[center][h3]Same Old Story - the First Turn[/h3]
The Koopa Troop’s [@DracoLunaris], Primrose and Therion’s [@Yankee], Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC], Ganondorf’s [@Double], Ms. Fortune
[b]Word Count:[/b] 2,129 (+3) [/center]

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAjJYqd0zR8&ab_channel=JoelBaylisMusic[/youtube][/center]

Sectonia was fine with blasting this thing, as was their prerogative to dealing with bosses as it were. [color=92278f]”About time we can silence this thing.”[/color] Seeing this thing was made of paper, or something akin to that, she started by summoning her fire Antlers before she got in close to hit it with her axe and fire breath, dancing out when needed so Bowser could do his shenanigans as it were. Still, whatever he did to Primrose was a bit concerning, so Sectonia figured they were all on a time limit.

Fortunately, another royal had a solution to that problem, the koopa prince hurrying over to the sleeping Primrose inorder to cast [color=SpringGreen]”Esuna!”[/color] on the dancer, a spell that could magically cleanse minor status effects. Even as she cured her, the prince also grabbed her with his free hand, aiming to help Nadia in moving her clear while she was waking up.

[hider=Primrose’s Dream]It had happened so suddenly. One second the dancer found herself unable to keep her eyes open; the next, they opened to an unfamiliar scene. Now, instead of the vaulted chamber where Ten Piedad had been laid to rest, she sat on the floor of a strange [url=https://i.imgur.com/Iq5cnJL.png]arena[/url], half-melted candles all around. She remembered attacking Robin Goodfellow... had it warped her into a cell to take her out of the fight?

[i]How irritating,[/i] she thought. Was this how most of the prison's cells were filled? Threats to the status quo faced down that demented mule-man and were trapped? Then, maybe, Yufusa had accidentally stumbled into Mercy Dreams and had been imprisoned the same way...?

Primrose approached the cell door, the only one in the room. She couldn’t hear any noise from beyond it. After a brief moment, though, she realized that she had more pressing matters than whatever might be going on outside. She wasn’t alone in here. Within the shadows, the shape of a man arose - a silver-haired [url=https://i.imgur.com/l7qLz0M.png]man[/url] with the mark of a crow hidden beneath his cravat.

She stared at the man in disbelief. The last time she had seen him it was the moment of his betrayal revealed. When he had stabbed her, mocked her, and left her for dead. She hadn't expected to see him in this world. It was impossible that he was here, at the same place and time as herself and Yusufa.

[i]This prison conjures up dreams. Nightmares. Of course none of it is real.[/i] If nothing else, this helped her really come to terms with the fact that the Yusufa in the silver-locked cell was a fake. And she should just ignore the fake in front of her - but then the man spoke.

"My [i]dear[/i] Primrose..." He sighed, his tongue curling around her name.

She lunged at him. Her lance had been lost somewhere, but she had her dagger. It flashed forward, seeking the man's neck where that damn tattoo sat. He laughed and danced out of the way. She didn't expect him to retaliate with his own dagger - it cut the skin of her cheek as she threw herself to one side. She turned back to him, murder burning in her eyes.

[color=D34C25]"[i]Simeon![/i]"[/color] Primrose snarled. She hadn't had a lot of time to process what had happened between the two of them. After being awakened in Alcamoth, Simeon had been the first thing on her mind. The confrontation in the Obsidian Manse was the last thing that had happened to her in her original world. She had been lost, anguished. Angry. And then she'd set out to fix the universe.

Ultimately, whatever had happened in the past, what they had felt for each other and what could have been didn't matter. Her goal was still to eradicate the Obsidians. Simeon was one of them; their leader, the final crow. This shadow would be a good warm up for the real thing.

She collected dark fire in her hand and struck the ground, letting her Black Serpent spell give chase. She started on another spell when Simeon was suddenly in her face. He'd gotten past the serpent by moving in close instead of trying to run - and he had his own spell prepared.

"Rondo of Stillness." Dark magic slammed into Primrose, flinging her back. She got to her feet quickly, less graceful than usual in the face of her hated foe. She felt herself growling in annoyance, but couldn't hear it. A chill ran down her spine. She touched her throat, tried to summon her magic, but she'd been effectively silenced.

[i]No matter,[/i] she thought. She held her dagger up in front of her, but before she could go back on the attack she felt her consciousness pulling away from her again. Confusion and hesitation took her, distracted enough that Simeon easily knocked her back again. This time he caught her before she hit the ground.

He held her loosely. One of his arms was cradled around her back, the other had taken hold of her dagger hand. He still held his own weapon, the two blades gripped tight and hanging menacingly over the both of them.

"How nice it was to know I'm still the man of your dreams," he said. Sweetly, smugly. His smile grew wider, showing his pearly teeth. "Alas, it seems our time together is up."

So that was it? She was being pulled out of the dream? No! She had to kill this man!

[i]Simeon![/i] She cursed at him in her head. [i]Simeon![/i] The nasty smile was still on his face, and he shrugged as if he had no choice but to let her be pulled back to consciousness. She struggled to get her feet back underneath her while in his hold, to thrust her dagger into his head while it was tangled with his, but blackness swallowed her vision once more.[/hider]
As the boy helped, his papa and sister put themselves in between the sleeper and her 2 helpers to protect them from whatever the two humanoid enemies Robin had summoned could do, assuming they tried to take down the sleeping target, readying shields and defensive strikers. As a result it was instead Kamek who took advantage of Sectonia’s dancing away, as the mage proceeded to fire a multi elemental cosmic spray across the battlefield at Robin, hoping that at least one of the elements would tickle a weakness they could exploit.

Jesse sprinted forward, putting herself in front of her comrades. Noting the two warriors had guns, she figured they planned on using them in moments. So she put out her hands and ripped debris from the floor and bound them together with her paranatural powers, creating a Shield in between her allies and Robin’s bodyguards.

Coming to was slow for Primrose. Even though she knew what was happening around her wasn't real, she struggled to stay asleep all the same. Whatever inner demons she'd found in that nightmare, she [i]wanted[/i] to stay and fight them.

[color=D34C25]"Simeon...!"[/color] Her voice was quiet and strained as her body woke up before her mind. She felt hands on her, jostling and moving her. She forcefully pulled herself out of the grasp, not quite realizing that her allies were taking her out of harm's way.

[color=D34C25][i]"Don't touch me."[/i][/color] The words were a clear, dangerous warning. Nadia heeded them, jerking away as if Primrose had burned her hands. Then, the dancer’s dark eyes brightened a little in recognition of Ms. Fortune and Bowser Jr. Ahead of them, Jesse and the others. She touched her forehead gently as consciousness fully returned to her. [color=D34C25]"I...?"[/color]

[color=797979]”Hmph.”[/color] Ganondorf huffed with a grimace. He finally decided he’d seen enough. He held up one sword as a gesture to command his moblins to temporarily hold their fire. Then with a smirk he took off in a run toward the creature called Robin. He’d seen the sleep-inducing fairy dust attack and now knew to be wary of it. He would not be so easily caught off guard by it.

Rather than a direct forward attack, the Gerudo King instead anticipated some kind of frontal defense of riposte and pivoted himself into a side step. That side-step then led into a jump that took him up and allowed him to come slamming back down onto the creature from above with an aerial Warlock Kick that of course wrapped his foot and leg in a dark, purple-ish magical flame, [color=797979]”Show me what you’ve got, creature! Do your worst!”[/color]

Robin hadn’t been the one to attack Ganondorf, however. Instead it was Oberon, and the strong-bodied warframe had bulled forward to bring the blue flames of his golden mace Silva down on the warlord’s head. Instead Ganondorf deftly dodged the crushing blow, then while Oberon momentarily raised his Aegis shield to defend himself from a counterattack, leaped away from it to target Robin instead. Unfortunately for Ganondorf, he’d earned himself an enemy that was far more mobile than he realized. Incensed, Oberon sprang into the air with surprising accuracy, hurtling after Ganondorf in a corkscrew leap. In the middle of his Warlock Kick, he took an aerial shield bash to the back, knocking him off course. Both flew off to the side, and Ganondorf had only the briefest opportunity to course-correct before Oberon followed up with an overhead slam from Silva to bring both himself and the Gerudo King back down to the ground.

Meanwhile, Titania had been more focused on the other attacker who flew in to attack Robin, that being Sectonia. With Primrose well protected by the Koopa Troop and Jesse, the sprightly warframe took aim at the swarm queen with her regal Corinth shotgun. With six punchy pellets, it had short range, middling fire rate, and a nasty propensity for critical hits made all the worse by a decently tight spread. With her first shot she missed, with the second she got a glancing blow on Sectonia, and with the third she scored a direct hit. By that time though, her target was backpedaling and the Antlers were closing in. Titania released her shotgun with one hand to cast Spellbind. This created a cloud of fairy dust, five meters in diameter, in the vicinity of herself, Robin, Jesse, Nadia, Primrose, the Troop, and Sectonia’s minions. Immediately, her enemies fumbled their weapons, and the Antlers floated into the air, surrounded by ghostly teal butterflies. Meanwhile, she and Robin became immune to status effects, and would be until Spellbind ended in sixteen seconds.

In the first few moments of the fight, Robin sustained a heavy axe chop, fiery breath, and a barrage of different elements. None of them seemed any more effective than any other, however, so while a smart move, Kamek’s gambit didn’t amount to much. With its minions already engaging the enemy, Robin followed suit. First it used Trick, inflicting Jesse with a random debuff, Melee Attack Down, for thirty seconds. Then the archangel used Fairy Dust again, this time targeting the major threat to its gameplan: Junior. The Koopa Prince immediately fell into a deep sleep, and around him the battle continued. One other thing happened, however. Within Robin’s strange corona, two of the ten empty diamond outlines now shone with vivid purple.

After seeing Primrose stir and confirming that she’d be okay, there was nothing else stopping Naida from cutting to the chase. When Titania’s Spellbind caused an unseen force to wrench her boxcutters from her grip, she didn’t even slow down. Instead she jumped onto Jesse’s barrier of torn-up slabs, claws sharpened, and pumped her limbs full of blood. “Nice trick,” she smirked, grabbing her right arm by the bicep as it spun up like a drill. “But I’m never unarmed!” She took aim, then fired at Titania. Rather than try to block, the warframe leaped upward on a conjured trampoline of energy, but Nadia was faster. On jets of blood she cannoned skyward, transforming her left arm into a white tiger’s as she raised it over her head. “Here’s your escape claws!” She descended with a strong slash that brought both back down, knocking the Corinth from Titania’s grasp.

The warframe landed and slid backward, drawing her Pangolin saber, while Nadia did two things. With her left she pulled off and rolled her head a bowling ball (which missed her target), and with the other she shot out muscle fibers to attach to her detached arm and pull it back on. Titania sprinted toward her, sliding to collect her shotgun, then rose to meet flashing claws with swirling blade. Nadia struck thrice in quick succession with Cat Scratch, each metallic clash gaining no ground. Only when the feral’s head flew in from behind Titania did Nadia manage to catch her off guard and land an El Gato axe kick that pushed the warframe back.