[center][h3]Vs. Sweet Tooth[/h3]
Word Count: 3,523
Donnie, Din, Tora & Poppi +3 exp
[@Stern Algorithm] [@Lugubrious][/center]

[i]By the Four Celestials…[/i]

Donnie gaped as the truck transformed into, of all things, a giant robot that, keeping with the Goblin comparisons, would give one of their shredders a run for their money. He had no more time to think about it though as a stream of high-caliber bullets flew in his direction from robot’s giant rotating gun. He managed to avoid the gunfire, but he was already breathing heavily. He had overtaxed his energy reserves, and was running on empty. He’d need to wait for his body to recover before he could cast more spells...which could make grabbing the clown a lot more difficult. He mentally called upon the massive reserves of Elemental Air in the Fists of the Heavens, using the wind currents to enhance his speed, making it much more difficult for Sweet Bot to hit him while he gave himself the time he needed to recover. Thankfully, being a monk, that process would be quick, quicker than a mage’s Mana regeneration for sure...but he’d need the time to do that, and the Fists would allow him to engage in evasive maneuvers while he waited.

“I need to recover!” he shouted to the others, “Try to avoid its attacks until I can cast my magic again! “ He smiled devilishly. “Then the [i]fun[/i] starts!”

Fortunately for Din, Sweet Bot seemed to focus on Donnie, leaving her and Gogoat unscathed. But seeing as how Gogoat’s attack merely left a small dent on the side of the truck, Din realized that she should adopt the tactic employed by Donnie; attacking the driver. She was grateful that Donnie had opened up an entrance into the machine, but as Sweet Bot rocketed up into the air, Din found that she had no way to take advantage of it. Two ideas came to mind, both likely to end in failure. Still, there was nothing stopping Din from trying, so at first she cast the Spell of Winter towards Sweet Bot’s rockets, hoping that cooling the flaming jets might disable it and bring it back to the ground. Her other plan involved launching herself up with the help of Gogoat into the robot ice cream truck, but she would hold off on that unless her first attack failed to make an impact.

Try as she might, Din’s spell ended up melting under the flare of Sweet Tooth’s rockets, only slowing it down momentarily as its ice froze over the ports. For his part, the clownish driver scarcely seemed to notice. He sprayed an almost lazy burst of gatling rounds over the scenery, little threat for anyone keeping a close eye on him, before zeroing in on Donnie. Needles went to launch a Laughing Ghost at the disk-borne monk, bound to home in on the monk and blow him to smithereens, only for a sudden jerk to throw off his aim.

Unable to freeze the rockets, Din resorted to her next plan of attack. Riding Gogoat a little further away, she turned back towards Sweet Bot and began accelerating. A certain distance away, Gogoat leapt majestically, and at the height of the Pokemon’s arc, Din stood up and leapt from Gogoat’s back towards the leg of the robot. Din, dressed in red, jumped from her green steed in midair, an action that caused the ghosts of numerous similarly betrayed dinosaurs with long tongues to stir in agitation, but Gogoat managed to land safely back on the ground, and the abandoned spirits settled down.

[hider=Ghosts of betrayed dinosaurs][img]https://www.evilmilk.com/pictures/Betrayal.jpg[/img][/hider]

Poppi appeared from behind the Sweet Bot, planted a solid cross in its chest’s passenger-side windshield that left the glass with a spiderweb crack, and boosted away. Tora, however, stayed behind; the intrepid Nopon leaped down onto the macabre mech and yanked a wrench from his overalls. With practiced hands he began to sabotage the Sweet Bot’s machinery. A moment later, Din herself latched onto the machine, having been flung up onto the low-flying deathbot’s fuselage by her Gogoat companion. The extra weight plus Tora’s hijinx worked to quickly exhaust the Sweet Bot’s fuel supply, and it began to descend. With a snarl, Needles engaged the Sweet Bot’s drop attack, and it plummeted to the earth with a giant slam that shook the ground. Tora leaped from it before it got up to speed, and the ever-attentive Poppi caught him, though the impact jarred the wrench from his wing.

Din, likewise, jumped from the machine even though she had just managed to get on it before it gained too much speed in its drop, landing on Gogoat, who managed to catch her, without injury. Din somewhat resented her wasted effort, but at least the machine was now more-or-less grounded. She rode away, rounding back to face Sweet Bot head on, looking for any new developments.

From the dust, Sweet bot rose, recovering quickly but smoking out the back. A salvo of bullets zipped upward, forcing Poppi to disengage with her cargo.

Donnie gritted his teeth as he called on the Fists, gunning the Disc as far as it would normally go and beyond, as he noticed that the clown-like robot was aiming for him, only to feel a rush of relief as Tora and Poppi threw off its aim. Better yet, he had completely recovered by this point. Now it was time for the main event.

Maintaining his incredible speed, Donnie aimed straight for the hole he had made in Sweet Bot’s cockpit, weaving around any further attacks, and soon he was right next to Needles himself, the Fists sheathed and with his hands directly grabbing Needles’ left arm.

[b]”GET! OUT!”[/b] he yelled, as he attempted to bodily haul the killer clown out of the driver’s seat with all of his strength, aided by the fact that Needles wasn’t wearing a seatbelt for some reason, and throw the bastard to the ground below. He kept an eye out for any desperate moves by either Needles or Sweet Bot itself, and would disengage if it looked like he was going to get blindsided.

Through brutish, Needles was no oaf. Donnie’s approach and intrusion did not go unnoticed, and by the time the monk made it inside the cab, the clown was ready. Donnie latched on to his arm, aiming to yank him from the Sweet Bot’s controls, but Needles wasn’t in there for his own safety. With a guttural bellow he swung a viciously-serrated machete at Donnie’s head. If granted even a moment’s leeway, he’d be going for his sawed-off shotgun in the passenger’s seat next, which would mean a terribly messy end for the interloper.

Of course, the interior struggle demanded Needles’ attention, leaving the Sweet Bot itself ambling straight forward without launching any kind of attack.

The clown’s swing was vicious, but it was the wild swing of an untrained street fighter..Lots of power, but little skill. He had seen similar fighters during his stint in the fighting pits of the Brawler’s Guild, and they were usually small-fries who always lost to someone who knew what they were doing. It was a simple matter to dodge the strike, catch Needles in an armlock, and start using the Disc to accelerate rapidly in the opposite direction to Sweet Bot’s jogging.

Now, Needles’ arm was in Donnie’s iron grasp at it was held outstretched, ground ruthlessly against the doorframe of the truck, all the while Donnie continued bending it into an unnatural angle. Considering that Sweet Bot was still jogging forward, as the gap between the two widened, Needles was put in a bad position. If he didn’t do something fast, his arm would at the very least break, and at most might actually end up being torn off at the shoulder. That was unless he allowed himself to be pulled out by the backwards movement, which would result in him hanging onto his enemy’s arm, suspended in the air. Even if he [i]did[/i] have his shotgun by this point, it would be faster for the monk to just drop him, and Needles didn’t have the benefit of reflex-enhancing magic to make sure he pulled the trigger first. And that was assuming that Donnie couldn’t outright disarm him in that situation.

Given the cabin’s cramped confines and his foe’s martial prowess, Needles fell prey to his tactic, and couldn’t maintain his position. His grasping fingers closed around his shotgun, but the next moment the monk hauled him bodily from his seat.

Din watched, with some amazement, Donnie’s combat ability. More than that, Din felt as if there was magic in his strikes, though she was unable to place it. It occurred to her that she should ask her teammates what magical elements they used, and test if any of her spells could bolster theirs. But when Donnie managed to force Needles out of the cockpit, Din saw her chance to help. Accelerating, Din rode Gogoat towards the dangling clown. Gogoat jumped making a leaping Horn Leech strike at Needles.

Its horns struck true, tearing into Needles’ exposed flesh before the impact sent both him -and monk with whom he was entangled- tumbling clear of the Sweet Bot. With nobody at the helm to keep it upright, the mech proceeded to trip on an outcropping of rock and topple with a crash; when Needles rose from the dust and spotted what happened, his head blazed viciously. From nowhere he pulled a trio of trip mines, which he scattered around himself before brandishing his shotgun. “Alright, gather round, kiddies. It’s time for you to see how sweet I can be.”

“Not seem sweet.” Poppi cruised in from above, dropping off Tora and handing off her Mech Arms to him before assuming a battle-ready stance behind him. “Poppi think clown not being honest with self.” With a roll of his eyes Tora clanged the metal gauntlets together before heading for Needles himself.

The good news: Donnie’s trick had worked, and Needles was now completely at his mercy, with him able to rise several dozen feet in the air and drop him at a moment’s notice (though the shotgun would’ve had to be dealt with). 

The bad news: That lasted for all of five seconds before Din’s Horn Leech, while making a rather satisfying slice into the clown’s flesh, knocked him from the Disc and sent him tumbling to the ground. He let go of Needles in the confusion, who presumably due to Sweet Bot’s relatively short height, had emerged unscathed from the struggle. Donnie tucked and rolled as he hit the ground, mitigating what little damage the impact would have done, while the Disc simply dropped to the ground with no-one to pilot it, hovering off of the miniature cloud on its bottom.

The better news: Thanks to that Horn Leech, the clown was definitively away from his robotic ice-cream truck and wouldn’t be getting inside it anytime soon. And he was bleeding.

However, it wasn’t all fun and games. Apparently, the clown had some kind of magical pocket-dimension or something like the Madman’s Luggage, because he pulled a bunch of what he assumed were more-advanced versions of Goblin Land Mines (by Xuen, why was he able to make so many goblin comparisons today?!) and scattered them on the ground around him...before he brandished his blunderbuss and said...that.

Donnie, under his helmet, stared at him with an incredulously flat expression. “You’re the furthest thing from sweet I’ve [i]ever seen[/i], and I’ve fought the [i][url=https://wow.gamepedia.com/Sha]sha[/url][/i].” Quick as a flash, he ran full-tilt over to the nearby Disc, which would only put him in a better position, and hopped on. Then, he fired a Chi Burst downwards towards Needles’ skull as he flew above the grounded clown’s head.

A gravelly guffaw resounded from Needles as Donnie approached. Reaching down with his machete, he slid the tip beneath a landmine before flipping it up into the air with a sudden twist, activating its sensor in the process. The explosive beeped once, then on the next beat blew up right in the monk’s path, negating the predictable Chi Blast and shell-shocking its sender. Donnie’s ill-planned flight path carried him over Needles’ head, who waited with gleeful patience to unleash a deafening shotgun blast straight upward. 

He thought that he might pierce the bizarre flying machine, or that the monk’s disc would die a shield, but it proved to be made of sturdy stuff. Yet, that meant that every ounce of force packed by the brutally-modified weapon went to violently throwing Donnie off its surface and to the ground, dazed and confused. Needles moved to finish the fistfighter off, but Tora and Poppi leaped into his way. Before either could say much of anything, the clown had already lobbed a molotov cocktail their way, which shattered against the earth between them in a surge of flame. Poppi dodged sideways, but Tora moved forward. While Needles could scarcely believe that some egg-shaped hamster thing not even half his height was running at him, he wasted no time hacking away at Tora with his machete. Clang after clang rang out as the Nopon blocked his swings, holding out long enough for Poppi to flank Needles with a jet-powered kick to the head. Though staggered for a second, the clown flung his machete at Poppi when she turned to face him, forcing her to block with her arms and take a nasty slice.

Reminding himself to tell Poppi to tag-team properly later, Tora moved in to attack the disarmed clown, only to be taken aback by the roar of a chainsaw. Needles swung it with reckless abandon, its teeth grinding against Tora’s weapons, but in a free second the Nopon slammed the ground with his Mech Arms and rocketed upward. A midair somersault turned into a overhead slam, but even that weighty blow barely seemed to faze the burning killer. Letting go of his chainsaw, Needles grabbed Tora by the hair and kicked him bodily away.

Tora rolled to a stop a moment later, barely avoiding another mine in the process, and Poppi appeared by his side. “This clown no joker!” the Nopon wheezed.

Din was intimidated by the mad clown’s threatening demeanor, and wondered waht those metal plates were that he laid at his feet. But as Donnie went to attack, the clown flipped up one of the plates. The result let Din know that they were bombs of some sort, though seemingly more advanced than anything that was available in Hyrule. But this gave Din an idea as Tora and Poppi kept the monstrous clown at bay. [color=ed1c24]”Heads up!”[/color] Din called out, riding Gogoat into position, placing the mines between herself and Needles. She noticed that he was swinging a mechanical slicing instrument. Gogoat lifted itself up on its hind legs before slamming its fore-hooves down ward, using Rock Slide, and initiating a wave of sand, earth, and stone towards Needles, pushing the mines towards him. Hopefully, this would cause the mines to detonate on the clown, while also jamming up his mechanical cutting machine with sand. Not caring whether the attack connected or not, Din acrobatically leapt off her steed and cart-wheeled over towards Donnie, activating her invigorating dance as she approached him in the hopes of reviving him from his daze and giving him a second wind. It seemed silly, and downright dangerous, to be dancing and healing, completely exposed, but she knew that if Needles came after her, Tora, Poppi, or Gogoat would protect her.

“What!?” Din’s torrent of earth left Needles dumbfounded--just for a moment, but it was long enough. The wave swallowed up the remaining mines before crashing into him, and the next second blew apart in a great plume of sand, stone, and fire. When it subsided into smoke and dust, it left behind a half-buried Needles, burned and bloodied. His head, however, still burned, and when he saw Din dancing for Donnie, he beat his fists against the ground. “I’ve had it with you runts.” In one motion he tore himself from the ground, and from flame a machete appeared in each hand. “Time to die! HRAAAAAGH!” 

From his mouth spewed a raging cone of flame, its heatwave distorting the air.

Donnie took a bit to recover from that impact. A lot longer than he used to, in fact, probably because the armor was a lot weaker this time around. Once he stopped seeing stars, he cast Vivify once on himself to heal the remaining mental trauma away before rising and turning to face the threat. He dodged out of the way of the incoming attack, invigorated by Din’s strange dance, as he went in to actually start dealing some serious damage. He was lacking many of his most potent techniques, such as Touch of Fatality, Serenity, or Whirling Dragon Punch, but that was no reason to do nothing. Keeping the Fists sheathed for now, he leapt into action.

Once he had dodged the strike, it was a simple matter to begin fighting Needles toe-to-toe in earnest. He came around from the back, opening with a [url=https://wow.gamepedia.com/Tiger_Palm]Tiger Palm[/url] to his kidney, then kicked Needles in the spine with a [url=https://www.wowhead.com/spell=100784/blackout-kick]Blackout Kick[/url], and followed that up with a [url=https://www.wowhead.com/spell=107428/rising-sun-kick]Rising Sun Kick[/url] that knocked him up into the air, and finishing up with a relatively-normal axe kick to Needle’s torso while he was still airborne, knocking him down to earth. And with that, he unsheathed his weapons and made to get out of dodge, hopefully before Needles could brutally retaliate, enraged as the killer was. And with Din’s enhancements, that wouldn’t be hard. Of course, he’d be coming back into melee range to let loose with his actual weapons soon enough, but he expected a counterattack first.

Din did not expect Needles could breathe fire. She needed to get out of the way, but as a healer, she couldn’t leave the one she was healing behind to be scorched by the flames. Fortunately, Donnie recovered in time and used some healing magic of his own, so Din rolled out of the way. Meanwhile, Gogoat had been using Bulk Up on itself, pawing its hoof at the ground, readying itself for another attack while Needles was distracted. When Donnie knocked Needles to the ground, Gogoat attacked with another wave of Rock Slide in an attempt to bury the angry clown. Meanwhile, Din ran back to reunite with her pokemon, and looked on, hoping the fight was over, but she was doubtful. Needles seemed strong enough, and crazy enough, to keep going.

Needles’ wounds were piling up. He struggled to get to his feet, a deep noise of pure rage rumbling within him. A molotov appeared in his hand; he shattered it against his mask, bathing himself and the area around him in flame. Gogoat’s Rock Slide bore down on him, and Needles met it with chainsaw in hand. Its screaming teeth flashed in the sunlight as he span, a hurricane of burning steel, and annihilated the stones that threatened to squash his fire. Tora watched the display, wondering why the clown would go to such extreme lengths. Did he feel like he had to utterly crush any challenge that came his way…? The Nopon wasn’t complaining, though. After a workout like that, the overweight psychopath had to be running on fumes. “Poppi, now is chance! Prepare for super double attack!”

The Artificial Blade nodded, grinning. “Understood. All Poppi systems are go.” She grabbed the Mech Arms that Tora through before jetting toward the clearing dust cloud. Needles couldn’t see through the haze, but thanks to his fiery head, she could see him. He moved to lash out with his saw the moment he saw a shape approaching through the dust, but too late. Her spinning punch broke his left elbow, and as Needles reeled from the blow, Poppi delivered an explosive uppercut to his masked jaw that sent him flying upward. From behind his partner, Tora leaped onto her shoulders, grabbed the Mech Arms, and was promptly hurled after the brutalized clown. “Meh-meh-meh-meh-meh-meh-meeeh!” Tora landed punch after punch as he ascended, his trajectory following Needles’ closely, until after final smack he opened up the Mech Arms to pelt his foe with a swarm of missiles. With a hellish cry the killer disappeared in a terrific blast.

A burning husk hurtled toward the ground, bounced twice, and rolled to a stop. For the briefest of moments, the smoldering mass held its shape, as though death itself couldn’t stop the twisted clown. Then it crumbled to ash, leaving only a spirit behind.

Tora landed a moment later, having used the Mech Arms’ blasts to slow his fall. With the fight concluded, his put his weapons away, though Poppi remained in her new form. Both regarded Needles’ spirit dubiously. “Wanted to try new powers,” Tora said, “But that too dangerous. Not want crazy hell clown in head.”

Nodding sagaciously, Poppi patted Tora’s stomach. “Plus, probably make Masterpon even rounder. If such thing possible.”

Aghast, Tora could only sputter for a moment before crying, “S-so disrespectful! How could Poppi exaggerate Tora’s roundness like that!? M-must have circuit crossed somewhere, meh.”