[center][h3]Montoj - Sayonara, Wild Hearts[/h3]
The Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Cyclops the Driller, Overhard the Engineer
[b]Word Count:[/b] 4010 (+5)[/center]

After Kuebiko was ready to roll under Junior’s control, Overhard went ahead and pressed the big red button on the hacking pod. Hack-C’s monitors lit up, lines of code pouring across them faster than any human could ever possibly read, and Hack-C began tapping its keyboard like a robot possessed. The Power Station detected the security breach right away and started fighting back, and while the progress bar on its top monitor indicated that Hack-C would win that battle eventually if left to its own devices, the network monitoring the Rival Tech in this sector would not let that happen. Almost immediately, a squadron of [url=https://i.imgur.com/kGoXgvE.png]Patrol Bots[/url] showed up out the blue, either hovering through the air in spread mode or rolling around on the cavern floor in tower mode. Their orange laser bolts were an issue, but not the only one; small swarms of [url=https://i.imgur.com/W24Nl8N.png]Shredders[/url] appeared as well, eager to slice all living things into ribbons as they viciously darted around.

“Contact!” Cyclops bellowed, switching to his semi-automatic Subata pistol to try and pick swarms off at a distance. “Lock and load!”

Overhard’s turrets went to work while the engineer’s Shard Diffractor blazed. “And protect Hack-C!”

While numerous, the Shredders that approached Sectonia were in for a shock, literally, as her tesla coil zapped them out of the air. While evasive and small, they were extremely fragile and couldn’t stand up to more than a tiny bit of punishment. The Patrol bots on the other hand were much more tanky and had almost the same level of evasiveness. Her antlions also assisted, but they assisted by dealing with the glyphids that showed up due to the noisy robots about and the commotion of Hack-C. 

Using this opportunity, she tried out those new spells that she had gotten from her new spirit. Normally these spells would be a little weak it seemed, even if she could cast them easily, but when cast in triplicate, they were a bit more of a threat. The triangles, after being summoned, didn’t have their own projectiles affected by that mask, so they could shoot straight even if they moved in weird ways. The other spell, the homing balls however, were similar to Sectonia’s own arcane orbs, but homed in which in combination with a few of her other items made them somewhat difficult for an attacking Patrol Bot to dodge even at range.

Bowser started off the fight right this time, spitting a mega fireball into the air to slowly float through the cavern, providing light as it did. Then he got to air scrubbing, exhaling out wide gouts of flame to wash away whole swarms of shredders in a single breath. Kamek hovered above his King, flicking fast moving fira spells at any foes that got around Bowser’s waves of death, while havng his healing clones keep the king topped up when they weren't bobbing and weaving to act as decoys.

Rika meanwhile sailed to and fro on her pre-prepared sea of slime, which gave any patrol bots that tried to roll over it a nice coat of shocking goop on the orbs they were balancing on. The ones in the sky she weaved around the projectiles of, and then blasted them with bursts of flaming goop, threatening to overheat the machine's internal circuitry, especially when she triggered all out assault every dozen pulls of the trigger, which let her hammer any unfortunate bots nearby with a burst of rapid fire triple spread shots. 

Finally jr got plenty of use out of his new trigun tractor, letting loose a hail of bullets from its main triple barreled cannon and keeping on the move like Rika was. It was a little tricky to combined moving and shooting like that, particularly against the small/agile bots, but in a way that just made them very good practice. 

The initial response from the Rival Tech network proved wholly inadequate to resolve the threat posed to its Power Station. Just the dwarves would’ve been able to hold the bots off on their own, but with the Koopa Troop and Sectonia to help them, their attackers didn’t stand a chance. Shredders dropped like flies, and even the most resilient Patrol Bots turned to scrap metal when the Seekers focused them down. In fact, Rika’s All-out Assault ended up feeling like overkill, most of her ammunition wasted as the last few targets really weren’t crowded anywhere near thick enough to make the most of it.

Still, Hack-C’s progress bar remained half empty, and the team wasn’t out of the woods just yet. Stirred up by the commotion in the fight against Rival Tech’s response unit, bugs began to crawl out of the cavern walls. In addition to glyphids, with a greater percentage of guards and slicers, speedy [url=https://i.imgur.com/eiaF1I9.png]tickers[/url] began to appear in groups of three. To the dwarves’ delight they behaved just like glyphid exploders, able to be detonated early when shot, but their huge burst damage and ability to come from every angle (including dropping from above) made them high-priority targets. It wasn’t long before things much creepier and crawlier showed up, though. Like nightmarish elite versions of the web spitters, two huge [url=https://i.imgur.com/CEAVIOd.png]Bloodstalkers[/url] lurked in the dark of the cave’s upper reaches, shooting out webs to grapple targets and pull them in for evisceration against their blood-sucking spikes. One of them snatched Overhard right out of his turret nest, causing the dwarf to yell as the webs dragged him up into the darkness. “Eeeeeelp! Somethin’s got me!” As he rose, he was also horrified to glimpse masses of icky black spiders, packed so tight together and moving with such cohesion that they resembled [url=https://static.miraheze.org/rainworldwiki/f/f5/Spider2_transparent.gif]centipedes[/url]. These coalescipedes were fast, vicious, and terrifyingly stealthy, their aggression limited only by the size of their chains and their aversion to light–though even then, familiarity would eventually bring contempt.

A moment after he cried out, an amber bubble wrapped itself around Overhard as Kamek cast an arcane barrier around him in-order to give them more time to get him out of there. Then he summoned Quiet, in-order to have the sniper striker take down the grappling bug with her well aimed shots. He had the End take her place on counter sniping duty after she timed out, while the mage himself set about reanimating the dry bones from earlier to once again act as bait. The skeletal koopas were not much of a threat to the glyphids, but they were near impossible to keep down, repeatedly drawing attention away from actual targets whenever the self resurrected.

Rika, out of reactant to get the explosive slime in her grizzco blaster to detonate, and not really looking forwards to refilling the tank with her spit, switched up her strategy as the insects replaced the robots as their main threat. First, to do something about the spider swarms she sent out her own, launching her electric fire flies and sending buzzing up into the ceiling to chase after and zap them till she used up all her SP. The spiders instinctively fled from the light, but in reply they began to group into larger coalescipedes, pooling their health and damage together.

After that she held her non renewable rifle ammo in reserve, using it only to pick off the exploding tickers, and instead used her gauntlets and hullclaws vs the glypids, sailing across her shocking sea of slime and delivering a beatdown on any bug foolish enough to enter her domain.    

Bowser spat up another cavern lighting mega fireball, before he and Jr both want mobile, both monster and machine leaping to and fro in the cavern, stomping on glyphids and making it very difficult for them to get a devastating surround on either of the royal koopas. In addition to hard landings, Bowser’s stomps caused fiery shockwaves, while Jr pointed his tank turret up and blasted wildly at anything up there that moved.

While the royal koopas were doing their thing and keeping the riff raff at bay, Sectonia decided she’d do something with these giant spider centipedes. Giving herself some buffer room with her antillions and with her tesla coil zapping the exploding bugs, Sectonia began to charge and then unleash a spacial shatter upon the coalescipedes as Bowser’s fire made them all horde together into much longer, larger variants. Seeing one that was more charged, the dwarves could see what it did as reality around the bugs shattered like glass and darkness overcast the area for a bit until it disappeared, leaving a white void behind that slowly, slowly reformed back into the reality of which it was.

If not for the long-range rapid-fire capabilities of Kuebiko (not to mention Kamek’s protective quick thinking) Overhard might’ve been toast, but thanks to his new allies’ help the engineer managed to avoid getting gored on the Bloodstalker’s probosci. Given that crucial moment, Overhard seized his Shard Diffractor and turned it up to eleven. A bright orange beam of energy refracted through the weapon’s crystal burned through the webs reeling him in, and Overhard plunged toward the ground. Rather that yell out in panic, he kept his cool and waited for the right moment to activate his Hover Boots to break his fall. “Argh!” he growled, turning his beam upward to finish the job. “It’s like a bloody Stingtail on steroids!”

Exposed to the light, countless spiders had collected into nightmarish coalescipedes, but once Bowser and Rika grouped them up, the others could cut them down. Kuebiko’s chaingun worked well enough, but Cyclops’ flamethrower was just the ticket. When a coalescipede got just a little too big for him to roast, Sectonia arrived to wipe it off the face of the planet with her reality break. With the number of fodder bugs quickly dwindling, only the other Bloodstalker really remained to challenge the Seekers. When Overhard saw it, he marked it with its laser pointer, giving the monstrous arthropod a glowing outline that everyone could see. “There it is!” he yelled. “Take it down!”

As the others started shooting up at it, Cyclops had an idea. “Hah, watch this!” He pulled out one of his grenades, took a moment to aim, and then threw it down. It promptly expanded into a [url=https://i.imgur.com/losLyG7.png]springloaded ripper[/url] that started slicing through the ground, mincing a couple stray glyphids as it ran before hitting the cave wall. It climbed right up the surface, approached the flushed-out Bloodstalker, and chopped up one of its legs like green onion. Losing its grip, the Bloodstalker promptly fell from the wall and became easy pickings.

A moment later, an alert sound rang out from the hacking pod. “Hack-C’s done!” Overhard announced happily. “Good job lads, we’re through here!”

As if on cue, a big stretch of ground by one of the cave walls began to rumble. When Cyclops glared at the engineer, his helmet’s single eye somehow conveyed every ounce of his irritation. “Nice goin’ there, poindexter.”

After another moment, a freakish brown-and-white [url=https://i.imgur.com/t1A2JaO.png]monstrosity[/url] with a huge segmented tail, wings of radiant green energy, and lobster-like pincers dug its way out of the ground with a shriek. “I don’t believe this, it’s an alien!” Overhard exclaimed, like they hadn’t been fighting alien bugs until now. He rushed over to resupply his turrets, while Cyclops loaded up a fresh can of fuel. The alien raised its claws and prepared to attack, only for the cavern wall behind it to explode in a gigantic eruption of rock, soil, and plant matter. Through the chaos plowed none other than the Kingtusk, majestic and imperial, to land on and squash the alien bug beneath its immense mass. As the husk turned to ashes around it, the Kingtusk sucked in its breath, then shook the entire cavern with its ear-piercing squeal.

Wincing, Cyclops cracked his neck and lifted his flamethrower into position. “Awlright. Guess it’s time to pull some pork after all! Suuuuuuuuuuuuuey!”

In response, the Kingtusk lowered its head, and charged. 

“Hmph, a beast will be a beast.” Sectonia said, casting her Slow on the Kingtusk as it approached the group, setting it up for the koopa clan to deal with it as they seemed eager to beat it up.


Never one to back down to a challenge, be it a mighty meal or mighty battle (or both in this case) Bowser counter charged, which would have been incredibly foolish had he not called out for [color=FD0000]”Kamek!”[/color] to [color=FD0000]”Make me huge!”[/color]

Now there was logic to be found here, for if the cavern could support the big pig, then surely it could support the king too. Both however? Well that was a question that was just about to get answered, as the mage saw no choice between using his magic and letting his king get trampled.

He quickly landed next to the hacking station, raise his his wand over his head and began chanting.

Unfortunately to do this he had to sit still, while making an awful lot of noise, which had the inevitable result of drawing attention to himself as an excellent Bloodstalker grapple target. 

So up he went.

[color=Aqua]”Kamek”[/color] came a cry of alarm from Rika who had seen this happen, and who then did the only logical thing, and grappled the mage from below. Her own hook launched up, grabbed a leg, and then with a cry of [color=Aqua]”I’ve got you”[/color] Rika began to pulled in the opposite direction from the bug, resulting in some rather pained sounding chanting as the mage kept up the spell even as his life was in danger. 

Then there was a wooshing sound, and light briefly blazed as a trio of rockets slammed up into the ceiling as Jr expended some of his Metal Attacker’s limited unused stores to free his caretaker. Said caretaker was pulled down with quite a bit of force, and it was a near thing that he did not get slashed by Rika’s chainsaw bayonet’s blades as she caught him.

[color=Aqua]”See, told you I had you”[/color] Rika reassured him, preparing to set him down, only for Jr to powerslide to a stop beside them, throwing open the door to his tank and urging his sister to put Kamek [color=SpringGreen]”In here!”[/color]

[color=Aqua]”Huh? Oh! Good idea”[/color] Rika agreed after only the smallest delay, before quickly popping the mage inside and strapping him into the copilot's seat. 

She stepped back, and then, with the source of engreatening power safely secured, had a chance to take in the spectacle Kamek was enabling.

Intentionally or not, the mage had only increased the king’s size to on comparable to the big pig before he had been distracted by his abduction, meaning that dragon met sow on a mostly level playing field. 

With each step the king had grown, until he’d been big enough to grab the boar by the tusks as it charged him, causing him to grind backwards through the dirt, boots carving furrows into it till he brought it to a halt. The two roared at each other as they struggled, claw vs tusk, before the king slammed his own head into it, and then lashed out with his vine tendrils, driving them into his target, releasing electrical shocks at each thorny impact site.

The pain gave the Kingtusk a burst of strength, wrenching its head up into the air, kicking the king with its front trotters, and then slamming its head back down, smashing him back and freeing itself from his grip. 

It was the kings turn to roar in pain, and then retaliate recklessly, the king swinging a wild punch forwards, having expected his foe to follow up a charge with a charge. Instead the Kingtusk stomped the ground again, sending a line of roots to spike up from the ground one in a wave like pattern, forcing the king to step to the side to avoid being skewered. 

His slowness meant he still suffered a glancing blow, the spikes clipping his arm and sending him stumbling. Perfect for an ungrabbable charge, which the Kingtusk wasted now time in executing, the pig thundering forwards towards the king.

Yet unlike it, the King was not alone, and in that crucial moment his family and allies came to his aid. Missiles and triple cannon fire slammed into its side fired by Jr’s Metal Attacker, along with a barrage of sticky disruption globs from Rika, that clung to the beast and sapped its strength. Sectonia helped out as well, using the fact it was such a huge target to fire her large Rings of Light at it, which would be incredibly difficult for that thing to dodge with its size, their size, and the limited cave room. Still, she kept her attention on the smaller bugs to keep them off of the others while they dealt with the big guy with her antlions, lightning, and tesla coil.

Those knocked it off balance and weaned it, but what really did a number on it was the dwarves, with Overhard’s Shard Diffractor and Cyclops‘ flamethrower igniting parts of the decidedly plant like pig and making it squeal in pain. It rounded on them, which was particularly bad for Cyclops who had had to get into close range, but Bowser was quick to repay the favor.

[color=FD0000]”Eyes on me bub!”[/color] the king, who had recovered from the root attack, demanded, as he charged back in, winding up and then driving a punch into the side of the boar’s head.

The baor reeled, and then, naturally, focused back on the main target before it got mashed to a pulp. The two struggled for a moment before a voice chimed in Bowser’s ear thanks to the linkpearl.

 [color=SpringGreen]”Burn it papa! The dwarves’ stuff seems to be really working out, but no one can top you when it comes to fire power!”[/color] his son helpfully chimed in like one of those helpers Mario seemed to acquire a new one for every adventure. Unlike them, Bowser would never find his son annoying, particularly when the advice was so useful (for him anyway, anyone else would have been able to work out the weakness for themselves after all) 

[color=FD0000]”Now you're gonna get it!”[/color] the armed with new information Bowser told the pig, before he breathed deep and unleashed a sea of fire breath upon his foe. 

As predicted, the flames ravaged the plant-based pig’s body. Not predicted, however, was the way that the Kingtusk’s face became engulfed in its own source of liquid flame, and its tusks grew even larger, splitting off thorny branches wrapped in energy as burning hot as its anger as it entered an [url=https://i.imgur.com/ng55MQ6.jpg]enraged state[/url].

Burning roots burst from the ground all around it, an explosion of power that slammed the king back again, the king staggering and then finding his footing to face down the rival king once more. There was the briefest moment of stillness, and then the two charged each other again. 

Bowser tried his tusk grabbing trick again, but the spikes and flames on them made them too hot to handle, harming first his hands and then his chest as he was properly gored by the beast for the first time. 

He roared with pain even as he drove his elbow down into the forehead of his foe, and then trying to shove it away, only for the beast to stay right on top of him, tusks stabbing and scraping his shell as it did so. He would have flame breathed it again, but ironically, he too was part plant, and the red hot tusks were already threatening to put the vines growing out of the back of his shell aflame, and so there was no way he was risking burning washback. 

Instead he and it engaged in a grueling bout of punching and stabbing, till Rika chimed in to relay some details, which from the other koopa’s perspective sounded something like [color=FD0000]”I can’t do shock damage that’d burn my roots! … No … Ask them what they mean by that … Well why didn’t they just say so!”[/color] after which the king slung a single cannon over his shoulder.

Doing so exposed part of his back, and the mass of vines beneath, which the burning farec boar immediately tried to take advantage of, trying to hook a tusk around the side of the shell to drive it into Bowser’s innards. The jab landed, but not before the cannon fired, blasting the beast not with bullets, acid, or light bullets, but with water.

The initial incoherence of this move was quickly replaced with dwarven genius as the fire on the pig’s face was extinguished, stealing away the power boost, and the rapid cooling from the water sent the pig into temperature shock. 

Flesh and tusk disintegrated and several eyes turning to hollow sockets under the damage, sending it stumbling back. Bowser immediately capitalized, stepping forwards, driving a vine covered fist into it to deliver a different kind of shock. Then he fired up his kinetic strike module, slamming into the kingtusks’s lower jaw with a devastating uppercut, shattering both its tusks and sending it staggering up onto two hooves.

Not at all done, the king grabbed his porky foe and hauling it over his shoulder, suplexing it directly into the power station, before turning around to face it. His jaw opened, breathing in gallons of oxygen, and then he exhaled all that built up fuel, blasting a mega fireball into the stunned target, the giant fireball near as large as it absolutely incinerating the foe in a single devastating finisher.

When the flame and smoke cleared, the heavily-damaged kemono was deader than dead, its massive carcass quickly burning to ash that blanketed the compromised Power Station in a mound of black powder. The dwarves watched with slack jaws, not just sweating from the intensity of the fight. “...Bloimey,” Cyclops muttered. “This fecker’s a bloody monster!”

“Glad you’re on our side,” Overhard laughed somewhat nervously. “Uh, well, that’s the Power Station sorted. Back to the Data Vault then lads, that Caretaker ain’t gonna crack itself.” He recalled his turrets, and together the dwarves packed up to leave the burning bamboo forests and wheat fields behind.

With the battle over, Bowser rapidly shrunk down to his usual size, as a rather exhausted Kamek released the spell as soon as the battle was won. The kids meanwhile gave their papa cheers and adulation for his mighty victory, which did plenty to boost the king’s already sky high ego.

After they’d all calmed down a bit, Jr looked back to ask Kamek to make his toadies do some spirit collecting, only for the exhausted manaless mage to shake his head. It would be a while till he was back in fighting shape, but at least he was going to be able to ride out his rest period in Jr’s new ride.

That left the others to quickly salvage what spirits they could from the battlefield before they all started fading. Naturally the two big bosses, fought and unfought, were salvaged, along with a smattering of others.

There wasn’t that much time however, seeing as the dwarves wanted to get moving, and the threat of more swarms was still hanging over their heads. So soon enough they were back on the road, and heading back the way they had come.