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[img]https://i.postimg.cc/d1m9cwtC/Kid-s-Hat-3.png[/img] [img]https://i.postimg.cc/G2xPk9Gk/Jiggy-2.png[/img] [img]https://i.postimg.cc/vTD8rQzY/Star-Fox-Faded.png[/img]

[b]Level:[/b] [color=8258fa]5 (27 -> 32 -> 35/50)[/color] | [color=fed428]4 (19 -> 24 -> 27/40)[/color] | [color=darkgray]1 (9 -> 14/10)[/color] [color=slategray]LEVEL UP![/color] ---> [color=darkgray]2 (4 -> 7/20)[/color]
[b]Location:[/b] Land of Adventure - No-man’s Land -> Spiral Mountain
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2330 (+3 EXP)

Item: [color=8258fa]Ray Gun, Iote’s Shield,[/color] [color=fed428]Bytan Ball (x4), [s]Primid Hat[/s] -> Red Feathers (x2), Chicken Thigh, Monster Eye, Trowlon-lon Milk (x1 -> 0.8), ->[/color] [color=darkgray]Steel Sword

[i](Level up pending…)[/i][/color]

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Banjo took aim with his spirit-loaded partner at the depleting horde of the Subspace Army, but Kazooie momentarily ‘misfired’, her shot delayed with a hiccup before spitting out a sword tip-first on a straight flight into an unfortunate Primid’s back. The feat was closer to a comically violent circus stunt yielding a meager, incidental result than the work of creative tactic. Banjo winced upon seeing this at the realization of what he accidentally subjected his partner to.

[color=0aaaff]“S-Sorry about that. You alright, Kazooie?”[/color]

[color=f60000]“[i]*cough, cou-*[/i]Yeah… I’m fine,”[/color] she replied dryly, but otherwise no worse off; probably needing little more than a drink of water. Banjo put her away to give her a breather, and seeing as the conflict was dying down anyway, there wasn’t much need left for either of them to engage.

The skewered puppet-being spent its last moment staring agonizingly at the blade tip protruding from its chest before Fox came rolling over its back, gripping the sword by its hilt and fluidly drawing it from the dying Primid in a full vertical swing. He added his other sword arm to the draw, slicing both the fell shadow puppet and another approaching one in the same move and finishing them with a reverse stab and forward thrust from an arm each. He examined the Beam Sword as it began to flicker, suggesting that its utility had just about run its course, so he casually threw the broken weapon aside without looking, splitting a random Primid’s head vertically down the middle before the blade’s light faded out completely. With his now empty hand he drew his blaster and let off a few rapid volleys of potshots at the few enemies that remained while Peach spoke. She needn’t tell him twice, as he had been dispatching them with extreme prejudice already. To boot, they had shared past experience in dealing with the Subspace Army, so they both knew what was at stake (perhaps her more than him).

When they were clear of the last of their opposition, Fox holstered his gun and ‘sheathed’ the steel sword at his back as he made his way into the canyon pass at the front of the line, helping the other leaders set the pace. Hat Kid slung her new shield around her back, stowed away her new sidearm (which now put her a step closer to [url=https://img.ifunny.co/images/6df59ea84594e64e5218c33b1ac1012951d3160e944517af54da89e9a90e3c21_1.jpg]having a real gun[/url] [[url=https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/333/747/11b.png]and edge[/url]]), hopped aboard her recovered scooter, and followed suit behind the party leaders. The animal duo fell in with the group on foot in short order.

The intrepid party pressed on tirelessly (except Kid, being the only one left with [url=https://i.imgflip.com/1bcnyq.jpg]‘tires’[/url]) for close to half an hour through the barren one-way corridor of cliff faces until, eventually, a light at the end of their path came into view. Odd, that, considering what they were heading for; the great, aberrant sphere of darkness contrasted by the luminous end marker. Adding to the disconcerting oddity of their path’s final stretch was the growing presence of fresh Summer greenery, after travelling through miles of bare, sunless wasteland to get where they were going. The group pushed on for just a minute more until they crossed the tunnelled threshold into open daylight, to a sight most familiar to only two of them.

What they came upon left the duo floored. They took all of their first moment after arriving to reassure themselves that they in fact were where they believed themselves to be.

[color=f60000]“Banjo? Are we really...?”[/color]

[color=0aaaff]“Yep. We’re home, Kazooie.”[/color]

Indeed, they were, as hard as it might have been to believe. Sadly, the feeling it left them with wasn’t that of a warm welcome home, but rather one more sinister and foreboding. Perhaps the void’s edge resting just behind Gruntilda’s Lair wasn’t a sight one would exactly consider ‘inviting’. Even still, that wasn’t all that struck them as ‘out of place’...

[color=f60000]“A starting area in the land of starting areas. I should be less surprised, but…”[/color]

[color=0aaaff]“Let me guess, you’ve got a bad feeling about this?”[/color]

[color=f60000]“Yeah.”[/color]

[color=0aaaff]“Is it the graphical update?”[/color]

[color=f60000]“Sort of, but no. I mean the place looks better than we left it.”[/color] She was referring, of course, to the fact that the terrain had not yet been partially destroyed, as per the events of their second adventure. It was as if time itself saw fit to [b]remake[/b] the valley anew. The sole exception seemed to be the bore hole in the mountainside that they arrived from.

[color=0aaaff]“Oh yeah, I noticed that too,”[/color] he said, having only just noticed. Gazing back at the lair and their ominous destination that lay just beyond it prompted an obvious thought from him. [color=0aaaff]“So… you think ol’ Winky has anything to do with this?”[/color] He asked his partner, referring to their nemesis by her last name in jest.

[color=f60000]“If she does, I can’t imagine her doing it alone, or having a lot of input. Handiwork’s too competent for that.”[/color]

[color=0aaaff]“Hmm. Makes sense,”[/color] Banjo added, cupping his chin and nodding his head. [color=0aaaff]“In any case, I wonder who-”[/color] Banjo stopped shy of finishing his thought to direct his attention upward to the movement over the mountain, him and Kazooie shielding their eyes from the sunburst to behold the spectral entity that emerged from it. As one might expect from the literal right hand of the Lord of Light, the Master Hand addressed the heroes in condescending word of ill omen before instantly summoning a stone tower with six marksmen upon it atop Spiral Mountain with but a simple gesture. He then issued the conditions of the challenge he set before them and summarily vanished. On his departing command, the Illuminated* warriors under him took their vantaged positions, marked their chosen targets, and let fly.

Fox, Hat Kid, and the duo were quick to heed Peach’s call to take cover, with Fox being the knowledgeably quickest to do so. Though the Kid, bear and bird didn’t share the same battlefield experience in dealing with long-distance assaults, they knew a gun when they saw one, and they weren’t keen on being openly available targets for them. Especially considering what they were capable of in this special case, of which Euden was made a terrifying example when a beaming black arrow pierced through him and left him inanimately petrified where he fell. The eyes of the platformers went wide at the sight, stirring them on into higher gear to find their way out of sight.

Fox swiftly rounded the nearest corner on the clearing of oversized tree stumps where he hugged the canyon wall with his back, Hat Kid ramped the stream crossing while diving from her scooter into a tall patch of dry, golden grass where she would lay prone, and the duo decided that the quickest route to safety was directly up, Spring Jumping up onto one of the cliffs overhead and scurrying their way behind one among the several rising rock formations where they would take care to keep their heads down. The latter of the three (or technically four) knew the terrain best by default, but the feeling they got was that they wouldn’t easily be able to take advantage of it with a stark distance and firepower disadvantage. They wouldn’t have long to deliberate on their next course of action, so they made a rushed mental reassessment of the situation and their options. The conclusion they came to was that they would have to act boldly if they expected to make any headway in this challenge, and Kazooie had a simple--and possibly bad--idea for how to get started.

She handed Banjo the bottle of redish-pink knockoff from their latest loot roundup and trusted him to know what to do next. He hesitantly examined its contents while he glossed over the label, then pulled the cork and downed the first of five servings. Him turning away with a mild reaction of disgust might have indicated just how pleasant it was. The flavor and consistency were closest to that of rice water… if the ‘rice’ in question was an artificial substitute. The results, however, as far as the intended effect, were much more satisfying--if at first startling.

The ursine [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50nf3Jiifso]turned head over foot with a surprised, helpless yell as he starting rising,[/url] but Kazooie was able to catch and stabilize the both of them at the zenith of their concoction assisted ascent, unfurling in a spiral as she emerged in full flight. Though they were already capable of flight, it made sense for them to cheat their height as much as they could without exhausting their precious feather supply, but would spare a couple--or another drink--if they needed the extra boost. On that note, Banjo grabbed and plucked the feathers from the two hats they received and discarded the remains, aimlessly casting aside what they couldn’t use of them.

By this point they were likely to be fired upon by any number of the nested shooters, so they would be doing their best as far as keeping dynamic in their evasive and advancing movements. Thankfully, the ever impatient and headstrong Koopa family were already making their own advances on the tower, which would almost certainly help take some of the heat off of them. They banked, twisted, dipped, climbed, stalled, etcetera in every attempt to stay clear of the trophifying shots that came their way as they tried to close in on the leftmost shooters. Although it would be difficult to manage a successful hit while dodging, Kazooie unloaded their entire collection of Bytan Balls at the heads of their assailants; two for the frontward human bowman, one each for the rifleman and tri-bow wielder on the left. If her aim and their luck held true, the rubberized shots could serve to disrupt enemy fire, possibly striking multiple times/enemies per shot, with some bouncing back into Banjo’s hands to restock--or maybe they just miss and [i]none[/i] of that happens. Either way, it was worth every shot they could take to try.

Assuming their chance bought with their distraction, the bear and bird tucked their arms and wings to their sides in order to gain speed--as much as they could short of relearning Beak Bomb--as they closed in on the two shooters head-on. They did their best to line them up to prevent one from shooting past the other as the duo recklessly charged toward both with every intention of knocking them from the tower. For contingency’s sake, they readied themselves for the case that the frontmost shooter acted to get off a point blank shot on them, for which they would swerve around them in a bullet spiral to check their teammate over the ledge. While their gambit was undoubtedly risky, they stood to gain substantially, should they succeed. This, of course, was the best case. The worst case was that they get hit with a statue ray and accomplish nothing whatsoever. Most likely, they would have to take a plunge to clear themselves of the line of fire, whether they took anyone with them or not.

Grounding one shooter over the gambled two would be better than none, but if it came down to it, none would be preferable if it meant staying alive without being imprisoned in one’s own form. In any case, they couldn’t keep up avoiding fire at their going rate, so they would aim for the moat as they fell. Directly below the tower out of the line of sight was as good a place as any to avoid fire from those atop it. The pair knew they could duck into the underwater alcove under the mountain if necessary to buy themselves some time, and they had the collective lung capacity between them to manage. They would/could only wait out long enough for the enemies to momentarily forget about them, however. At which point they would begin their tactful ascent up the mountain and through the tower.

While Fox picked arguably the best spot on ground level for interchangeable cover, where he could exit from any point, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get any closer to their enemy without them first being sufficiently occupied. There was one among them that he could guess at the capabilities of: the blue clad archer that fronted all of them. If he had recognized him, Fox would have remembered him as an ally; a friend perhaps. As they were, now, he saw him only as another foe, no more friend to him than those at his side; the [i]other[/i] side; the enemy's. He had his mark, but would have to wait for his opportunity to make a dead rush for the tower’s base, ducking between the trunks for cover if any shot should be aimed for him.

Hat Kid made what could very well have been the riskiest, most impulsive maneuver of them. Her chances were dependent on not being seen entering the grassy plot, and her scooter rolling to a stop just off the trail adjacent to her hiding spot may not have helped those chances. The good thing about it was that she wasn’t readily visible to be picked off, which reduced the odds of her taking a hit. The bad part was that she couldn’t freely, carelessly move through it while any of the hunters were looking, lest she disturb the brush enough for them to notice, so she dared not do so if she fell under immediate suspicion. She would have to keep a vigilant eye out for that at all times to be sure.

From where she lay she had two options for escape: the waterfall’s basin, which could cover and lead her downstream into the moat, or back on her scooter to make a speedy getaway. Her timing for either would have to be as careful and precise as she could make it. She readied herself to don her Sprint Cap at [url=https://i.imgflip.com/1bcnyq.jpg]the drop of a hat[/url] to make haste for her chosen route.