[center][h3]Tora, Poppi, and Big Band[/h3]
[b]Location:[/b] Sandswept Sky - Graveyard of the Peaks
Level 9 Tora (135/90) Level 9 Poppi (135/90) Level 5 Big Band (73/50)
Midna’s [@DracoLunaris], Fox’s [@Dawnrider], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Primrose and Therion’s [@Yankee], Laharl’s [@Dark Cloud], Raz’s [@TruthHurts22], the Phantom Thieves, Braum, and the Scout
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1847[/center]

As if the snowy slope dotted with weathered gravestones as far as the eye could see wasn’t bleak enough in and of itself, a certain someone -or perhaps more accurately, [i]something[/i]- just had to drift into view. For the few among the gathered Seekers who shared the misfortune of meeting Master Hand prior, its appearance had been less a question of ‘if’ than ‘when’, but that hardly lessened the tension of this encounter. Even as the snow scraped their faces and the wind whipped at their hair, Tora and Poppi Alpha reacted instantaneously, readying their Drill Shield and spectral claymore for a brawl. As much as the Nopon would have liked to crack Master Hand’s knuckles with a Boom Biter, however, Tora did not open fire. He and his companion knew what the Phantom Thieves and the Scout with their firearms quickly found out; a bubble shield flared to life around the entity before them to protect it from incoming fire, and it showed no sign of damage. “Don’t waste ammunition!” the artificial blade warned them. As infuriating as it was, the heroes could do little but try to endure the battery of both otherworldly voice and buffeting snowstorm, dreading what Galeem’s servant had in store for them this time.

Master Hand’s brief speech managed to take Tora and Poppi by surprise as much as it did Big band. Not only did the entity offer them congratulations, but it even dropped a hint at what their teammates were up to all the way across the continent. A handful of faces flashed through Tora’s mind, most of them vivid as the moment when the two teams parted ways. It had been a minute since he thought about Sakura, Link, Geralt, the intrepid Hat Kid, or even Bowser and Blazermate, who’d been right there from the very beginning. He hadn’t been afraid for them, necessarily, but who wouldn’t worry about friends half a world away, who must surely be on a quest as dangerous as this? The knowledge that the others weren’t just okay, but actually at least half a day ahead of Yellow Team on their quest to eliminate the boss of the Deep Blue Seaside, fanned the sputtering flames in his heart. 

Of course, the enemy that loomed before them seemed determined to extinguish any such hope. It proclaimed that this final stretch of the mountain would be the Seekers’ undoing, a statement that it made with such conviction that it saw fit to manifest no additional opponents to bar the way. Then, after urging the climbers to soldier on, it disappeared as unceremoniously as it came.

To say that a moment passed in silence would be inaccurate, given the howl of the wind across the peak and into the heroes’ ears, but a few seconds went by while those who stood before the gate took in what Master Hand told them. Midna averted her eyes from the path ahead, and in her search for alternatives discovered an edifice in the distance that looked promisingly like the abbey that poor Gemino in his arrow-studded husk of iron described. It took a few moments for Big Band to follow her gaze, and when he did spot the place she described, he shook his head in disbelief. “That’s a hell of a long way off!” he practically shouted, fighting to be heard over the ambient weather. The detective extended a pneumatic arm to point out a potential route with his finger. “‘Less you can fly straight there, we’d have to go up a ways, then backtrack farther down than we are now! If we turn up empty-handed, we’ll be even worse off for a longer climb than we already got” He wasn’t going to argue that a brute force solution seemed unlikely at best, but the whole team couldn’t possibly go that far out of their way and still hope to proceed, unless the place ‘where the frozen and the burning embrace in communion’ could offer them a king’s ransom of rest and warmth.

Optimistic even in the face of a brutal ordeal, Raz dispensed some ideas for how the struggle upwards might be made less severe. His suggestions, unfortunately, met with enthusiasm from neither Braum nor Mona. As much as the very big man appreciated the very small man’s willingness to help, he was forgetting a crucial factor. “I am sorry, little Raz, but I don’t think that would work!” he told the Psychonaut, kneeling behind his shield for protection from the wind. “The bigger the surface, the more the wind can push against it. That quickly becomes a problem even for one as mighty as me!”

Mona shook his giant head, his eyes sad. “Uh huh. I probably don’t even have the tire grip to push through the wind and snow uphill, let alone the horsepower.”

As for his other observation, Poppi couldn’t shell out much hope. “You may be on to something, but then again, it might just be here. Lots of stuff in World of Light not there for any good reason.” Having heard about if not experienced firsthand the random weekly generation of the Land of Adventure, ostensibly manmade structures and all, she could corroborate Primrose’s suspicions about things just being places.

“Fox!” Joker called all of a sudden. His masked friend turned to him quizzically, but for once the Phantom Thief wasn’t referring to him. Instead Joker was calling out toward the back of the pilot who even now drew farther and farther away from the group, proceeding alone and without a word up the slope. “Fox!” the teen called again, but there came no answer. “Ugh…” he groaned, releasing the hands cupped around his mouth to pull the parka from Deportes Bienes around his shoulders. “This is bad.”

Panther shivered despite her winter coat, its hood pulled so tight around her head that only her red mask could be seen. “W-what about our fire?” she asked. “Carmen and Lamia can keep us warm as-as-as long as we have the energy!”

“There ain’t anythin’ ‘round here we c-could light!” Big Band bemoaned. “And even if we did have torches or s-somethin’, they’d get blown out in an instant!”

As best he could, Skull put his thinking cap on. “Well, what about castin’ fire on each other? I know it ain’t a great idea, but it’s better than freezin’ to d-d-death…right!?”

At that, the Scout spoke up. “Whoa, bad idea, mate! That’s liable to c-cause thermal shock, if ya don’t burn our damn clothes off first, so unless agonizin’ death sounds like a jolly g-good time, I’d say think o’ somethin’ else!” Skull sagged down with a hang of his head, his curses lost to the wind.

In the midst of the team’s deliberation, Tora took his eyes off the radiant cleft in the mountain above to face and address his teammates. “F-f-friends! Why all doomy and gloomy, meh? Don’t you see? It not so far at all!” He pointed a wing finger up to where the radiance of Split Mountain’s summit shone through the snowstorm, a beacon of hope that not even this cruel blizzard could quench.

It definitely looked close–tantalizingly so. Yet Poppi’s optics told her otherwise. A combination of size, distance, weather, and wishful thinking conspired to warp perception, creating a mirage that only empirical hardware could pierce. As always Poppi’s first impulse was to correct her Masterpon, but as she looked out over the faces of the Seekers, she fell silent. Things were not looking good. Nobody wanted to trudge upward through this frozen hell. They didn’t think they could make it.

They needed a guiding light far closer than the mountain peak.

“Jerkypon hand taunt us saying we don’t have what it takes to be heroes,” her Masterpon was saying. “Tora say meh to that! It b-b-being here mean that we close to boss! If friends j-just huddle together and push onward, we can make it!”

A handful of wry laughs and groans steamed out with the team’s breath. For his part, Big Band looked incredulous. “Look kid, I like seein’ a hero beat impossible odds all the time. See it every Saturday on Peacock’s cartoons. But this is life or death, we’ve gotta be realistic!”

Tora gave a solemn nod. “Yes. That why if things go wrong, we can slide down with wind at back and glide all way to T-t-toasty Town. But we cannot turn tail just yet because this look tough, meh! I-I-It job of heroes to try very, very best! And just as Primrose friend say and Fox-Fox show us, there no time to lose, meh-meh!” He looked to his companion for support. “R-right, Poppi!?”

After a brief moment, Poppi nodded her head. “That what Poppi believe.”

Braum gave a booming laugh. “Ahaha, well spoken! I could not have said it better myself!” He stood to his full height and regaled everyone with a heartwarming smile. “I believe it too. I believe we can all make it! And if you should fall…” the Freljordan flexed his muscles. “I will carry you!”

“Ugh. Too much TV is bad for ya,” Band groaned, rolling his eyes before he gave a windy sigh of resignation. “But if you’re doin’ this, I sure ain’t gonna let ya do it alone. H-here, we’ll go with your idea,” he told Therion. “And I got an idea who oughta be pole p-position.”

So saying, Band turned to face the wind. He breathed deep of the frigid air and began to play. A simple but strident tune blazed forth, loud enough to be heard over the wind for a decent distance. He pushed forward into the snow, propelled by sonic energy that trailed behind him in bands like sheet music. The detective made for the memorial obelisks, and after reaching them deployed both giant mechanical arms to wrench two free from the snow-covered earth to use like skis. “Sorry to disturb your rest, but we’ll be carryin’ your memory with us,” he told the frozen ashes before raising his voice for the others. “F-form up on either side of me! Half on one side, half on the other. I’ll be your anchor and your center, so if s-somethin’ goes wrong, make sure you f-follow the sound o’ my sweet, sweet jazz.”

Tora jumped to it, although Poppi beat him there. The artificial blade positioned herself on Big Band’s left, a hand affixed to one of the caps on his coat, and Tora took hold of her shoulder on her left. Braum took the lead on the detective’s right to start the other branch of Therion’s proposed v-formation. Wherever the Phantom Thieves ended up all four of the teens would invariably be in sequence, while Mona rode on Braum’s shoulder. Though the storm had already laid waste to Fox’s footprints, everyone kept an eye out as best they could as they set off, hoping to induct the pilot into their ranks. Heart in heart and hand in hand, the Seekers with the will to push forward began the final climb.