[center][color=tan][h3]Courier 6[/h3][/color] + [color=8258fa][h3]Hat Kid[/h3][/color]
[b]Level 3[/b] - (29/30) EXP (-1 friend heart +3) / [color=8258fa]Level 1[/color] - (5 -> 8/10) EXP
[b]Location:[/b] Castle Bridge
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2951 (+3 EXP)
A collab between [@propro] and [@Dawnrider][/center]

The Courier had fully expected Ratchet to take the hit from his pickaxe, or at least block it. However unforeseen circumstances meant that his attack was left largely ignored when the owner of the flying house, some small girl in an oversized hat, jumped into the scene from nowhere. Ratchet blocked the young girl’s blow from overhead whilst moving back from the force just barely enough to be missed by the Equalizer. Confused by the sudden appearance of this small child, the Courier only stood idly by as she produced an umbrella, seemingly from nowhere, and further engaged the lombax and small robot. She showed skill beyond her age, that much the Courier had to admit, but her body was still that of a small girl while her opponent was a fully matured alien operating at enhanced power. The conclusion was easy to predict, and the Hat Kid pulled back, stopping right next to the Courier with a small greeting. 

Courier 6 smiled warmly at the small girl, feeling a sort of passion warming him internally. Something other than the alcohol, that is. Children certainly were a weak spot of his no matter how drunk or high he was at any given time, and this one seemed to be more charming than most. Capable too, but putting herself in danger wasn’t her duty. That was what adults were for; not that [i]she[/i] could have been told that. Little did he know, she had been manipulated and endangered by more adults than have ever been bothered to safeguard her, by an overwhelming margin, so she had plenty of practice taking care of herself in perilous situations.

[color=tan]”Hey,”[/color] he shot back, taking a couple steps forward and swinging the Equalizer at Ratchet again. The buffout empowered his body just as the Master Hand had empowered Ratchet and Clank. Axe met wrench in a powerful clash, locking into place. Both combatants pushed hard against one another, but neither would budge.

“Looks like we’re deadlocked,” Ratchet commented. Clank rubbed his chin with a small chuckle.

“Allow me to rectify this quandary,” the little robot added. Still attached to Ratchet’s back, Clank’s limbs transformed into a series of propellers which began to circulate at high speeds. The added force began pushing the deadlocked fighters back, the Courier struggling not to lose his balance. 

Seeing an opportunity to gain ground on the opposing duo, Kid followed suit a step behind 6, diving toward them in a lunging somersault, boosting herself forward the second she touched the ground. She curled herself into an improvised cannonball and used the force of the maneuver impact into Ratchet’s side in order to throw him off-balance. It may not have accounted for much given her size, but it would be just enough, if only barely, to tilt him as needed. While still airborne from the impact, she turned her umbrella in hand to hook one of the mounted bot’s propellers with its handle to disrupt and manipulate their propulsion, circling behind them to try to create enough centrifugal force to get them off their feet. The idea was less to throw them than to make them throw themselves, be it downward to bounce them off the stonework, forward towards the Courier for him to follow up, or upward between both of them to accomplish the same. Either way, if she succeeded, one or both of them would have an opening.

The Hat Kid’s strategy worked great for knocking the duo off balance. While the impact of her body didn’t cause any harm in their empowered condition (and likely wouldn’t have done much under regular circumstances either), that didn’t mean Ratchet was anchored to the ground. The added momentum of the Kid spinning off of Clank’s propeller only exacerbated the effect. Luckily for Ratchet, he was an incredibly agile fighter and turned the situation to his advantage.

The lombax broke away from his clash with the Courier and threw his momentum to the side, leaving his omniwrench behind. Together Ratchet and Clank splashed into the moat, but they weren’t out of the thick of things just yet. Clank reoriented his propellers to stay afloat in the water while Ratchet stood atop his little robot buddy as a floating platform. In his hands he produced the Maniac’s Bombuilder, which was pointed right at the bridge. “Looks like it’s time to go commando!”

“Affirmative!” Clank responded as Ratchet pulled the trigger twice, launching two soda can sized bombs from the red barrel, which affixed to the bottom of the bridge completely out of sight of his foes. With another pull of the secondary trigger, the bombs went off in a loud [b]kaboom![/b] Two huge holes blew open in the bridge near the Courier and Kid. The Courier went flying, several smaller cuts opening up all over his body along with some moderate bruising, but the jet in his system let him keep focus.

[color=tan]”Show me what you’ve got, lakelurk!”[/color] he called out. The spirit was summoned forth, appearing just beneath him in the moat. The Courier landed on the mutant turtle, grasping around its neck with his left arm and replacing the Equalizer with his magnum pistol. [color=tan]”YEEHAW!”[/color] he cried out, firing two shots at Ratchet.

Kid, surprisingly, was less graceful with her plunge, having been stunned from the concussive force when launched by the explosion. Without the same chemical assistance her partner had, she was slower to react, and plummeted straight into the blue. She resurfaced in time to see him manifest an amphibious humanoid creature to use as his waterborne mount, to which she decided to pop up and out of the water, open her umbrella beneath her feet for use as a buoyant platform, and grasp one of the Westerner’s coattails to use as a tow line. She did this to compensate for her inability to swim for very long, and would have otherwise been unable to keep up with the other two. The cowboy’s creature may have already been supporting his weight, but it was unlikely that she would be adding much to its workload.

She would catch Ratchet’s discarded weapon in her free hand as it fell through glancing off the border of one of the openings just before the Courier’s monster took off with both him and her in tow. To try to reduce any drag, she would periodically spin her parasol while steering as they closed in on their opponents. After they got going at a decent enough pace, Kid veered to the left towards the wall of the moat where it drops off from the castle, twirling her umbrella once more for a quick burst of speed and released her grip on 6’s jacket. Utilizing the momentum created by this, she forcefully bobbed her makeshift floatation device to launch herself from the water and onto the wall, landing on it feet-first into an angled run. She maintained this for as long as physics would allow her to do before leaping off in her enemy’s direction. With both his weapon and hers in hand, she fell towards him at a forty-five or so degree angle and spun swinging both sunshade and tool as she accelerated her fall, aiming to get in at least two strikes on him, but a single solid crack to his forehead with the wrench would do, if she could manage it.

Ratchet had to deal with two opponents now from two different angles, and to make matters worse the lakelurk was far more maneuverable in the water than he was atop Clank. This was a problem he didn’t foresee, but that didn’t mean he was out of the count just yet. The two bullets struck their mark, sinking into his furry skin and drawing blood, but thanks to the Master Hand’s enhancements didn’t cause tremendous damage. Meanwhile the Hat Kid had launched herself into an acrobatic assault using his own omniwrench. 

“Big mistake.” He grinned. Switching to holding the Bombbuilder in one hand, the lombax reached out toward Kid with his other, open palmed. The omniwrench she had picked up along the way yanked itself out of her hand and flew right back into his, reclaimed by the specialized magnet glove. Kid, being unaware of this feature, let out a surprised yelp as she was pulled forward faster she meant to go so soon, and suddenly less equipped. Soon as he held his signature weapon again, Ratchet spun around, pulling the primary trigger of the bombbuilder twice and swatting at the Kid with his wrench simultaneously. The Kid was now flying at him without a weapon in hand, while two proximity bombs hit the water right in front of the Courier and his lakelurk mount.

[color=tan]”I shouldn’t have given him that fuckin-”[/color] [b]BOOM![/b]

Kid’s gambit backfired unexpectedly when she was smacked head-on with the narrow side of the deceptive multitool, sending her splashing back into the moat. She managed to regain herself while underwater, but instead of resurfacing, she opted to remain submerged and out of sight of her better armed opponent for as long as she could until she could make it to the beachhead just opposite of her where she could gain better footing. 

Meanwhile, the Courier felt the sting of water and shrapnel blasting into him, only partially mitigated thanks to his lakelurk using its sonic attack to push back against a portion of the blast. The Courier took a risk by leaping off the back of his mount, effectively desummoning it in the process so that it wouldn’t be blown to smithereens. The remaining shockwave hit him like a tank, tossing him up higher into the air and arching over Ratchet and Clank. Thankfully his subdermal armor, and the added durability provided by the buffout, gave him only moderate damage instead of tearing apart his flesh.

As the wastelander sailed over his foes, an idea came to him, an out of the box idea one normally only gets when addled by drugs. Rather than taking the opportunity to shoot at the pair from above, or recover after hitting water once more, the Courier summoned the spirit of the Bastion in configuration: tank. As he did so, time slowed to a near halt, and suddenly numbers appeared before the Courier’s eyes. VATS had been activated. Target: Ratchet. Mode of attack: let gravity drop a fucking tank on his ass. Chance of hit: 99.4%. Engage.

“What? Oh no! Move it, Clank!” Desperation overtook Ratchet as he fired his second to last bomb directly upward. Alas, Clank was incapable of moving at speeds fast enough to avoid the obstacle, not without his jet booster module. The proximity bomb struck the Bastion as intended, but that didn’t deter gravity, and the explosive still took a fraction of a second to go off. Ratchet had trapped himself beneath an exploding tank-bot. Bastion collided with him head on, pressing Ratchet and Clank into the water, where the explosive ultimately detonated, creating a small tidal wave that washed up on shore. The Courier was shaken, but ultimately unharmed. Bastion had taken massive damage, barely functional, but returned to spirit form within the Courier. As for Ratchet and Clank, the results were less pretty. The lombax had taken heavy burns, knocked unconscious, saved only thanks to his tripled durability. Clank on the other hand, well… Clank was never a very powerful or sturdy robot, and three times the durability didn’t make nearly the difference. Metal bits sank to the bottom of the moat, replaced by a floating spirit.

The child hadn’t seen the tank fall onto the Lombax and explode on top of him; she had only felt its effects behind her, which were effectively likenable to that of a depth charge. The pressure wave sent her reeling end over end, abruptly pushing her closer to shore. She pulled herself to and took a moment to catch her breath before looking back to examine what had just taken place. All she caught was the water’s sporadic ebb gradually dying down and the commando’s unconscious form float to the top, resting face-up on the waterline. Deeming him now harmless, she took it upon herself to get back in and swim him to safety. She didn’t really have any personal stake in his well-being, having known him only as an adversary in this short time, but it wouldn’t have made sense to simply forsake him either. Besides, it wouldn’t have reflected well on her character to leave him after someone had performed the same favor for her earlier today. Everyone here, on both sides, was fighting for a reason. Even if it wasn’t yet clear to her what that was, she thought the better of apathetically resigning him desultory defeat. She pulled the comatose feline onto land and rolled him on his side to let his lungs drain, gently slapping his back to assist the process to the best of her ability.

As Ratchet was being rescued by the errant Kid, the Courier used the advantage of his temporary steroids to swim to shore, stopping only to grab the spirit of Clank as he continued forward. Once he reached the shoreline, 6 let out a deep gasp, something to provide him relief from all the adrenaline he had to deal with so far today. So many battle of such intensity, and they still were not done. If he weren’t for the healing powers of Blazermate, or his buffout, the Courier sincerely doubted he’d have been able to last as long as he had so far. 

He trudged over to where the Kid was helping Ratchet, and solemnly glanced to the spirit in his hand. This little robot was someone Ratchet was willing to fall back under Galeem’s power for. It was his best friend. Now the little robot was a casualty of war. And war never changes. But people do. The Courier understood that intrinsically. Hopefully the experience would change Ratchet for the better, but first he had to be liberated once again. The Courier touched his heart, snapped his fingers, and drew out another friend heart, imbuing it into the unconscious lombax.

As the color returned to Ratchet’s body, 6 turned to his surprise ally. [color=tan]”You did good, kid. I could use you in my posse.”[/color]

Kid eyed her partner curiously when he summoned a healing heart, a previously undemonstrated ability that he didn’t appear he should reasonably be capable of, and let it drift into the body of their opponent turned rescue. The child placed her hand to her chest, held it for a second, and gestured forward to attempt the same, but produced nothing. As she observed the effects, she started to wonder if the same was done to her; if this was how she was brought back. This all but answered her question as to what they were fighting for: to bring back those who had been lost.

She took note of the Courier’s compliment and comment about allying. Well, doy! [i]She[/i] had that idea first, hence her impulse to intervene. This made him the second one today to suggest as much, but she was under the assumption that all those with their hue still intact were on the same side anyways, which technically meant she already accepted the proposal. Still, she took it for what it was and offered the rugged merc a soft smile and a fist bump as affirmation. She had to admit, despite not knowing this guy (or [i]any[/i] of these people), they did do good work acting together. She was normally alone in all of her affairs and escapades, so maybe she [i]could[/i] use a comrade; a friend (or several). It would certainly be nice to not be alone in everything for once.

Oh hell yes, a fist bump! The Courier hit that shit hard, harder than was probably safe with his drunken, high, roided out self. BAM! Fist bump! [color=tan]”You can take care of yourself pretty well, kid. I’ll see about getting you a better weapon than that, uh, the hell is that?”[/color] He gestured to the umbrella. Funny, despite coming from a desert he never knew about umbrellas. Just one of those little details that didn’t make the transition into the post-nuclear apocalypse.

The slightly over-enthusiastic return of the friendly gesture toppled the child. Apparently, her comrade didn’t know his own strength versus hers, but she thought nothing of it. She sat back up tipped her hat back into place before acknowledging his comment about her umbrella. What was wrong with [i]it[/i]?! It served its purpose just fine for her as a weapon, despite not being designed or intended as such, and it performed a multitude of other functions just as well. It’s most common--and original--she saw fit to demonstrate by opening sunbreaker and reaching on a tip-toe to break the sun above him, handing it to him if we would receive it (but expecting it back, of course).

Feeling a bit cautious, the Courier took the umbrella in his hand. He had to admit, blocking the sun like this felt pretty nice. He glanced up to view the interior, and instantly regretted it. Oh god, spiders! Spiders everywhere! Get them off, get them away! [color=tan]”Ah!”[/color] he jumped, throwing it back at its owner. Suitably creeped out (WHY did a kid carry tons of spiders around with her?!) he shifted uncomfortably away, then carefully placed the spirit of Clank into Ratchet’s hand. It looked like he was going to wake up any moment.