[center][img]https://www.mariowiki.com/images/thumb/b/b2/Koopa_Troop_artwork.png/658px-Koopa_Troop_artwork.png[/img]
[h2][color=FD0000]The Koopa King[/color][/h2]
[b][color=FD0000]wordcount:[/color][/b] 1061 (+2)
[b][color=FD0000]Bowser: Level 8 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=FD0000]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color]////////// (70/80)
[b][color=FD0000]Location:[/color][/b] The Dead Zone - Hell-bent City
[/center]

Blazermate seemed to be on Bowser’s side in this, at least partially. Enough that she was open to talking to the girl and maybe even working with her after she's ripped up the root. Unfortunately the idea that they could just let her deal with the root had a pair of interlinked snags. First was that she was taking an age to get through it, which explained how she was still here, and the second was that they didn’t have that time

[color=FD0000]”WAIT WHAT? DISAPPEAR? WHY DID THIS NOT COME UP EARLIER?”[/color] Bowser roared at Nero when he told them about the timer they were only now learning they were under, ignoring the cat ladies’ insistence that he stop talking about the Skullheart. Cursed artifacts were one thing, dime a dozen really to the koopa king, but the threat of being disappeared was... well when it came down to it that was also something of a common threat the king would have had to admit if asked, but it didn’t make it any less of one. 

He’d already done the damage by running his mouth off anyway, so telling him to shush didn’t help. Marie knew Nadia wanted the Skullheart, and now she also knew she, like they, had limited time. Unfortunately, rather than deciding she would now welcome their help in breaking the root, she instead decided she would simply kill them and take their power for herself. 

[color=FD0000]”Kid, if its revenge you want we can help with that too, you don't need to-”[/color] Bowser said, but it was too late. The conversation was over. The undead maid girl made her first move, ripping the catacombs apart, the ground shaking beneath them, causing Bowser to wobble on one leg with his arms spinning as the vibrations rocked the party. Then the ground started collapsing beneath them into a deep pit that Bowser instinctively assumed ended either in lava or nothingness. The heavy king quickly dropped out of sight, his weight cracking his part of the floor much faster than that supporting the lighter and nimbler members of the party.

For a moment he was out of view until suddenly he reappeared riding Carrie as the Trowlon did what she did best. Ascend.

The king rose up after the catgirl, weaving past or smashing aside debris until he too arrived at the boss arena Nadia had created. He shoved the ruins of the library aside, the mimic’s lair they’d so carefully cleared had reduced to ruin in an instant, and stepped onto the glowing platform as the cat and the maid were finishing their brief exchange about their shared homeworld. 

[color=FD0000]”You’ve got guts kid, but you don’t know who you're messing with”[/color] he warned the girl as she armed herself with a bony vacuum, but it was much too late for talk. Her eyes flashed red and it was do or die time. 

Dark magic filled the koopa king, increasing his size from a building navigable bulk to proper boss fight size. The towering dragon turtle, twice the height of a man, stepped forwards in front of the rest of the party and then pivoted on one foot and put his shell in the way of the barrage of skulls, giving them a face full of spikes and shell to careen into. Some were blunted by the shell alone or impaled on its spikes, while those that tried to sneak past got elbows, boxing gloves and crushing jaws in response. With the barrage either dealt with or out of his reach attacking the other, the king pivoted back to face the Skullgirl and her now rising legion of skeleton warriors.

The undead horde came at them, armed with a chaotic assortment of decent weaponry but, for the most part, they lacked any kind of defensive armaments. Not that armoring them would have mattered much against the brutish might of the koopa king.

He stomped down on a skeletal wolf that materialized out of the vines to try and bite him with a steel capped boot, then began advancing. He stomped forwards, backhanding a skeleton with a [url=https://i.imgur.com/1LAZzpt.png]huge braincase[/url] that was leading the back, shattering it to pieces in one blow before washing fire over a gang of human skeletons in bowler hats trying to shoot him with tommyguns. Then, leaping up over a giant ‘s fist as it tried to punch him, the king grappled onto the massive metal mouth guard of one of the massive bone horrors with one claw and his tentacles before he hammered it in the skull again and again till it shattered and the entire thing fell.

The king cashed back down into the melee, crushing an unfortunate bone horse in the process, before grabbed an ork skeleton that was trying to cleave him with a sword twice as big as it needed to be, blocking the bow with one of the spiked steel bracelets, and then chucked it at a halfling aiming a tube full of fireworks at him, causing both fantasy creature skeletons to explode in a colorful light show. 

After the mimics and Dante it was nice to fight things you could rely on just standing still and letting you punch them in the face rather than hiding or dodging all over, or Bower felt, but it wasn't really getting them anywhere. Even he could tell they were basically just going to have to put up with endlessly spawning swarms of undead forever if their master wasn’t made to stop spawning them.

Much as he didn’t like it, he’d have to go after the child. With so many allies, Bowser briefly considered leaving that to others. But if he did, well, then the cat would end this her way.

[color=FD0000]”Cant have that,”[/color] he growled to himself and then after a deep inhale he unleaded a mega fireball towards the skullgirl. The giant orb of flame, as grand as he was, lazily floating across the platform. It wasn't hard to avoid, but it did not stop, it did not falter, it plowed through anything foolish enough to get in the way, blackening bone, melting plastic, super heating steel and detonating ammunition. Behind this ball of death Bowser advanced, fists swinging, hat mounted boxing gloves pummeling, water cannons blasting, blunt impacts one and all reducing the skeletal fiends to scattered piles of bone once more as he advanced on the Skullgirl’s location.