay in wait just ahead. Before confronting it, though, everyone could take a moment to catch their breath, and to ponder what the Moebius meant.
“The Endless Now,” Sandalphon repeated. “I’m afraid those words do not appear anywhere within my memory. Though it would be a reasonable assumption that it simply refers to the Moebius dominion over this world, something tells me that there’s more to it than that. Would that I could discern what.”
“Guess we’ll have to have a nice long chat with the next Consul we see,” a familiar voice called out from up ahead. A rare smile spread over the face of Goldlewis when he looked toward the central structure and spotted Giovanna sitting just above the doorway. The secret agent was a bit beaten-up, but still very much alive.
“There y’are,” Goldlewis hollered. “Where’d the hell’d you go, Gio? When you didn’t show up for rounds two or three I thought you mighta finally bought the farm.”
“Pssh.” Giovanna eased off her seat and landed beside the door, markedly less steady than usual despite her laudable attempt to save face. “Urgh…well, the big freak did just about knock me into next week. Sent me flying on a chunk of debris across the whole reactor. When I stopped seeing stars, I saw you all get sucked inside, but I managed to jump into this thing.” She gestured at the difficult-to-describe building behind her. “After that…well, I’ve had better days. Kinda needed a break.”
Goldlewis gave her a sympathetic look. He hadn’t seen what happened to his friend when she fought Armstrong, but it had obviously rattled her, and after that the blow from the Soul of Ambition had been icing on the cake. “Well, don’t push yourself too hard, Gio. We don’t want you kickin’ the bucket on us. You can hang back for this next fight if you need to.”
At that, Giovanna gave an appreciative nod. “Thanks, pardner.”
If she felt bad about being the only one to sit out, the secret agent certainly didn’t show it. The others were all fighting-fit, and after the multi-faceted battle with Y, thoroughly warmed up again after their hour-long trek through Deep Ground. Finally, after everything they’d been through since their arrival in Midgar, all the losses, all the myriad friends and foes they’d encountered in their three crazy days, they’d made it. Just one last fight -one more enemy- awaited them. The Guardian of Midgar.
Yet even now, after all this time, neither Goldlewis nor Sandalphon had the slightest idea who -or what- it could be. By this point, who -or what- was left?
Within minutes, total war had engulfed the scarred borderlands between Midgar’s outskirts and the now-lifeless Valley of Ruin, and for the defenders the outlook was bleak right from the start. Without the backing of the Shinra Administration, whose forces huddled in their stronghold while the populace outside had to fend for itself, the fate of the city lay in the hands of a ramshackle legion assembled hastily and from disparate factions. The Sector 07 militia stood arm in arm with the remnants of the once-proud Hermits, while the androids of YoRHa had risen from the ashes of DespoRHado to fight alongside defectors from General Affairs and the Psych-OSF. Even Seiran, motivated to do what the Administration wouldn’t, lent its aid to the cause with the deployment of its inhumane Other Weapons. Still, despite their last-minute reinforcements, the coalition lacked numbers compared to the Machines. Outgunned and hopelessly outnumbered, but not out of options, the defenders of humanity had no choice but to fight with everything they had, and hope it was enough.
Of course, their enemy was just as determined. The Machines had sloughed most of their fodder during the fight a few days ago; today, they brought only their best. Animal-shaped machine lifeforms fought with bestial ferocity, leveraging the elements to their advantage, while the frightfully advanced Raptures brought terrifying weapons to bear. Blood spilled, sparks flew, and the window panes of Midgar -even the air itself- shuddered with the percussion of constant explosions. One by one the Machines fell, but their successors exacted retribution in kind–a price the defenders could not afford to pay. This wasn’t just a self-sacrificial bid to buy time; without knowing what the Seekers were up to, or what their actions could accomplish, the defenders were fighting for the fate of everyone in Midgar. Yet from the very beginning, the Machines made it clear that this was a lost cause. Any long-range artillery units among the Raptures not actively engaged in combat made it their priority to shell the city itself, firing indiscriminately into the undercities and up at the plates, with special attention paid to the supporting pillars. Filled with horror and anger, the defenders fought all the harder.
Protected by barriers and empowered by righteous fury, Penance let her flail fly again and again, its thorny hammerhead crumpling armor and dismantling machinery. When a gang of Clamberjaws attacked her, she held her own for a few moments with her stunning Last Word lash and Trial of Thorns, but eventually their onslaught proved to be too much and she was forced to activate Stoic Atonement. The damage reduction gave her a chance to chew through her simian assailants with radiating Arts waves, each kill replenishing her barrier, but with fateful solemnity the Judge realized that even this wouldn’t last for long. But as the Clamberjaws crowded around her, all slashing claws and gnashing teeth, help finally came. A half-dozen molotov cocktails exploded around her, getting the beasts’ attention, and a second later a nodachi plunged through a Clamberjaw’s back and pinned it to the ground. Then Kyle landed on his weapon’s hilt, releasing a massive surge of electricity that coursed through the machines, rupturing their purgewater canisters and stunning them. As they reeled, Mudrock charged in and brought her hammer down in a tremendous Crag Splitter, finishing what the Judge had started.
Penance canceled Stoic Atonement, letting out her breath in relief. “I owe you my thanks.”
“Save your thanks ‘til later,” Kyle seemed to smirk as he perched on his blade, his holographic mask ever-grinning. Up ahead, a Sunbather began to charge up red energy within the petals of its metal flower. “We’re not out of the woods just yet.”
Nearby, a squad of YoRHa androids was being destroyed by a deadly duo of futuristic Rapture walkers, Duelring and Halo. While the former plugged away with its heavy cannons, the latter launched energy rings like giant buzz saws to slice the dolls -as well as any mooks in the way- into scrap metal. In moments the squad was nearly wiped out, with just one stunned android left staring at a bright blue ring flying her way. Instead, an energy shield sprang to life around her, projected by an Axe Legion she couldn’t even see. “Don’t worry,” a grizzled, gray-bearded policeman told her. “We’ll take it from here.” Both Raptures focused fire on the shield, which was just what Captain Maximilian’s fellow officer Jin needed to send his Arm Legion forward and wrap its chain around Duelring’s legs from the side, disabling it. Maximilian seized the opportunity. His Axe Legion cast Blue Shield to give its partner three hits of invincibility, and Maximilian used it to charge straight at the Rapture in order to jump and strike its center with his x-baton in gladius form. That heavy blow left a crack in its armor, and the Axe Legion quickly planted an energy blade inside it. Unable to see or strike back against its attacker, the Halo simply leveled its cannons at Maximilian as he landed, but before it could open fire the energy blade exploded, blowing its core in two.
Meanwhile Jin had encased himself in his Arm Legion to deliver a rapid-fire beatdown to the Halo. It broke free of its chains just after the finishing punch and leaped back, hurling energy cutters. Steely as ever, Jin swerved from side to side fast enough to leave afterimages, then sent his Arm Legion forward to stagger the Duel Ring with an uppercut. It then yanked him over, and he grabbed its shoulder as it advanced with a flurry of four overhead smashes. He missed the final sync attack, however, and the Rapture recovered with surprising speed. It brought its halos around, spinning like saws, to carve into him either side, only for a deafening howl to stun it. Jin turned to see Alicia riding her Beast Legion, a grin on her face as she charged into the fray. She struck the Rapture’s legs again and again as she galloped past, and not to be outdone, Jin sent forth his Arm Legion in a barrage of punches and lariats. After a few moments the Halo began to fall, and both officers unleashed their legions with Hit Rush to deliver fierce combos on their own. When the legions disappeared, Halo was on its last legs, allowing the officers to pull off a double gladius cleave that put it down for good.
All over, the Psych-OSF defectors were fighting in tight-knit, well-coordinated groups. Yuito and Kasane’s squads led the charge together, closing the distance on the machines to take the fight to them. Hanabi’s fire and Shiden’s lightning flared up all over the place thanks to the SAS, and with Luka’s Teleportation plus Arashi’s Hypervelocity, everyone could reposition at a moment’s notice–or vanish altogether with Kagero’s invisibility. Critical use of Gemma’s Sclerokinesis and Naomi’s Precognition saved more lives than anyone would care to admit. The sight of Septentrion Second Class Fubuki Spring on the battlefield, Song of Broken Pines in hand, was glorious to behold. His ice encased all sorts of machine lifeforms and Raptures alike, allowing his allies to shatter them. When a handful of Porters put in a surprise appearance, flinging ink-black bombs the size of beach balls, Sasha Nein’s immaculate Marksmanship put a psychic bullet through each and every one to detonate them mid-air.
Still, a firing squad of long-range Raptures was nothing to shake a stick at. As wounds piled up, desperate measures became necessary. Yuito and Kasane joined forces, combining their Psychokinesis to rip up a huge amount of terrain. Milla Vodello lent them a hand, using her Levitation to lighten their load, while Kyoka used her Duplication to fill the air with even more debris. A moment later, the psionics launched their massive barrage of metal, earth, and stone, made even weightier by Fubuki’s ice. The havoc their efforts wrought gave the defenders a much-needed, but all-too-brief reprieve.
Farther forward, though, two YoRHa androids were on their own. Using their flight units, 2B and 9S made a beeline for the three lumbering titans known as Engels. “Kill…kill…kill…kill!” the rusty colossi chorused, their distorted cries echoing through the battlefield. Barely able to hear one another over the roar of battle, the androids opened fire, lighting up the dark, cloudy morning with floods of bright yellow shots. As if their huge saw arms weren’t enough, the Engels could fire volleys of missiles from their smokestacks and even huge red lasers from their heads. 9S and 2B played a dangerous game, kiting around to make the giants bodyblock -and even hit- one another. Sooner rather than later, however, their number came up. While trying to dodge one Engels, a second clipped 9S with its immense earthsaw, which was more than enough to destroy his flight unit and send him plummeting down onto its top.
“9S! Ugh!” Almost immediately, 2B’s flight unit received a punch from the third Engels, sending it flying for over a mile. Once it recovered, the flight unit transformed into flight mode to rush back into the fight at top speed. “Hang on. I’m coming!”
“Don’t worry about me,” 9S gasped falteringly, his tremulous voice reaching her over their sigils. “2B…I found a weakness in the target…hacking in…to provide support.” 2B said nothing, instead rolling her flight unit from side to side to avoid incoming lasers and countless shots from the Raptures. “2B…the control…on the enemy’s upper arm…” 9S piped up after another few seconds. “Use your pod…should be able to take it over…”
“Got it.”
Against all odds, 2B managed to fly in through the projectile storm, switch back to combat mode, and use her momentum to carve through the Engels’ upper arm. The enormous earthsaw fell, but before it could hit the ground, a huge halo of light appeared around it and hauled it back into the air. “Infiltrating enemy sub unit,” her pod reported calmly. “Behavior table adjusted. Balance controls overridden. Enemy unit subjugation complete.” With that, 2B went on the attack. She swung the captured arm again and again, each colossal blow taking a chunk off an Engels’ body, but even then it wasn’t enough. The arm buckled before her enemies did, and finally 2B was forced to jump for her life and land atop the Engels her companion fell onto, where she found 9S in dire straits. His human facade had been shattered, with the metal skeleton inside exposed wherever his limbs had been torn asunder. 2B knelt over him, holding him in her hands even as their enemies closed in.
9S half-laughed, half-coughed to himself. “I don’t imagine that…this is going to end well.” After a moment he held up a small object, a black cube inscribed with lines of flickering golden light. 2B stared at it, her expression vaguely terrified. The fact that her companion held it in his hand could mean only one thing, grim though it was. “The black box,” he groaned. “It’s ready.”
After pursing her lips for a moment as if pained, 2B nodded. “Right.” Immediately she withdrew her own black box, slowly holding it up.
9S breathed in deep, then spoke into his sigil. “Requesting…destruction of enemy hostiles via black-box reaction.”
There was a moment of hesitation before the response. “...Request accepted,” Sandalphon told him.
A moment passed, oddly serene. The call had been made. Their fate was sealed. “2B…it was an honor to fight with you. Truly.”
“The honor was mine.”
The two tapped their black boxes together, and among the army of machines blossomed the radiant light of total annihilation.
As the explosion went off in the distance, annihilating many of the biggest threats and most of the robotic horde alongside them, the two most pivotal fights reached their fever pitch. Unleashing up an immense storm of metal with his magnetic fields, Eve turned his battlefield into a night-impenetrable dust bowl. In that dusty shroud he attacked, his arms coated with masses of serrated scrap. Even in that mayhem, however, Chai managed to find the rhythm. Holding tight to his own scrap-metal guitar, he landed strings of musical hits, each a stylish combination of snappy lights and delayed heavies. His peppy energy even seemed to fight against the doom and gloom, coloring the dust with bright, cartoonish sound effects. Eve attacked him furiously, and Chai did his best to dodge and parry, then tag-team his opponent with attacks from his allies. His three friends supported him without fail, either lending a hand in neutral, punctuating his combos, or performing parry counters. Peppermint rattled off shots from her blasters or delivered acrobatic kicks, while Macaron dealt out punishing punches or pitted his strength against Eve’s heaviest scrap-metal slams. Korsica whipped up miniature cyclones to cut through the dust and make Eve more vulnerable.
When their teamwork finally staggered their opponent, Chai took the stage. As the world’s colors seemed to invert around him, he slid backward, then launched into action. His guitar cut into Eve with such energy that it left a bright blue streak in the air behind it, followed by another to make an X, then three from side to side. Finally, Chai brought his guitar down, yelling, “Overdrive Slash!” The blow threw Eve back, but he planted his foot, sliding to a stop. He growled, metal swirling around him. Peppermint promptly blasted him, which knocked him off balance long enough for Korsica to jump in and launch him with her staff. As he flew up, Macaron met him in the air and punched him down. He rolled to his feet with a yell, gathering a huge amount of scrap to armor himself up and coat his right arm for his biggest swing yet. The others scattered, but Chai charged forward. He slid on his knees beneath the giant limb, leaning back as his scrap became a real guitar with a slow-motion chord. 808 sprang toward their foe and swatted the scrap off Eve’s face with her claws, giving Chai the chance to follow up with a final climactic chop. “You’re TOAST!”
Meanwhile, Eve’s brother Adam took a different tact against Avalanche. At first he fought by conjuring countless pristine white cubes, some as defensive walls that could be launched, others in giant form to crush his foes, and still others as explosive projectiles. All the while pontificating about the nature of humanity. His opponents, seeing what was happening to Midgar and its defenders, had no time for this. Barrett let rip his prosthetic chaingun, tearing into Adam for all he was worth. Aerith pelted him with magic -occasionally magical beams- and provided the others healing. Meanwhile, Cloud and Tifa fought hand in hand, punishing the eldest of the twin machine overlords with an unrelenting assault. It wasn’t long before Adam began to realize what he was up against, which seemed to thrill him. Announcing his intent to risk his life in an effort to experience the purest essence of humanity, he disconnected from the machine network, then changed his fighting style completely. Wielding a sort of golden energy, he unleashed empowered kicks and punches, projectile barrages, and explosive fireballs, sometimes disappearing inside golden bubble shields or pumping out ground explosions.
Quickly, though, the fight began to drag on, and the members of Avalanche knew that this couldn’t continue. With the melee fighters pushed back by the constant projectiles, Barrett and Aerith dialed their output up to eleven to blaze a trail with magic and lead. Plan in mind, Cloud and Tifa fought their way back in, and the minute they worked their way back into Adam’s face they threw caution to the wind.
“No more games!” Tifa called, winding up in a low stance.
“Let’s dance, asshole,” Cloud declared, brandishing his Buster Sword with both hands.
The two unleashed their Limit Breaks, Ascension and Dolphin Flurry, at the same time. While Tifa leaped up and descended with a whirlwind kick, Cloud whipped his blade around in a fiery dance of death. At the last moment, they came together and launched into the air, Cloud with a climhazzard and Tifa with a magical dolphin uppercut. Their combined might launched Adam high into the air, and once he hit the ground hard, he did not rise. “Is this…death?” he choked out, laying in a pool of artificial blood. “So dark…so cold…”
Panting, Cloud looked over toward the other group. Though similarly haggard from his own boss battle, Chai gave a thumbs up. Then the soldier turned to survey the battlefield before him. In the aftermath of the androids’ black-box reaction, the scales had been tipped in the defenders’ favor. Without either of the twins, most of the machines seemed uncertain. Directionless.
But not all of them.
With a bloodcurdling howl, Chatterbox leaped from the dust. The enormous, apelike Rapture charged the two teams of four, eager to pound them into the dirt while weakened from their battles. Before it could reach them, however, a giant red ripped tipped with a golden spike burst from the ground and stabbed into the Rapture’s belly. Chatterbox snarled, scanning the area until it spotted a monstrous creature with many such ribbons, one currently buried in the earth. It was a freakish amalgamation of plant, statuary, mannequin, and insect, its limbs contorted in unnatural ways, yet it seemed determined to stand in the other abomination’s path. ”If you want them,” Peach’s telepathic voice resounded. ”You’ll need to go through me.”
Chatterbox leered at her, and spoke. Its low, scratchy, garbled voice sounded alien, artificial, but not in the manner of a machine–rather, like an alien tongue forced to construe its native sounds to words of a language for which it had never been designed. Not being psychic, it couldn’t have heard Peach’s voice, yet still it directed that loathsome voice her way. ”Fine. You first!”
It fired off Spike Missiles, corrosive Superacid Missiles, and finally its High-output Heavy Particle Cannon. Peach fought back, attacking with massive, contorted swings and bladed ribbons that burrowed through the earth. As its wounds mounted, Chatterbox growled and closed in. The two titans clashed in a tremendous impact, ribbons snaring and stabbing into Chatterbox as its massive mitts grabbed onto Peach’s marble heads. Struggling violently, Peach pounded at the Rapture’s head with a reversed fist, but no matter how grisly the damage to its head became, Chatterbox would not relent. Even if it meant dying here, it seemed determined to take Peach with it. Not even Barrett and Peppermint shooting him as the others rushed over seemed to slacken his grip. Finally, after a few more seconds, Chatterbox shattered the Other’s head in a burst of butterflies and plaster. A moment later the Rapture slumped down, the last of its strength depleted.
Peach slumped down the next moment. ”I’m sorry, everyone,” she groaned, her mind flooded with misery and regret. From the very beginning, back in her castle, she’d been trying to step up and do a good job. Yet no matter where the journey took her, the princess found herself hopelessly out of her depth. Though only too happy to become the figurehead for the campaign against Galeem, she routinely fell short both on the battlefield and as a leader, relying on the others to do all the heavy lifting. It was hubris. Maybe, she thought bitterly, she should have stayed in her lane. She could have waited in her castle, sipping her tea and baking her cakes while the real heroes went out to save the world. Now, she would never have that chance.
There was no cure for metamorphosis. That revelation, delivered by the scientists at the Supernatural Life Research Facility, had shaken her to her core. Then, she’d been told just what secret ingredient went into the medicine that kept her sane. Driven by her hubris to push ever farther and ever harder in an attempt to prove herself, she’d become a bloodthirsty monster forced to consume a serum distilled from human brains just to maintain lucidity. She didn’t want to live like that. So rather than rot away in her cell until the last vestiges of her humanity atrophied completely, she’d chosen to join the fight against the Ever Crisis as an Other Weapon. At least then she could die knowing she achieved something.
The dying Other lay sprawled on the ground, a broken heap of fiberglass, foliage, and clustered butterfly. It didn’t even hurt, not really. Others didn’t have nerves and didn’t feel pain like people did. Still…it was a shame it had to end like this. Peach would’ve wanted her adventure to continue, if only it could. She wanted to see new places and meet new people. To try and make the world a better place, even if she didn’t always succeed. She wanted to go back home, to see the rolling fields, to play soccer, golf, and all the other games with her friends. To throw lavish tea parties and bake magnificent cakes. To see him face to face once more.
Mario…
Chai reached the Other’s side as she crumbled into ash, then exchanged a look with 808. Not being even remotely psychic, he wasn’t sure what compelled him to jog over. As far as he knew, this was just an Other under Seiran’s control. Still, something about the monster’s sacrifice against that enormous machine struck him as oddly heroic, as well as strangely tragic. He pursed his lips. “Rest in peace, big guy.” 808 nodded her approval, and after another quiet moment, they turned to face the others. His friends and Cloud’s team were with him, while the Neuron legios and Psych-OSF defectors were approaching. In another moment, the remaining defenders had regrouped. “Hey gang. What’s up?”
As Hal’s drone finished its descent from its bird’s-eye view, its operator gave his report. “It looks like taking out Adam and Eve left most of the Machines directionless. They could still pose a threat in the future, but it looks like the invasion is over for now.” He paused for a moment. “We took heavy casualties. Even still, this might not be over. The Machines’ aerial weapons platform, Sinister, went straight for the Shinra Building, and Shinra sent out the Alpha to handle it. While they both went down over the Sector 06 bay, Sinister’s still online. But we’ve got a bigger problem. Nox.” He projected a hologram of the supposed Machine leader, who nobody present had seen since the battle began. “He’s nowhere to be found. It’s like he vanished the moment the fighting started. Which begs the question, horrible as it is…” His drone turned toward a battlefield coated in ashes and slag, dominated by the giant crater left over where 2B and 9S gave their lives. “Was this -all of this- just a diversion?”
Despite her stolid, almost robotic demeanor, Sandalphon was not quite as emotionless as she appeared. In her centuries of faithful service to the Ilian Church, she’d seen countless mortals come and go, whether on the battlefield against demons and fiends or in the course of their daily lives. Much as it pained her, she’d even witnessed terrible tragedies, the worst of all being the horrific sacrifice of hundreds of innocent villagers during the events surrounding Satan’s revival. After everything, however, she’d never grown numb to the grim reality of death. Though her face never showed it, the archangel’s heart went out to each and every lost soul, filled with sadness that good lives had to come to an end.
Only now, however, could she feel tears welling in her eyes. It was as strange a feeling as the first time, yet Sandalphon found herself oddly grateful. Sometimes, she wondered if she really was a machine, wearing the skin of an angel. But these tears told her that she really did have a heart for humanity–and for the androids who gave their lives to protect it.
Discreetly wiping away her tears, Sandalphon dismissed the screen containing the list of names she’d just received. It would take some time to read and eulogize them all, and time was a luxury she didn’t have. “Everyone good to go?” Goldlewis asked up at the front of the group, turning around to confirm that all of the Seekers were ready for the final battle. Naturally, they were. He gave an approving nod, then turned and mashed the button beside the central drawer. The doors to the Cornice’s central structure slid open, and the team moved in to see what awaited them.
The walkway extended into a giant domed chamber, terminating in a circular disc suspended above a long fall directly into a black abyss. Most of the room was dark, though a huge ring light in the ceiling illuminated the central plate, and spaced around the walls were strange moving images like projections in a movie theater, each surrounded by strange pumps. They appeared to be magic portals with the appearance of concentric gears, and inside them the Seekers could see visions of what looked like other worlds. Mountains, forest, oceans…all seemingly drained and devoid of life. All this was just the backdrop, though. On the disc sat an enormous machine, a bizarre amalgam of fantasy and space-age technology, with angelic wings like helicopter rotors, and arms outfitted with shuttle thrusters. It loomed about thirty feet high, and though it did not react to the newcomers’ presence just yet, it harbored a degree of menace beyond its status as Midgar’s guardian. For this was not some eldritch monstrosity, nor legendary beast. It was just an artificial enigma, forged by the hands of man.
Warning! Boss discovered!
Reverse-engineered Machine God of Spacetime
Tycoon
Within a minute, the Seekers had amassed on the platform with their opponent. Still it did not aggress, and it likely wouldn’t until the newcomers attacked first. Maybe, Sandalphon considered, the machine was busy. To her, it seemed intrinsically linked both with this place and the phenomenon going on around it, and not just in the sense that it all served to keep Midgar’s Guardian under lock and key. Everything here struck the archangel as sharing one singular purpose, but whatever that was, she could not immediately tell. Did it matter, in the end? What could be more important than destroying the Guardian, after all? Putting aside her unease, Sandalphon readied her weapons and prepared to give the Seekers her support.
Just as the heroes steeled themselves to begin the fight, however, a strange noise reached their ears. It puzzled them not just with what it was, but where it came from–for it was the roar of a car’s engine, and it was coming from behind them. When they turned to look back the way they came, they saw an extravagant six-wheeled convertible, fuchsia in color and strangely familiar to a few of them. It was flying through the air of the mako reactor, and once it slammed down onto the broken bridge a moment later, it raced across the rest of the span and into the central structure. Just before reaching the arena, the driver slammed the breaks to bring the convertible to a halt. Though taken aback for a moment, Goldlewis remembered that car. He knew who it belonged to without even having to look.
“Chaos.”
“Hello, hello!” A familiar figure climbed out of the car, giving the Seekers a cheerful wave before he leaned on the convertible’s hood. Just like before, he was clad from the waist down in the dark suit and cherry-red armor of the Consuls, but showed up shirtless with his turquoise musculature on full display. This time, though, he also wore a helmet: a bulbous affair with protruding rabbit-like ears, a rictus grin, and a crossed-out heart where the eyes should be. It was Midgar’s other Consul, C.
“Y’know, it takes a real sumbitch to hang a comrade out to dry like that,” Goldlewis told him tersely. “You shoulda helped Y out back there, hoss. You mighta stood a chance against us fightin’ together?”
C shook his head, seemingly disappointed. “Aw, c’mon. Even if he did expect me to show up, that was his moment. Hayato’s, too. The culmination of their story. It’s a beautiful thing, you know. Not everyone gets the luxury of a true ending.” Crossing his arms, C tilted his head. “Besides, you got me all wrong. Remember? I don’t care who wins or loses. I’m just here for the drama.” He shrugged. “Of course, the same can’t be said for them.” He reached down and slapped the hood of his car. “Gentlemen?”
The hood immediately popped up. Instead of an engine, it contained an impossible staircase, made possible only by magic. As the Seekers watched, four men emerged from within. The first was one everybody recognized: Karen Travers, masked in silver, his demeanor deadly serious. A handful could claim to have seen the second and third: Jetstream Sam, one of the DespoRHado cyborgs from yesterday morning, and Mephisto, the sickly-looking Reunion subordinate of Jena Anderson. The last, however, nobody could identify. He appeared to be a mummy of some sort, wrapped in bandages and adorned with strange, mystical-looking armor. Once the four spread out, and C dematerialized his car with a snap of his fingers, it was the stranger who began to speak.
“I am Nox.” he told the Seekers, his coldly eloquent tone bearing a light French accent. Sandalphon’s eyes blinked into crosshairs as she recognized the name–it belonged to the ‘enemy’ that Xatow said must never be allowed to lay claim to the Guardian. “I don’t expect you all to know me. But know this. Since the World of Light began, I have been gathering Wakfu. All so that I could accomplish what even Xelor could not, and turn back the hands of time.”
He held his hands out to either side, indicating the others who’d accompanied him. “We have to go back. Mistakes to correct. Wrongs to make right. Not a matter of if, but when. So, Seekers of Light. Let us waste neither lives nor time. There is no need for us to fight; just hand it over to me. That thing, the Guardian. Its power over spacetime is the last piece of the puzzle. Then we will simply leave. Change what needs to be changed. Save what needed to be saved. You’ll never realize what changed. Barely anything, to most. But the world will be a better place. And every evil we’ve wrought…” Nox looked down at his own hands. “Will have never happened.”
Goldlewis held his tongue for a moment, absorbing what he’d been told. This was an insane revelation to receive seconds before a climactic boss battle, but the arrival of Nox’s team threw a huge wrench in the Seekers’ plan. Of course, this wasn’t really up for debate, and he felt pretty sure that the others felt the same way. Whether or not Nox spoke the truth, his team couldn’t afford to lose one of the thirteen spirits they needed to defeat Galeem. That much was an immutable fact.
“Hate to break it to you,” the veteran began. “Bad shit happens to everyone. Happens to loads o’ good folks who don’t rightly deserve, every goddamn day. It ain’t fair.” His expression hardened. “So how many good folks did you happen to? How many got their lives unfairly cut short, just so that you could someday go back and right your wrongs? What makes you so worthy?””
Sandalphon stared at Nox, trying to parse the man beneath the mask. “It’s clear that any amount of sacrifice is justified if you cannot achieve your goal. At the same time, it seems like there’s a tiny part of you that isn’t completely gone. I understand your conviction; you must undo the evil you’ve wrought, so you must succeed. But even if you did manage to go back and save whoever it was you mentioned needing to save, could that person live with what you’ve done to make that happen?” She narrowed her eyes, her gaze questioning. “Could you?”
For a moment, Nox’s eyes were closed. When he opened them, however, they blazed bright. “I didn’t expect you to understand. How could you? You couldn’t imagine it. The weight on my shoulders.” He lifted up his hand and beckoned. “Come, then. Stop me if you can..”
Goldlewis bulled forward with surprising speed. Nox’s allies readied themselves for battle, but he held out a hand to stop them, then lifted his left arm as if holding up a shield. A glyph appeared on his forearm of blue interlinked gears, glowing with magic as they slowly spun. “Try this on!” When the veteran’s crushing blow struck it, it came to an instantaneous stop as Nox’s magic froze both weapon and wielder in time. With mechanical precision, the Watchmaker held up his right hand, summoned summoned a pendulum sword, with its tip against Goldlewis’ forehead, and unceremoniously drove it in.
Putting his palm to the veteran’s chest, Nox drained his Wakfu in only a moment. Then his body fell, crumbling into ash, and with his team at the ready Nox levitated into the air. On the other side of the Seekers Tycoon stirred, roused by the disturbance, and unfolded its wings. “No further questions? Good. There’s no time to lose.”
The Seekers of Light Vs Tycoon Vs Nox the Watchmaker / Karin Travers, Brain Eater / Jetstream Sam / Mephisto the Singer
A boss fight has begun. For those involved in the fight, and for the entirety of the fight, tensions and stakes are high--but so are the rewards. Post XP is accelerated: <500 words is 2 points, 500-1000 is 4 points, and 1000+ is 6 points. Confer with me to include boss actions in your post
Objective: Defeat the Guardian of the Dystopiascape and claim its spirit
As her jeers before the ambush implied, Nadia did not believe for one moment that Consul F would actually deign to put up a fight. From the moment the Seekers set foot in the Under he’d been a thorn in their side, appearing from thin air to try and get them killed. She couldn’t have failed to notice, however, that each attempt on their lives had been indirect. First he literally cut short the heroes’ ride into the Chasm, hoping they’d fall to their deaths. Then he mind-controlled the whole population of the Home of Tears in an effort to wipe them out. And now he’d gathered together the team’s former members, maybe hoping that the mental blow would soften them up enough for his infected minions to finish the job. And with the death of the thing that had been Artorias, the most enduring of F’s newest lackeys, he’d consummately failed yet again. Even before the infected knight fully dissolved, Nadia turned toward the doorway where the Consul appeared, where she found exactly what she suspected: that the smug little snake was nowhere to be seen.
“Hee…heehee…hee…” His voice reached the Seekers, somewhat faint due to distance, and try as she might Nadia couldn’t pinpoint the source due to the echos. “You guys really get it, huh? In this world, it’s kill or be killed. Too bad you have no idea what you’re up against. Go on, then. The Hollow Knight’s waiting. It’s your funeral. Hee hee hee hee…”
The Hollow Knight? Was that the Guardian? One this was clear: that F had ditched the Seekers yet again. Nadia rolled her eyes. “I knew it,” she muttered. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she raised her voice and shouted around the cavern. “You suck! You’re traaaaaaash! At least your buddy P-brain actually tried killing us himself!” Hearing no reply, the feral gave it up with a sigh and a shrug. “Then again, that’s why he’s dead I guess. Still. Tearing that little clown a new one woulda been nice consul-ation.”
Another look around revealed no sign of Master Hand either. In the nightmarish parasite farms beneath Carcass Isle, the five-fingered enigma had appeared to confound the Seekers with a difficult challenge in the form of timed boss battles. Did this brawl really count as the Hand’s pre-Guardian trial for the Under? Though thoroughly unpleasant, it had been very easy in comparison. Maybe Mast Hand deferred to F for some reason, giving him the spotlight for this penultimate encounter. Nadia snickered. If that was the case, then maybe the Hand wanted to see F embarrass himself as much as she did. With both enemies inexplicably absent, the way into the Temple of the Black Egg was clear. Only one thing kept them from heading straight in, other than a quick breather: the spirits of the fallen. Though their bodies had been twisted by disease, their spirits appeared untainted. That included not just the infected, but also their fusions: Ten Piedad, Silitha, and a Xweetok. Nadia wanted nothing to do with any of them, except for that of the tree demon, which she promptly mashed into the ground beneath her heel. “No way I’m taking the slightest chance you get to Ground me again,” she hissed.
Item obtained: Tiento to your Thorned Hairs A prayer that can only be cast by a practitioner of miracles. Summons the help of the thorned dame, who protects the faithful petitioner from all evil for a short while
Once everyone dealt with the spirits however they saw fit, Nadia was more than happy to get a move on and leave this sorry scene behind. None of the poor people brought here by F deserved what happened to them, but she doubted any deserved it less than Omori. He was just a kid. She couldn’t stop herself recalling the piggyback ride she’d given him back in Alcamoth, a warm memory turned painful. Though she’d taken an almost teasing tone earlier, Nadia’s hatred was strong. “You’ll pay,” she muttered venomously to herself. “Soon as I get my claws on you.”
For now, that would evidently have to wait until after the Guardian. Once the Seekers headed into the massive temple, they hurried across the infection-choked interior to the Black Egg. The great obsidian mass, so eerily flawless when Ganondorf, Primrose, and the Troop last saw it, now bore countless hairline fractures. Orange gas wafted from the cracks, and orange ichor oozed out from below. They’d reached the source of the infection. It lay behind the seal. Quickly, those who’d volunteered to carry the assembled mask produced and inserted the oblong keys. Each one fit like a glove, receding slightly into the surface. The Temple began to shake, and after a moment the completed seal pulsed in a flash of white, a web of glowing lines surrounding a shape like an upturned crescent moon–or a mask with enormous horns. It flashed again, stronger this time, and the seal blew apart in a shower of rubble. After a brief moment, a resounding cry echoed from within, a voiceless, mindless howl like nothing the Seekers had ever heard. It expelled a massive amount of fetid vapor, but even without the smell, it would’ve still chilled Nadia to the bone.
Inside the Black Egg, despite all the infection without, it was dark and quiet. Too dark, in fact. The heroes could see nothing but the glowing white patterns of stepping-stones leading them through the darkness, and the dull orange light to which the stones led them. “Heh,” Nadia chuckled to herself, trying to break the tension as she forged ahead. “Talk about build up, eh?”
All too soon, the team reached the other side of the darkness, and together they stepped into the light. There they found a metallic vault, murky with infected fog and strung with thick, intricate chains of almost ceremonial make. The Seekers found what they were looking for hanging several feet above the ground. Its chains had been wound tight, but not tight enough. Whoever had imprisoned this thing must have meant to contain the infection. They had failed.
Warning! Boss discovered!
The Hollow Knight shone from within. Bright. Too bright. So bright that Nadia could scarcely force herself to look into its eyes. There was something horrible about that light. It burned, like staring into the sun. Like someone was prodding her brain with a branding iron. The Orphan had been ghastly, but this was an altogether different beast. Even killing this thing wasn’t a prerequisite for fighting Galeem, Nadia understood instinctually that it needed to be destroyed. As the Seekers approached, the monstrosity struggled against its bonds, and the room began to shake. In quick succession the chains holding the Hollow Knight snapped, and after a moment it tore free. It hit the ground, assumed its full eight feet of height, and tilted its head back to fill the Black Egg with its haunting, ungodly cry.
A boss fight has begun. For those involved in the fight, and for the entirety of the fight, tensions and stakes are high--but so are the rewards. Post XP is accelerated: <500 words is 2 points, 500-1000 is 4 points, and 1000+ is 6 points. Confer with me to include boss actions in your post
Objective: Defeat the Guardian of the Under and claim its spirit
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lewa’s advocacy for a non-violent solution concerning the reported beast failed to get any appreciable groundswell, either among the villagers or his fellow fish out of water. In fact, the hunters regarded him with a mixture of muted bewilderment and astonishment, clearly intending to give no offense but unable to suppress their awe at such a wild, naive notion. Meanwhile, amongst the otherworlders, only Remilia dignified his suggestion with a response, though her choice of words did suggest that even she didn’t take his idea too seriously. Well, no matter. While he wasn’t going to summarily discard his preferred plan of action, Lewa didn’t plan to insist on it. Even now he had a very poor grasp of how things worked in this alien world, but given the vast differences he’d observed already he knew it would be nothing short of hubris to blindly apply his own way of doing things to this new reality. Maybe the rahi of this world couldn’t be befriended no matter what, or maybe these ‘monsters’ had more in common with the Bohrok than Mata Nui’s own wildlife. Rahi had every right to try and live their lives that matoran did, but the Bohrok Swarm was a mindless force of annihilation, killing and destroying not to survive but out of some inexplicable mechanical malice. With the Bohrok, there was only kill or be killed, and maybe it was the same here. Still, Lewa wanted to hold out hope that if the team ran into some majestic animal, no matter how ill-tempered, that he could be the one to hold out the carrot instead of the stick.
Anne volunteered to stay behind and keep the villagers safe from any possible threats in the others’ absence. Though Lewa wanted nothing more than to help guarantee the safety of the poor folks who’d already suffered so much, others would be better suited to guard duty, while comparatively few would be better suited to a forest expedition other than himself. With the composition of the two teams decided, no further deliberation remained, so with the hunter named Derek in the lead Lewa and the others got underway.
Bolstered by a troop of capable combatants at his back, Derek could retrace his steps through the forest with renewed confidence. After saving his village from the Raven Heralds, surely these people could handle a rogue beast or two. The further he and the others delved into the trees, however, the more ominous the traces of unnatural activity became. As they appeared, Lewa studied the tracks with an interest that bordered on enthusiasm. “Bigger than an Ash Bear,” he remarked, his tone surprisingly chipper. He knew the creatures of Le-wahi, and to a lesser extent those of Mata Nui’s other regions, like the back of his hand. The same couldn’t be said for the rahi of this world by any means, but his experience meant that he could see certain commonalities. The scarred tree trunks suggested that this beast was marking its territory. In turn, the fact that it was claiming new territory to begin with suggested a disturbance in its ecological niche, maybe an emigration from its usual habitat. However, the decimated underbrush filled Lewa with bemusement. What purpose could that serve? Rahi didn’t destroy just for destruction’s sake. With that in mind, the sheer size of this creature’s tracks became more worrisome. If amicable solutions were off the table, this makeshift team could be in for quite the fight.
Some of the others came to their own conclusions. All could agree, though, that the sheer amount of traces could only be explained by the existence of multiple culprits, possibly all of a similarly gargantuan stature. Their expedition came to a momentary half as the subject of ‘youkai’ sidetracked the conversation. Lewa could only assume that the completely unfamiliar word represented something unique to a particular foreign world. Half-listening, the toa of air continued to examine the area, crouching down by tracks to try and get a better idea of the mammoth feet that made them, or climbing up to inspect damaged tree trunks. While doing so he realized that Remilia was talking about the organics’ species. Human, hmm? When she mentioned rahi, he decided to chime in. “In truth, ‘rahi’ means ‘not us’. Meaning any living thing other than matoran, which would technically include all of you. But yes, ‘wildlife’ would be more appropriate.”
After another moment, Lewa stood from the set of tracks he’d been looking at. “This is quite the mess. But if we want to hunt-track down the source of this disturbance, I think we should hurry-go this way.”
Even if Sandalphon hadn’t pointed it out, Goldlewis had already gotten a grip on the situation now confronting his team. Nothing about the near-featureless, mathematical void that stretched out infinitely around him clued him in, necessarily, and certainly no prior experience shed any light on present circumstances in even the vaguest terms, but when all else failed his ever-dependable gut told him what he needed to know: that this was it. Do or die. This state of quasi-existence was the closest that the individual known as Goldlewis Dickinson had ever been to annihilation, not just his material body, but his immortal soul. His right to exist as an individual was staked on this battle, and as such, he held nothing back.
Bellowing like a raging bull, the Secretary of Absolute Defense attacked. He threw caution to the wind and bore down on the Moebius core to deliver a withering bombardment of punches, kicks, elbows, tackles, and smashes. His coffin became a battering ram of destruction, wielded in every manner conceivable, and the UMA within -perhaps fearing for its own existence- gave its partner everything it had. Thunderbird grenades appeared with mechanical regularity to detonate against the polyhedron’s glassy, amorphous bulk. The core struck back with relentless brutality, but without apparent intelligence or strategic cohesion. If it focused everything it had on one opponent, it might be able to overwhelm that assailant beyond any hope of recovery, but instead fought on many fronts at once. It churned out an abundance of projectiles, lancelike projections, and subservient wireframes, but that was all it could do. When Goldlewis confirmed his suspicions that his enemy couldn’t combo him, he didn’t need to know anything else. He just needed to tough out the punishment that came his way, sustained by the intermittent pulses of Sandalphon’s healing miracles. His furious assault really began to snowball when Roland ‘s Rake came into play. The core’s purple skewers represented its clearest and most present danger, thanks to their high damage and hard-to-react-to speed, and with that attack sealed the close-quarters specialists like Goldlewis, Sakura, and Karin could really shine.
Attacking from behind, the wireframes tried to take Goldlewis and the others down, but beyond shrugging them back and pushing them off the veteran barely needed to do anything. Everyone pitched in to clear out the fodder, but Midna and Zenkichi went among them like wolves among sheep. Though the princess and the detective couldn’t have been more different, some strange core conceit connected them across space and time, giving them a pronounced upper hand against hordes. Together the two shut down the wireframe offensive, shattering them as quickly as they appeared. Meanwhile, Sandalphon kept calm and did her job. Though able to take potshots here and there, and punish overeager wireframes with far deadlier wires that sliced right through their constituent lines, she focused on evasion and healing so the others could keep the pain train rolling.
Working together, the Seekers were gaining ground. Cracks created by the falling house and walloping coffin deepened where the missiles, bow blades, quake rounds, and karate techniques collected. Everyone was motivated to pull out all the stops in this fight for survival, but for one hero, this fight was personal. Hayato and his Sword Legion moved and fought in perfect sync, not just attacking in tandem but pulling off flashy sync attacks with a one hundred percent success rate. Together they piled on the damage, but when the core struck back Hayato diverged from the formidable Goldlewis approach. For him, the core’s attacks weren’t hindrances, but opportunities to unleash a counter strike or Perfect Call and turn the tables with an empowered blow. “Give her back!” he howled, breaking his characteristic silence. “This! Is for! AKIRA!”
Hayato whipped his Sword Legion around, and time seemed to slow down as he lined up the perfect slice. A moment later, his partner shot out, a blue-and-white blur whose blade parted -and subtly shifted- reality itself. After a brief pause the displaced halves slammed back together, but the rift didn’t quite mend. With the wireframes gone, the Seekers whaled on the break. The cracks spread, and the next second, the core ruptured. A wave of force pushed its attackers back as the core crumpled in, collapsing into a smaller, spiky shape like a split-open geode. Cubic purple cores rained down slowly across the geometric plane as it settled, and on touching the ground the corrupted data began to assume the roughly humanoid forms of those Y had absorbed.
Then some of the data began to coalesce. With a noise almost like crackling timber it amassed into a murky, purple-black figure. It was Y–or more accurately, the man beneath the Moebius mask, Yoseph Calvert. Though of course, it wasn’t truly him. In his endeavor to transcend everything he was or had become, Yoseph had made himself something entirely different.
Hayato rose and struck him in a rage, only for his baton to pass right through. “It’s useless,” Yoseph intoned, a strange feedback inherent to his voice. “I’m part of the Astral Plane now. I’m endless.” He held his hands up. “I transcend mere dimensionality.” Ignoring him, Hayato turned and attacked again as the others approached, but again his weapon phased through Yoseph’s body. “Please stop. Come, now. It’s time for you all to join me.”
Then a baton slammed through his back, actually piercing his heart. It belonged to Akira, now no more than a phantom of the Astral Plane, like Yoseph himself. Gasping in shock, Yoseph sank to his knees. Behind him, rays of darkness began to bleed through the core. “I am…endless!”
When the core ruptured, everything went dark and hazy. When the Seekers opened their eyes, they picked themselves up from the bridge leading toward the mako reactor’s central structure. No sign of the Soul of Ambition could be seen. A moment passed before Goldlewis dared to clear his throat. “We did it. Or…she did it, I guess I oughta say. Poetic justice.” He let out a deep breath. “I reckon we-”
A flare of purple light got his attention, and he turned his gaze down the bridge, toward the towering structure. There he saw a masked purple figure alight with power. Tentacles streamed upward from his head, and in his chest glimmered a true Moebius core. Yet his manner seemed strangely defeated, and when he spoke, his demonic tone sounded bizarrely morose. ”So this as far as I can go,” Y murmured, practically hanging his head. ”All that legionic fusion, the Astral Plane itself, and yet-! Moebius, after all. We are all slaves…” Raising his head, he adopted a side-facing stance and extended his index finger forward. A light appeared in front of it, and a moment later, a huge purple laser burst forth to scream across the bridge. It scattered the Seekers and struck Goldlewis, sending him flying. He hit the bridge again near the edge that had been snapped off and tumbled toward the brink, unable to stop his momentum.
”I no longer care who lives or dies,” Moebius Y announced, his voice imperial. ”But I may as well destroy you if I can. So show me, Seekers of Light. Who will bring a stop to this: you, or I.”
To some of her teammates, Nadia’s question invited an easy answer. Many of them had means of neutralizing the danger inherent to the Chasm’s preternaturally long fall, different in form but similarly effective. Primrose, Jesse, and Rika possessed arcane methods of slowing their falls, turning a lethal plummet into a slow, almost whimsical drift. Kamek could soar down into the nigh-illimitable pit with the help of his broomstick, and Sectonia’s majestic insect wings allowed her to achieve still greater aerial movability. Of the two magicians, though, only the Magikoopa could lend wings to others through the conjuration of additional beasts of burden. Even Ganondorf, someone Nadia would have expected to be hopelessly terrestrial in terms of locomotion, had apparently obtained a familiar that would allow him to parachute down alongside the others. It was a ghastly creature, reminiscent of the ocean’s stingrays or manta rays, but woven from fully exposed, blood-red sinew and serrated lengths of bone. The sight of Ganondorf’s phantom, together with the voluminous beat of its tarpaulin wings and its hideously raspy intonations, made Nadia shiver, but she couldn’t deny that she felt a little sting of jealousy. With everyone accounted for, only three of the Seekers lacked a reliable means of traversing the Chasm, and the cat burglar was one of them.
Once the final preparations concluded and everyone could put off the inevitable no longer, they began their reluctant trek down toward that terrible rift in the earth where they would once again entomb themselves in that subterrene kingdom of continual nightmare. The closer she got to the pit, trudging over rugged yellow grasses and through spiraling stone channels, the more Nadia loathed her newfound sense of duty that obliged her to leave the enlivening breezes, wholesome creatures, and liberating sky behind. In addition to the way it reminded her of a yawning maw, poised to snap shut on her for good now that it had gotten a taste, Nadia dreaded the possibility of revisiting the various horrors she’d already experienced down there in the last few sunless days. The Womb for example, and everything in the Basement leading up to it, had been plenty nasty in their own right, but the surreal encounters she’d suffered through in Mercy Dreams had been the worst of all. It was frustrating; Nadia had been doing her best to leave her past behind her and embrace this farcical hero’s journey, but her past seemed to be pursuing her doggedly, and she was tired of it snapping at her heels. Hopefully Robin had been the one responsible for bringing her shadows into the light, and with him out of the picture, Nadia could focus on looking forward.
Coming to the edge of the Chasm, Nadia steeled herself and peered down into the depths. On the way she’d tried to drum up some of her trademark great ideas, but nothing that came to mind really tickled her fancy. While she knew that Charge could be used to change her momentum, relying on that to stop her fall would demand such exact timing that Nadia felt really doubtful. Between miscalculation, accident, and good old-fashioned impetuousness, she’d almost splattered herself several times already, and this involved even greater risk. Her other ideas pleased her even less, like scaling the Chasm walls manually with her claws, or being carried by Sectonia like an infant. However, the World of Light was nothing if not full of surprises, and not always in a bad way. Other people, with more tools and time on their hands, had already taken a shot at solving the problem that confronted them. One solution, belonging to a very polygonal woman named Makena, seemed almost laughably simple. In clear and alarming violation of the laws of physics, she’d placed an endless waterfall that acted more like a column of water. Nadia ended up smiling at the delightful and convenient impossibility. “Well, it sure wouldn’t be the first time I soaked myself to the bone on this trip. And hey, at least there’ll be a little sunlight to warm me up at the bottom, so…don’t mind if I do.”
Ready for the shock of cold water, she took a running jump and leaped right into the vertical stream. She entered it with a splash. While she knew that it flowed much, much slower than a normal waterfall just by looking at it, Nadia didn’t expect the pillar to slow her down as much as it did. “Oh, jeez,” she muttered, sticking her head out of the water and into the air. “This is gonna take fur-ever…”
At that very moment, she heard another, much louder splash, and swiveled her head upward to look. With incredible comedic timing, Bowser fell on her the next instant. Something about the big guy caused him to sink like a rock, slower than freefall but still appreciable fast, and as he plummeted through the water column his weight drove Nadia beneath him. She plowed through the water like a fallen water skier dragged by an oblivious boat, spread-eagled and sputtering. “Whubbbububbububububbububbub!” Fighting to orient herself, she ejected her head from the waterfall on a corded ‘neck’ of muscle fiber. She craned it upward to look at Bowser in bafflement. “Water you doing!?” Once she realized what was happening, Nadia quickly did the only thing she could: unleash jets of blood to blast herself clean out of the waterfall and into the open air of the Chasm. Once Bowser passed her by, she airdashed back into the pillar of safety, where she hung for a moment in comparative peace. With friends like these, even the simplest tasks were never boring.
If nothing else, the mishap gave Nadia an idea for speeding up her progress. Nadia began to swim out of the waterfall on purpose, fall for a few moments, then jet back into the liquid elevator before reaching terminal velocity. This literal rinse-and-repeat strategy allowed her to make relatively good time. Still, the Chasm was monstrously, absurdly deep, so much so that even a freefall could have taken minutes. No matter who made the descent, or how, it proved to be a painstaking and drawn-out procedure.
After what felt like ages, Nadia finally reached the floor, not too long after the others. “Whew! Made it!” she panted. “Finally getting to the bottom of things, eh?” She said this, of course, knowing full well that the Under went down much, much farther. Down through the Basement and the visceral waterways of the Womb, down through the Kingdom’s Edge, down into the Hive…she dreaded to think just how far down it went. Instead, she stared upward for the second time, noting just how far away that vital pinprick of sunlight seemed to be. Only now did it occur to her just how bad it would have been if someone obstructed the waterfall mid-descent. Someone had shown up to ruin their day last time, after all. Come to think of it…where was F? Considering where the Seekers were going, she felt grimly certain that the Consul would make an appearance. At the bottom of the Chasm, that shaft of light shown on a bed of ruined yellow flowers, systematically severed and scattered with an ill-tempered haphazardness. If Kamek’s guess about who did it was on the money, maybe F was already here and lying in wait somewhere up ahead. For Nadia, though, that notion didn’t hold much menace. “Isn’t this a little…” she gestured around at the flowers. “Petal-ful? No way he seriously thought he’d nip us in the bud like that.” The feral shrugged. “Well, we’ve already pruned one Consul. If F shows up, he’ll find himself pushing up daisies.”
No vicious and varied monsters sprang from the dark corners of the vaulted cave in ambush, so the Seekers began the next leg of their journey after a warning (as well as heads-up about a Flame Clock) from Ganondorf. He, better than anyone, knew that their objective lay close at hand. When the team put aside ruminations on the Clocks and began to push through the ruined crossroads, however, they found it very, very different from how they left it. Before, this region had been rather plain, its corridors and pathways well-trodden by the subterranean denizens who dwelled within comfortable distance of the light of day, positively hospitable by the Under’s standards. During the days of the Seekers’ absence, however, the crossroads had undergone a profound and disturbing change. The stately roads of stone and shell, fringed with unremarkable vegetation, had been completely overtaken by a frightfully virulent corruption. Now, the blue-black backdrop festered with a kind of immense mold that gave off a vibrant, unnatural orange phosphorescence. Slimy threads connected clusters of gelatinous cysts or boils, and within those abominable buboes that quivered and pulsed in sync as if united by a single unfathomable heartbeat squirmed countless grotesque dark smudges, hideously suggestive of things to come. The contagion had spread into everything that once lived in this place, either changing them from within or filling up the hollows their deaths left behind. Vile sounds filled the cross roads, throbbing, squelching, slopping, and a foul stench pervaded the place. Not the miasma of rot or death, but the stench of new life, irreparably at odds with every facet of the ‘old life’ it had come to supplant wholesale. The Infection was here.
Boxcutters in hand to avoid close contact, Nadia fought through it alongside her teammates. The infected bugs on the road to the Temple of the Black Egg were aberrant, the mere sight of them making Nadia’s skin crawl, but they were hardly difficult to dispatch. They moved predictably, and in short bursts. The Seekers could outmaneuver and outrange them, and not one took more than a few strikes before it fell apart. As they made progress, Nadia couldn’t help but feel like this was just the beginning. This region was doomed, no doubt about it, but the plague had not yet surged forth to flood through the Under like a toxic tide. It was still…incubating. Nadia shivered, but kept moving. She’d heard about the Infection, but she got the impression that it had been under control. Was this connected to the Guardian, somehow? If so, there was no time to waste.
Within half an hour, the Seekers arrived at the Temple of the Black Egg. The closer they got, the thicker the Infection became, and now it gleamed through the temple’s windows like the eyes of some primeval monstrosity. The pustules clustered thickly here, bloated with disease. Having not actually come here before, Nadia wasn’t taking point for once. Instead she cast her gaze around with her eyes narrowed, clearly expecting something. She wasn’t disappointed.
A dark silhouette cut through the orange glare of the temple’s front door. Floating above the ground, it quickly grew larger, and though Nadia could tell what she was looking at for a moment, she quickly puzzled it out. This shadow belonged to a hand, hovering horizontally with its palm up, and atop it stood a small, squat silhouette made strange by a flowing cape. After another moment, Master Hand came into view, then lowered its fingers like a ramp so that the figure of Consul F atop it could step onto the ground.
F stayed where he was, however. Though he stood firm with his arms crossed, an almost imperceptible nervous energy animated him, causing him to fidget. Nevertheless, the malice in his eyes was very real. “A little early, don’t you think?” he sneered at the Seekers. “There’s no way you have enough fragments, duplicates or not. You didn’t even touch the Under’s north side, or the real depths. Are you stupid?”
Nadia averted her gaze, chuckling evasively. “Aheheh, well uh…”
The Consul’s eyes narrowed. “You know, I really didn’t think you little freaks would actually beat Robin. Finding out that he’s not real did a real number on him, huh? Giving in’s not so bad, you know. It’s liberating. Empowering. Of course, he went and trapped folks in dreams so they’d never have to suffer like he did. If you dopes had half a brain, you would’ve taken his mercy. Still, it’s fun watching you struggle.”
Nadia extended her blade toward him. “Better watch close then, little man, ‘cause we’re about to roll over your Guardian. Or are you gonna quit standin’ on the sidelines and actually try to stop us this time?”
Y chuckled darkly. “Hehehe. Funny you should say that, actually. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging some entertainment for us. Mostly for me, I’ll admit, but maybe you’ll get a kick out of it.” Finally F stepped off of Master Hand, who disappeared as the ground began to shake slightly. “See, I’ve been watching you. All of you. Did you have a nice sleep up in Dirtmouth? Ever stop and think about all the friends you left behind?” Around the Seekers, the infected eggs began to quiver with renewed intensity. “Well, I did. Poor souls, alone and shivering in the dark. Even though you’ve been terrible friendsI went and found ‘em for you so you can see ‘em again. But after I brought ‘em here, the funniest thing happened. Turns out, friends have a short shelf life. They all sorta…went bad.”
Suddenly, the sacs burst open. From within, terrible shapes lurched, sprawled, and finally rose. Some were very large, and others very small. They were little more than husks, practically unrecognizable. Puppets given life by an awful, insatiable light. They were grotesque, spine-chilling parodies, foul regurgitations of an eldritch force as pragmatic as it was cruel. Nadia’s heart thudded in her chest; her gorge threatened to rise. Why hadn’t the Seekers paid them more attention…how could they have let them go? Of course the lurking viper who dared not strike at the pack would single out those that strayed, one at a time…
For these were the infected corpses of the Adventurer, Omori, Ichiban, Undyne, Rubick, Nocturne, Teemo, and Artorias.
“So much for a tearful reunion, I guess,” F remarked offhandedly, his tone mocking. “All you can really do now is put them out of their misery. You’ve slaughtered so many after all. What’s a few more corpses on the pile?”
Nadia bared her teeth scornfully as she got ready to fight. After a brief moment of weakness, her heart was hardened. Whoever these people had been, they were already dead. “The worst kind of boss,” she hissed. “When we’re done disinfecting, you’re next.”
While he tried to put aside his reverent enthusiasm for the sake of lofty simplicity as he furnished the others with an overview of his storied homeland, Lewa still fretted internally that he’d do Mata Nui a disservice by failing to properly convey not just the versatile island’s majesty, but its essential nature. His time in this world, brief and involuntary though it had been, did more than anything else serve to illuminate the vast gulf of difference between it and the beloved realm he hailed from. Maybe, he reflected, he also ended up haranguing them with too many unfamiliar names and syllables, and those ultimately unnecessary details further garbled his explanation. On the contrary, however, the others seemed to grasp the sort of nature-attuned tribal society he outlined with immediate and surprising ease. They shrugged off the odd names, nonplussed for the most part by elements of a foreign culture, as one might expect from denizens of realities that were home to many. The only element of his eager fantastical tale that apparently aroused a sense of puzzlement was his matter-of-fact testimony that such a life could be led by machines. Of this, naturally, Lewa himself was living proof, and with pride in his home alight in his eyes he stood tall among the otherworlders, more than willing to answer any additional questions that his circumstantial allies might raise.
Remilia praised his home, and alongside Sanae, expressed sympathy for the toa’s plight. It pleased him to know that the others could grasp just how dire the situation back home could become in his absence–and how imperative it was that he return. Only one of the assembled strangers posed him another question, though. Though his face lay hidden beneath his mask, Lewa couldn’t hide the vigor with which he’d happily keep the memories of his home alive in his mind, and nobody wanted to get too bogged down in the details. His fascinatingly magical companion Rayne, however, did ask about one thing she wanted to know, a matter of taxonomy more than anything else. To Lewa, the answer seemed obvious, even if Rayne’s phrasing invited a measure of misunderstanding. “Why, my brothers and I are toa!” Lewa replied proudly. “Heroes defined by the three virtues of unity, duty, and destiny!” He gave each word special emphasis, then fell silent, as if his succinct declaration summarized everything worth knowing about his biomechanical race.
Despite the aplomb with which he’d reintroduced himself alongside his homeland, Lewa hardly resented the limelight moving elsewhere. The world didn’t revolve around him, after all, and this was hardly an appropriate time for showboating, even if the Spirit of Air had been particularly inclined. Joker introduced himself, offering a reference for his code name that completely passed Lewa by. Card? Was ‘the Card’ some sort of archetypal or legendary figure whose namesake the boy had become? He quickly dismissed that question as not just foolish, but irrelevant as Joker unveiled the presence of a new entity, ethereal and evil in appearance, not to mention so large that Lewa could no longer count himself the tallest out of everyone here. This spectral presence did not linger for more than a couple moments, just long enough to leave a lasting impression and an odd sense of intensified darkness. Lewa shuddered slightly as the impulse faded. Shadows were the domain of the Makuta, mortal enemy of Mata Nui, matoran, and toa alike. “Nothing safe-good can come of dabbling in darkness,” he muttered, half to Joker and half to himself.
The exchange petered out not long after his portentous warning. Everyone could tell the others a little about themselves, but the lack of common ground beyond their maddeningly unclear predicament made extended conversation nigh-impossible. To make matters worse, everyone was to some degree tired and sore thanks to their efforts since arriving in this world, and like the poor villagers who’d been through so much, they needed both rest and whatever succor could be found in dreams. Despite the success he’d enjoyed alongside these people so far, Lewa couldn’t truly bring himself to trust the others yet. Nor could he trust this hamlet to shelter him for the night; it had fallen once, and would do so again all the easier if assailed under cover of darkness. As such, he bid the others farewell, then made for the forest. He could sleep a lot easier up among the branches of the woodland canopy, where he could recline on a sturdy bough amidst similarly colored verdure and imagine, even if just for a moment, that the rustling whisper of the wind among the leaves belonged to the jungled slopes of home.
-=-=-
When the morning sunlight shone through the trees, casting dappled shadows onto the loam and leaf litter of the forest floor, Lewa awoke. Despite his best attempt to surround himself with comfortably familiar scenery, he’d never managed to shake the creeping, almost anathematic sensation that he didn’t belong here. That hardly made for a peaceful rest, and he knew his energy couldn’t have fully recharged, but after rousing himself he felt confident that he could go another day, physically at least. If another full day went by in this bizarre region without any indication of a return journey, the condition of his mind might be another matter. For now, though, he resolved to greet the new day with a smile on his face, and to hope that the youngster who played a part in his forcible seizure yesterday would be wide awake and amenable -not to mention able- to help. If not…well, best not to dwell on such things.
Lewa descended from the treetops with a practiced grace that defied his formidable form. He returned to the gutted village at a steady pace, suppressing the nervous energy that would’ve otherwise quickened his steps. When he approached the lodge where the others put an inordinate amount of trust in both numbers and one another, however, he found that a hushed but uneasy contention among the men had already garnered his allies’ attention.
They quickly filled the new arrival in, but the toa didn’t seem quite as quick to offer his services again. “Monster? In the trees?” He narrowed upturned eyes, a hand on the chin of his mask. He hadn’t sensed anything so far, but his senses were hardly used to the shapes and sounds of this strange land. “You mean a rahi of some kind? Now, now. Let’s not be so hasty. A sorrow-bad story has unfolded here, true, but rahi don’t understand such things. They know-feel no malice, and have only their instincts to listen-follow. It’s only natural that such things might lead them here. This is their home-land, after all. Let me keep look-out among the trees. I have a way with rahi. Even the mighty-big Ash Bear can become a friend if you know how.” Given how different things were here, and how much behavioral knowledge went into such endeavors, Lewa felt much less confident about befriending the wildlife than usual. Still, he felt obligated to try.
Though impressive to behold, and reassuring in its ferocity, the roar of the Skyfish in Goldlewis’ hands amounted to frustrating little. Moebius Y didn’t even register it. Well, the veteran hadn’t exactly expected this chimeric colossus to melt like a slug once salted by his minigun fire, but it looked like the Seekers were in it for the long haul. Still, that was nothing new, and at least his shots weren’t just pinging harmlessly off barriers or armor. As long as the team could strike their target, they could win. Provided that they survived.
As expected, Moebius Y was determined not to let that happen. The blows delivered by his arms were gargantuan, and not so slow that they could be evaded with casual ease. Whenever his limbs began to move, the heroes needed to move faster. Their foe’s offensive arsenal seemed limited in this form, but his attacks proved to be brutal in their simplicity. Worst were the lasers, threatening huge areas at once as they raked across the floors, airborne platforms, and walls. Goldlewis could try to return fire, but his Security Level system was the limiting factor, a major double-edged sword. Though his UMA could replicate technology without theoretical limit given enough time, this process put a hard limit on the quality -and quantity- of the firepower that the veteran could bring to bear. Only his coffin -and his iron body- remained constant. That meant that, like Giovanna, he had no choice but to get up close and personal. If only he shared her speed.
When Midna and her savage beasts took off running, Giovanna joined the pack. She might not be able to keep pace with the unnatural wolves on her own, but together she and Rei had run with the Twilight Princess already, and the floating remains of the bridge looked like the team’s best bet for staying mobile. Standing still, after all, was death. Moebius Y did not tolerate Blazermate’s turret for more than a moment. With a baleful glance, his lasers quickly shredded the stationary sentry nest into shrapnel. Nobody who saw that could fail to realize that the same fate awaited them if they failed to stay mobile. As such, the Seekers kept themselves one step ahead of their foe’s mighty swings and sweeping beams. Midna and Gio in particular put their agility to use trying to circle around the Moebius. Out of the two, the secret agent leveraged her positioning to launch hit-and-run attacks. Her divekicks and Trovão flying kicks allowed her to close the distance, strike like lightning, and then disappear just as quickly back into the mako storm.
Meanwhile, Midna kickstarted the colossal endeavor of managing the Soul of Ambition’s aggression. Karin pitched in with the help of her grappling hook, trying to alleviate some of the burden. By taking the role of tank, the two were playing a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, banking on their ability to avoid the worst of Y’s assault. Karin in particular had one problem: lacking any ranged options, she couldn’t threaten and provoke Y as easily as many of those she was trying to safeguard. By now, everyone was laying into the Mobius with everything they had.
Their target moved a lot, shifting hundreds of feet at a time as he turned and attacked. Even direct hits on the eyes didn’t appear to be any more effective. That made precision less effective than sheer output, but with thirteen Seekers and only three heads to focus on them, the team was more than capable of rising to the challenge.
An array of lasers from the eyes of Y’s main head swept over the hallway’s mouth from low to high, just the sort of catastrophe the frontrunners had been trying to avoid by taking their chances on the floating debris. Geralt evaded it with a mad sprint, but Susie and Blazermate, who hadn’t changed their defensive tactics from the fight against the clones, both got hit. The laser obliterated the medabot’s projectile shield in an instant, and two hit Susie’s bulky Business Suit. Sandalphon hadn’t moved either, but when the lasers blazed forth, she stood up and braced herself, eyes narrowed as they calculated with almost mechanical precision. “Steady…” When the beams rose she moved a half-step back and turned sideways, standing tall as she narrowly passed between the beams. Only her coat, billowing from the disturbed air, was severed.
Though he'd put a lot of effort into helping to defeat the imposter Akiras, Hayato's fight was far from finished. He ran after the others, sending out his legion and using it to pull him from platform to platform. With only a Sword Legion beside him, his ranged options were limited, so he kept up the pressure with his x-baton in blaster mode as he made his way closer. In the short time the others had known him, the young officer had been unerringly taciturn, seldom speaking or showing emotion even as he pulled off daredevil stunts. Now though, he looked furious. As his fusion with his own legion made plain, the death of his sister -his real sister- had sent him on a downward spiral. Whatever it cost him, Hayato was going to take revenge. His Sword Legion slingshotted him through the mako storm, his x-baton switched to gladius mode, to deliver a huge smash to the middle head of the Moebius. Then, as retaliatory lasers surged forth, his partner yanked him to safety.
Not long after, Midna pulled off the impressive feat of binding one of Y’s hands to the bridge. Though the Moebius thrashed against the astral chain to break free, her allies quickly took advantage. Roxas in particular raced up their enemy’s arm in order to deliver a flashy series of strikes to his head. Opposite him and Karin, a floating platform spun around to reveal Giovanna crouched on it, hiding out of sight. She leaped, airdashed forward, then shot down in a crackling green-and-red blur. “Fear on the wind!” As an overdrive, her Ventania struck with vigorous strength, mirroring Karin’s own flying kick, then led into a quick combo. With Y distracted, the firing squad down in the hallway could renew their efforts. Crossbow bolts, shotgun blasts, missiles, and charged hadoukens flew up to spatter against the monster’s huge body, while strikers attacked en masse. Valjean’s gun skills and Pit’s light arrows flew in from the tempest as well, and Sandalphon joined in the barrage, emptying a full magazine of red-hot sniper rounds into those unblinking red eyes of his.
At the moment, Goldlewis wasn’t shooting. He’d thrown caution to the wind by throwing himself at his Moebius foe, landing on one of the rib-like bone spurs on Y’s torso. “You’re! Going! Down!” He worked the body with his coffin, battering the bizarre, corded purple flesh. Few living things could take punishment like this, but the Soul of Ambition was one of a kind. And after a few moments, Y broke free from his bindings in dramatic fashion. With one final, mighty wrench, he tore off the entire section of bridge that Midna anchored his hand to, including those attacking it. The chains shattered as he flailed his arm through the storm in a gigantic backhand that hurled the bridge piece away to crash into the reactor wall. Giovanna was unlucky enough to be caught in the path of his blow. Stunned by the agonizing impact, she grabbed hold of the arm and held on for dear life. Luck really wasn’t on her side today.
“Gio!” Down below, Goldlewis clamped a mighty mitt down on the bone spur’s edge and held tight. Unable to see what became of his friend from this angle, he gritted his teeth in anger and uncertainty. Right now, he had no choice but to trust her, or -failing that- trust in the team’s healers to bail her out.
The fight resumed, as intense as ever. While the Seekers could deal damage easily, their foe was just too big. If they beat Y like this, it wouldn’t be through a death of a thousand cuts–a million might be more appropriate. His enormous attacks forced evasion to be their number-one priority. By the same token, however, Y’s impractical size meant he couldn’t really hit the heroes if he didn’t catch them sleeping. This was a stalemate of incredible proportions, but a stalemate all the same, and Y knew it. “Cease your pitiful resistance,” he resounded. ”Within my ark, there will be no injustice. No disparity. No suffering. Through unity, you can finally achieve peace. Immortality. Don’t you see? I intend to transcend the cycle! To transcend Moebius!”
Suddenly, the Soul of Ambition straightened up, as if breathing deep. His ‘ribcage’ opened wide like the tentacles of an anemone, and in his chest a brilliant light began to shine. It was another vortex, like the one Y used before in his Consul form, but far, far larger. Inescapable, all-consuming. Given his proximity, Goldlewis was one of the first to be sucked inside, but the floating platforms flew in right after. This time, nobody could escape. Sandalphon braced herself as she hurtled out of the mouth of the pod-lined hallway, drawn violently alongside the rest into the maelstrom of pure, unadulterated white. Her eyes were squeezed closed as she prayed, pleading in silence for deliverance.
After a moment of pure chaos, the mind-numbing sensory overload ceased. The archangel fell against a solid, albeit nigh-invisible surface. When she opened her eyes, she found herself deposited in an extraplanar void, snow-white except for the geometric purple lines that indicated a floor, stretching out to infinity where the lines merged into a solid purple horizon. The planes roiled like a polygonal sea, their movement more intense farther away. It was a chilling, otherworldly sight, but not everything was alien. She could see Goldlewis, who’s already arrived and risen to his feet, and the other Seekers were materializing. They were not dead yet, nor absorbed into the Moebius’ being. In fact, this might be a blessing in disguise.
As Sandalphon picked herself up, her eyes lay squarely on the only anomaly present anywhere in this featureless, geometric void. It seemed to be a collection of polyhedrons, similar in appearance to the ground but arranged in a sort of cluster around a single, glowing nexus. It looked a little like the purple core she’d seen in the chest of Y’s armor, and a lot like the singularity created by what Y described as ‘legionic fusion’. Maybe it was both. It appeared to be pulsing violently, constantly shifting in shape, growing spiky protrusions that shrunk back down just as quickly. After a moment, it spat out lengths of glowing purple lines like circuits that stabbed outward. On impulse Sandalphon rolled to avoid one of the circuit lances, while Goldlewis blocked another, taking a chunk of chip damage. To the archangel, the situation seemed clear. “He’s pulled us into some manner of metaphysical inner realm,” she declared, making her intentions clear as she took aim with her gunstaff and fired. “We must beat him here, or be absorbed like the clones.”
In response, the Core fluctuated violently. More lances shot outward to try and impale the Seekers, while needle-like barbs flew in arcs through the air. Circuits that spread out across the ground created forests of spears that shot up after a brief delay, and purple wireframe phantoms manifested in groups to attack or create barriers of dark purple interlocking triangles around the core. In moments, everything was pandemonium once more, but the Seekers knew what they had to do: what they were best at.
Without many other ideas, Nadia made her way out of Reeves Quarry at a leisurely amble, still hungry. Her meal of silver fish, preserved in briny tomato juice, left her half full and with a whetted appetite. Still, even if the artisan had more to spare, she didn’t want to go and entreat him for another handout. Her friendly chat had ended on such an uncommonly positive note that the feral didn’t want to spoil it, and besides, she knew that she could do better than begging for scraps like a mangy alley cat. Out here in the wilds, the world might as well be her oyster. Of course, that didn’t mean she could just pilfer whatever she wanted. Nadia was not the kind of thief who stole from those who didn’t deserve it, or couldn’t afford it. She couldn’t bat her eyelashes at people and make them forfeit their worldly possessions, like a certain dancer friend of hers.
A real cat didn’t need to rely on people, though. From the hugest tiger to the teeniest tabby, felines were hunters, and no amount of domestication had tamed that primal instinct. Nadia felt pretty confident that, despite all the stuff she’d eaten prepared by another’s hand, the same held true for her. And already the gears in her head were turning, a factory lining churning out an endless procession of great ideas–though some, admittedly, were much better than others. After exiting the quarry, the feral crested a rocky knoll of red grass and put her hands on the hips, scanning the Chasm. Listening. In a place like this, with no lakes or streams to be seen, she’d have a hard time finding fish. But who said anything about fish? There lay another great expanse just beyond her fingertips, home to all kinds of creatures ripe for the picking, and no ocean -no matter how great- could hold a candle to it. For the first morning in far too long, she stood beneath the boundless sky. Its denizens, unlike the fish who could remain submerged forever if they so chose, couldn’t help but descend every now and then. What they lacked in size they made up for in quantity. For her next heist, it was time for Ms. Fortune to nab some birds.
Filled with energy and motivated by appetite, Nadia got moving. She made her way back to Dirtmouth and began to ransack the ghost town’s hovels, turning everything upside-down as she searched for what she needed. Out of all the settlers who might colonize an uncharted territory like this in search of mineral wealth, there was one tradesman whose importance outweighed all others, whose continuous efforts made such townships possible: the humble farmer. Though Dirtmouth had been nothing but a shell of its former self for an age, the laborers whose agriculture once sustained it must have left traces behind, just like the weaver under whose dusty looms and discarded scraps Nadia slept last night. Eventually, the feral’s gamble paid off. The sight of old, rusted tools that looked like farming implements led her to a stash of seeds that hadn’t been looted. Neither the miners nor the bandits had the time -or perseverance- to try to coax new life from this thin, rocky soil. Better for them to rely on merchants and packed provisions. More practical for them, and more fortunate for Ms. Fortune.
Nadia grabbed a sack of seeds and scampered through town, a mischievous air about her. Wheat, carrot, potato, it didn’t matter what they were, just that they were easily visible from a distance. Next, the would-be hunter hunted for a good spot. She needed a place where nobody would be likely to blunder in and ruin her plans. Before she could find such a place, though, she found her path obstructed by a towering mountain of muscle crowned by a fiery red mane. Nadia stared up at Ganondorf for a brief moment. He looked…groggy. If not for the shortening of his hair, he’d probably have a serious case of bedhead. The thought made Nadia smile. As scary the big guy could be when raging in battle, he was still human at the end of the day. “Good morning!” she chirped, her cheerfulness dialed up to eleven in an effort to burn through the warlord’s gloom like sunlight through morning mist. “How’s Dirtmouth treatin’ ya? You know, we’ve been underground so long I just about forgot what the sun was. But then it dawned on me!” That one left her cackling, whether it improved -or soured- Ganondorf’s mood.”
“I just got back from the big mining camp,” she continued. You know me, just can’t ‘mine’ my own business.” She winked. “Met this walrus guy there, you’d probably like him. When it comes to blacksmithing, he’s super e-fish-ient.” After reading the room a little, Nadia decided to tone down the puns. Ganondorf had just one thing on his mind: his next meal. When he asked her about food, she hoisted her seed bag over her shoulder. “Well, funny you should ask! I was just about to go snag myself some grub, and I don’t mean beetle larva. With these bad boys, I’m gonna catch me some birds. You want in on this?”
To such a large man the average bird must seem like no more than a crumb, but when faced with an empty stomach, even crumbs were preferable. The two set out together, quickly finding a stretch of relatively flat land by a cliff near Dirtmouth where more plants than usual seemed to cluster. Ganondorf used his strength to churn the earth, disturbing the soil and hopefully flushing out bugs. Nadia then scattered the bait she’d collected, hoping that the birds would know that poorly-planted farmland meant a smorgasbord of tasty seeds. The two hid themselves nearby, Nadia’s eagerness practically infectious, despite the resiliency of Ganondorf’s immune system. With surprising and refreshing speed, the ploy actually began to work. Golden finches were the first on the scene, flitting around with remarkable speed to snag the choicest morsels. These birds, tiny and very flighty, filled Nadia with disappointment, but the catgirl’s bad mood didn’t last long. Soon black king pigeons showed up. Plump, meaty, and rather bold, they focused on the feast more than on potential threats, allowing the hunters to make their move.
This was the tricky part, since the two hadn’t prepared a trap and neither could claim ranged attacks to be their strong suit. Luckily, the two managed to come to a quick consensus. When the time came, Ganondorf popped up and hurled Nadia, who’d tucked herself into the fetal position, like a ball. She used Charge and became a streak of lightning that blasted through the thickest crowd of pigeons. When fried, they immediately poofed into smoke, essentially exploding into raw drumsticks. The other birds took flight in an instant, the finches first off the block, and without delay the Moblin archers opened fire. Their clumsy shots weren’t terribly effective, but they downed a couple pigeons, and with two hungry adventurers every morsel counted. Nadia and Ganondorf hurried to collect the meat, which remained remarkably clean despite touching the ground. “Huh. Well, somethin’ somethin’ gift horse, right?” As they worked, the call came in from Kamek to meet up at the Stag Station. It surprised her to learn that the team was missing a mask piece, and it surprised her even more to find out that the others had come up with some kind of magical solution. “Okay, yeah. We’re on our way. Me and Big G got some fresh supplies, and we didn’t ‘fowl’ it up!” With the last of the meat in hand (metaphorically), the team turned to head that way.
The deluxe camping set shared by the Seekers featured a spit roast, among other cooking implements, so when the scattered members of the team navigated back through Dirtmouth, they could follow the savory aroma of roasting pigeon. While Nadia wasn’t any better of a cook than anyone else, and nobody could furnish the meal-in-progress with seasonings or spices, the meat smelled very promising. While it roasted, Nadia investigated the other’s findings, her eyes only lingering on the Constrained Heart. “Huh,” she murmured, noting the rune-inscribed golden arc that traced its side as she pulled the Ripened Heart from her bag. “It’s kinda like mine. I could make heart puns about it all day, but this thing’s no joke. Saved my butt a couple times already.” Her tall tales of being unkillable had been sorely tested lately, and it had taken a few extra jolts of healing to keep those yarns spinning. Unfortunately, she didn’t have any mask pieces to offer them. “Eh, it’s the shiny stuff that gets my attention. Call it a ‘farce’ of habit.” She glanced at the simulacrum, an object that seemed simultaneously futuristic and archaic. “If that thing lets us skip another leg of this trip though, it’s good as gold.”
Once everyone had gathered, both orders of business could conclude. The meat of the black king pigeons was dense, flavorful, and immensely satisfying. With only a few slices left of days-old pizza, the fowl was a welcome alternative, though naturally everyone else could wait until Nadia and Ganondorf had their fill. Meanwhile, the gathered fragments socketed together cleanly, forming two whole masks and two thirds of a third one. That last mask seemed to be missing its lower section, but when the team’s magical experts carefully applied the simulacrum, the artifact assembled itself into an exact copy of the missing piece. At last, all three keys were in the Seekers’ hands.
“Well, that’s everything, right?” Nadia grinned, full of pep. “Now we just gotta get back to that big black egg where we found you, G.” The team’s tour of the Under (or a small part of it, at least) would conclude right where it began. There was just one glaring issue in the Seekers’ plan, since the region directly beneath them lacked a Stag Station of its own.
By the time Gru finished, the cheesemonger was quite out of breath. Even if his rats were the ones who hauled him around the Clanhold’s outlying farms, collectively doing all the physical labor, Gru had been working hard. He’d begun discussion after discussion at a disadvantage, trying to balance out negotiation and ingratiation as he strove to make the smartest use of his money. As much as his business needed milk, he could not afford to settle for poor-quality ingredients, nor ones on the precipice of expiration, nor ones that failed to meet his standards for hygiene. His morning had become a balancing act of elephantine (or given the circumstances, perhaps even mûmakil-ine) proportions, keeping track of names and locations, exact quantities, quality evaluations, probable shelf life, and of course, money. As always Gru was extremely exacting with his funds, deducting each expenditure from his overall total in his ledger with meticulous attention to detail. One miscalculation and he could unwittingly spend his bottom dollar–or worse, spend money he no longer had. Going into the red while betting on a future bonanza was a risky proposition at the best of times, but in the land of the Dinnin, debt could be worse than a death sentence.
After what felt like hours rushing back and forth through the miserable heat, Gru finally shut himself up in the Chuck Wagon to take a much-needed, well-deserved break. His rats accompanied him, either in the wagon’s rooms or their dedicated habitat in the ‘attic’, shielded from the desert’s scorching sun. Gru refilled his water bottle from a spigot on the same custom tank that his rats drank from, then took a deep sip, noting that his stores were getting a little low. While the Caravan did offer a communal water source, the cheesemonger much preferred to have his own private supply. On one hand, it was only fair. Between himself and his breathtaking abundance of rats, after all, the Chuck Wagon’s usage outstripped the vast majority of Pilgrims by a large margin. On the other hand, that meant that nobody else could threaten his supply, and in the case of an emergency, he would be self-sustaining. Of course, he expected that water would come at a premium in the desert, and while his careful calculations ensured that enough money remained for emergencies like a water shortage, he could no longer spend frivolously. Not until the cash started rolling in.
For anyone else in the business, that moment would have been a long way off. Cheese took a great deal of time, so much so that it could be weeks before even an inferior product could be considered finished. Gru, however, was no ordinary cheesemaker. While the others went off into the Clanhold for sightseeing and adventure, he planned to start work right away. By the time the others returned, there would be new cheeses waiting to tickle their taste buds. Not long after Gru caught his breath, he received his first knock on the door. The milk had begun to arrive. It was time to unseal the vats, lay out the cheesecloth, uncork the rennet, leaf through the recipes, and bring out the curd cutters. After so many damnable days spend idle, just twiddling his thumbs while his stocks slowly (or in certain cases, quickly) dwindled, Gru was more than ready to get busy.
As always, the first phase involved nothing but genuine cheesemaking skill, be it in processing the raw materials himself, or directing his crews of rats to maximize throughput. With several batches ongoing at any one time, this involved almost as much juggling as all the acquisition Gru went through earlier, but this time the cheesemonger was in his element. No bad attitudes, no strange customs, no wheeling and dealing, and no balancing the books; just practicing his craft alongside the critters he cherished most. Compared to dealing with people, this felt far simpler, almost relaxing even. Seeing his creatures go about their business brought him a remarkable amount of joy, as well. For the most part his rats did just as he told them, his orders relayed through his four most prized (and intelligent) pets, but sometimes his darlings displayed such a familiarity with their tasks that Gru could swear they were actually developing skills and honing their craft.
Once the creation process had finished, the rest was up to time as the cheeses either soaked in brine, or got transferred over to the Chuck Wagon’s dry room to age on its shelves. This was the point at which a normal cheesemonger would need to play the waiting game, and yet, Gru’s skill was such that he could age his products at speeds that beggared belief. Incredible? Certainly. Unnatural? Well, no need to sensationalize. It was only natural that those ignorant of natural science would look at its products and assume magic, and who knew anything about mycology? Who could say what was possible, or impossible? Only Gru.
Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.
Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.<br><br>Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.</div>
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