[center]
[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]

[i]feat.[/i]

[h3]Tora & Poppi/GM[/h3]
[@Lugubrious]

[h3]Geralt of Rivia[/h3]
[@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN]

[b]Level:[/b] [color=8258fa]5 (39 -> 42/50)[/color] | [color=fed428]4 (31 -> 34/40)[/color] | [color=darkgray]2 (11 -> 14/20)[/color] | 6 (51 -> 54/60) | 5 (46 -> 49/50) | 5 (2 -> 5/50)
[b]Location:[/b] Land of Adventure - Spiral Mountain
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2166 (+3 EXP)
[/center]

Mutually confirming each other as allies, as further clarified through the Nopon’s broken speech, Fox and Tora lowered their aim and guard respectively. Hat Kid was in the middle of acknowledging her strange new tagalong with less than the recommended level of apprehension for an unrecognized stowaway when two (to three) other invaders from their party entered the tower behind her. Banjo and Kazooie made it a few steps behind Geralt on account of their setback, fortunately clearing themselves of the moat ahead of Linkle freezing it over. Fox wordlessly called them up with a beckoning gesture. Before anyone besides Tora and Poppi could properly approach the elevator, however, a descending great arrow tore through the tower from above, reducing an entire quadrant of the structure’s upper half to raining debris with which to shower the intruders.

Any command to move would have been unnecessary, for those present were already making for cover to the nearest (intact) wall away from the above hazard. The following brief moment of stillness was accented with tension as the elevator proper had begun moving on its own. Alerted, Fox directed his sight upward to the lowering platform, both hands gripping his sidearm. When it reached the bottom, the blue-clad swordsman--the one Fox instinctively pegged for being the most dangerous of the enemy force--stood alone at the center of the platform, blade and shield brandished.

He engaged Tora with terrifying haste, leaving none of them a second prior to move or react, and Poppi, understandably slow to cover her Driver, was stopped dead in Stasis for her effort. The warrior followed with a vibrant blue explosive aimed for the group that Fox saw fit to intercept, dodging directly in front of it and sending it back with a quick pulse of his Reflector. He then bounded off and over the Stasis-locked Blade, squeezing off a three round burst of disorienting shots to accompany the reflected bomb, which the boy managed to block the blast from despite detonating it unexpectedly in his proximity. With reaction time like his, conically grouped potshots weren’t likely to hit him, but they didn’t have to. By then, Fox was on him the instant his feet hit the floor as he began laying on pressure with an aggressive series of relentless blows at blinding speed to beat the swordsman back.

Melee met metal in a momentarily even exchange of kicks and slashes. Link deflected Fox’s strikes with shield and sword alike; Fox ducked and sidestepped Link’s swings in kind. They traded like so for a handful of seconds, neither really gaining on the other until Link’s next swing passed narrowly over Fox’s head, his blade raking along the length of the sword at the vulpine’s back and throwing sparks in a glancing blow. Fox continued turning into his spinning step to throw the flat of his heel into the boy’s shin to drop him, then his midsection to crumple him, and finally finishing with a reverse roundhouse to his temple. The first two of the climbing strikes landed, but Link leaned in as he doubled from the second to duck beneath the third. His sword arm was tucked in from his last miss, unseen by the overzealous mercenary. A white sheen ran the blade from shoulder to tip with an audible ring, and on cue, he retaliated with a spinning horizontal slash that came out faster Fox could register, let alone respond to fresh off of an overcommitted whiff. For his trouble, the vulpine was rightly clipped with the attack and sharply swatted away.

With the brief moment allotted to him, Link stepped forward to strike Poppi. He hit her several times with his sword, but seemed to be holding back his strength. Still, the sight of it filled Tora with rage. “Poppi!” he wailed, and with his shield in one wing and his wrench in the other to mirror Link’s own weapons, he charged. The blinking golden light covering Poppi gave way, however, and the stockpiled energy delivered to her in stasis sent her flying into her Masterpon, and both tumbled away again. Though neither sustained any real injury, it’d be another moment before either could fight.

Link faced the others, ready for more.

Geralt smirked. There was always something about [i]heroes[/i] that rubbed him the wrong way. Legends, fairy tales, grand stories of wonderful knights sweeping beautiful maidens and princesses off their feet and living happily ever after. 

It didn’t help that he knew a few of those stories were true, and a few of them were convenient lies. A princess who had turned out to be a striga born of an unholy union, a troll who ate the valorous knight, a poor man betrayed by his kin, forced to kill his own wife under the spell of lycanthropy. 

And he, the Witcher who cleaned up all of their messes for a few hundred orens. So yeah, heroes annoyed him a little. It was with a bit of pleasure that Geralt raised his hand and made the Sign of Axii, forcing as much willpower into it as he could bear, hoping to either take control of Link, or at least stun him. This kid was a legendary hero, so the Witcher knew it wouldn’t hold him for long, if at all. 

He didn’t need to hold the kid, though. He just needed to distract him. Even a warrior with over a hundred years of experience could be killed by a pimple-faced teenager with a pitchfork under the right circumstances. He’d seen it firsthand, after all. If this was what the others needed to put the upstart kid down...he was more than happy to oblige.

The mind-bending hex reached Link, and soaked into his head. Its aura appeared around him, and he stiffened. A pained expression overtook his face as he fought against it. In that moment Geralt’s magic and willpower clashed against a mind that had lived countless lifetimes and held within the collective trauma of them all, a staggering aggregate of suffering, strength, and fortitude. Axii vied for control, but it found no purchase against the overwhelming odds. Instead the hex left Link reeling, disoriented for just a moment.

In that moment, a pair of the other attending combatants sought to capitalize on the opening afforded to them. Coming around the outer edge of the room, going from ground to wall to air in a sprint, Hat Kid propelled off the wall at speed and zoomed into the back of Link’s head, extending both feet at the moment before impact. She bounced over his head, falling away while winking at him with her tongue stuck out in mockery as he turned around too late to spot her, but just in time to see himself get struck with a clotheslining bear claw. Banjo doubled while Kid hooked onto the scaffolding to swing back around the way she came. She disconnected her Hookshot to launch herself like a bullet at the recovering swordsman, and the duo charged forth from his other side, throwing themselves into a rolling attack. Just as Link reoriented himself, the two attackers collided with him simultaneously--the duo bowling into him on one side, the child toppling him from the other. No pre-coordination went into the assault, but the remarkable degree of synergy on display yielded a solid result nonetheless.

At the end of their roll, Kazooie nabbed Link by the boot and whipped him into the air above them as Banjo sprang to his feet. He leaped skyward, catching the boy by his waist, lifting him over his head, and driving him downward as they dropped, aiming to drill him into the stonework head first. However, they met unexpected resistance. Link caught himself with his shield flat against the ground, causing it to crack and depress from the force, but stopping himself entering it. After a second of resisting, he broke Banjo’s grab by kicking himself upward and catching him with an inverted horizontal slice before landing.

The staggered ursine righted himself with a retaliatory Beak Barge that the swordsman parried with little issue, which meant violently batting aside Kazooie’s head. Banjo turned about to spare his stunned partner the incoming sword strikes that swiftly followed, taking the first three directly before raising both arms in front of him to cover his head, for lack of a better means to defend himself against an armed opponent. After sustaining the fifth or so gash into the thick hyde of his forearms, Banjo reached out to catch the swinging blade by hand, adding simply another step to his clumsy defense. Link then drove the edge of his shield into the desperate bear’s jaw, putting it between himself and Kazooie to ensure she couldn’t reach him over it after recovering from her head trauma. Banjo bore gritted teeth angrily as he attempted to pry Link’s arms apart--blood running from the palm of one hand, shield wood beginning to crack and splinter within the grip of the other. Before he could get the chance to open him up, Link brought his back foot up and forward into Banjo’s abdomen, heavily ramming the toe of his boot just below his sternum and up under his ribcage with force enough to lift the ursine off of his feet and send him and his partner flying back.

At that point Tora ran into the fray, brandishing the combined missile-launching fist weapons known as the Mech Arms. Casting defense aside to put up a blistering offense, Tora waddled forward while punching repeatedly. His shape combined with the Mech Arms made for a hard target, and while Link responded with a punishing sequence of slices and bashes, he was forced to give up ground. Behind the angry Nopon came Geralt, and the two circled around Link to force him to fight on two fronts. Make that three as he maneuvered his blade behind him to block a somersaulting strike with a tiny umbrella. She didn’t give him time to count her out, switching hats on the fly and chasing him with a Power Dunk that he managed to sidestep, joining the Nopon and Witcher in the onslaught. Steel rang and sparks flew as they traded blows, Tora’s offense insisting that Link focus more on him, yet even when the traveler’s sword danced past the bulky metal fists Tora barely batted an eye.

Link quickly found that he couldn’t prevent Geralt from landing hits without allowing the Nopon to simply start barging into him, or the child to acrobatically dance around his head to freely chip away at him, a massive annoyance. Bleeding from the cut of steel sword above his eye, Link clenched his teeth and bellowed, putting all his strength into a whirlwind spin attack. Tora recognized a knockout blow coming and stepped back in time to avoid the worst of it, with Link’s blade glancing off his Mech Arms. Trusting that Geralt would be putting some distance between himself and the deadly move as well, Tora got clear and hurled his weapons to Poppi. He saw before him a hurricane of gleaming metal, impossible to approach, but he need not approach. His own assault didn’t do any lasting damage to the Hylian either, but it need not do damage--only build up power for Poppi’s Blade Art.

Hat Kid stuck the landing in a backslide from being sent back by Link’s Spin Attack, a near miss for her. Unable to get closer, and seeing little point in doing so outmatched, she whipped umbrella around her in a semicircle, turning in motion with her recovery to face the hero in preparation for a ranged attack. The umbrella’s tip dragged the ground sparking with ergokinetic energy as she took aim, charging the weapon to its second stage before unleashing an empowered energy blast at Link. Much to her surprise, and misfortune, a well-timed shield reply was all it took for him to redirect the beam right back at her. Her eyes went wide in the brief microsecond of realization she had before being struck with her own attack hard enough to pin her against the wall at her back. She struggled to reopen her eyes as gravity peeled her from the wall face down onto the floor, barely conscious.

Tora watched as his blade partner unleashed a torrent of missiles at Link, hammering him incessantly. The chain of miniature explosions, a veritable fireworks display, went on and on even after Link stopped spinning and raised his shield to defend himself. When the last blast went off, Link stepped from the smoke with that shield of his no more than splinters. Battered and smoking, he threw aside the wreckage and in a flash equipped the ancient bow. “Poppi!” the Nopon called, but it was too late. A brilliant golden flash consumed Poppi, Banjo, Kazooie, and Hat Kid, leaving just Geralt, Fox, and Tora himself, armed with nothing more than his wrench. Gripping his sword with both hands, Link stepped up for another round. 

[center][h3]Dead Zone[/h3]
[@Eviledd1984][/center]

Echidna started the fight with a spin, bringing her enormous dragon tail around to wipe the heroes away. Nero, V, and Nadia all leaped over the attack, with V relying on Griffon to get airborne. Seemingly heedless of whatever attacks the great demon might have in store for him, Nero launched into a Wire Snatch that brought him up close and person. Once, then twice he swung in the air, revving the Red Queen expertly on each blow. Echidna reeled back, and the devil hunter finished by launching himself into a burning plunge attack. “Double DOWN!”

A burst of dark magic surged forth, but Nero evaded it cleanly. A moment later Echidna was assailed by bullets of electricity from Griffon, making her snarl in anger. “Try some seeds on for size!” With a wave of her hand she launched demonic seeds at the bird, only for the cackling fiend to roast them in a dome of lightning. “GAH! My CHILDREN!” she screamed, and all of a sudden she dove straight for V.

Nadia’s claws sunk into the demoness’ scales. Finding good purchase, she began to run up the body of Echidna’s serpent half, slicing left and right with her own detached tail. V slunk out of the way using Shadow, so Echidna banked upward, sailing through the air like an eel through water. She thrashed to and fro, weathering a hail of fire from Nero and V, but Nadia would not let go. “Nyahahaha!” she laughed, holding on by her claws. “What’s the matter, not up to scratch?” When Echidna leveled off a moment later to barrel down the block, Nadia saw her chance. She detached her arms and loosened two long loops of muscled fiber to snag around Echidna’s horns, and when they caught hold she pulled hard. The demoness’ neck snapped back with a cry, and she veered upward in a backloop before crashing into the street. Nadia jumped free, guiding her flight with jets of blood from her ankles.

Echidna righted herself with a sweep of her tail and floated into the air. “Enough games!” Pointing her tail straight downward, she plunged into the ground like a giant drill, burying herself up to the waist. For a moment the heroes wondered why, but the next a number of spiked tendrils started cropping up from the ground, trying to spear them from below and then thrash them once they fell. The onslaught forced the trio on the defensive, though they worked to close in on Echidna herself. A few tendrils burst up around the somewhat nearby Doom Slayer too, putting him in jeopardy.