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[img]https://i.imgur.com/ziR5Pse.png[/img]
[b][color=FD0000]wordcount:[/color][/b] 1,931 (+3)
[b][color=FD0000]Location:[/color][/b] Forbidden Kingdom - Ancient woods
[b][color=SpringGreen]Bowser Jr: Level 15 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=SpringGreen]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](246/150)
[b][color=Aqua]Rika: Level 11 [/color][/b] EXP:  [color=Aqua]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](192/100)
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After only a few more window shopping distractions the koopa kids made it to the western side of town, and found an exit out of it: namely a gate leading out into a heavily forested region sporting only a few dirt roads. 

Despite having had issues with being blocked on the road into town while using it, the pair still opted to use the tractor shaped Kuebiko as their mode of transport. Given the rough terrain ahead, and it being built to carry two passengers in relative comfort, it was still, in their opinion, the best option.

As such, they summoned it via armory portal and then piled on in, after which Jr gunned the engine and they rolled out into the wilds on the first leg of their side-quest

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[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvmJIr2yadk]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/GddOKyC.png[/img]
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Bamboo filled every spare inch of the ancient woods that was not covered by the trees themselves, and on that bamboo many a kind of panda subsided. While panda monsters like the firework slinging [url=https://i.imgur.com/dbieLG8.png]Pandalf[/url] could rarely be found muchning away, it was the entirely mundane pandas made up most of their numbers, and in large numbers too. This would be a surprise to an ecologist from Zenkichi’s earth, where pandas were in danger of going extinct, let alone an ecologist of the even more dangerous world of light with its super predators. An explanation for the abundance could be found in the form of gangs of [url=https://i.imgur.com/eMsqbXI.png]Pancham[/url] lead by [url=https://i.imgur.com/aAbnmNW.png]Pangoro[/url] bosses (the toughest of which could give the nearby city’s fighters a run for their money) that ran a protection racket with actual protection where the poke-pandas protected the regular pandas from ‘bullying’ in a return for a cut of their bamboo. Given the abundance of their shared food source, paying up wasn’t exactly hard. It was so easy in-fact that the pandas didn’t even know they were doing it, simple minded animals that they were.

Ultimately the panda-mon where just as much fighting fanatics as Esaka’s population, and so their delinquent gang stuff was all aesthetics and an excuse to duke it out with threats, passers by, or each other over territory.

Despite their rivalries, all the gangs bowed to the true head honcho of the region: the [url=https://i.imgur.com/rpLrhc9.jpeg]Pretty Protector[/url], a top tier fighter in Esaka and the law of the wilds to its west.

That was only the wilds however, as there existed pockets of civilization [url=https://i.imgur.com/SKGrVeB.png]among the roots[/url]. Living in little villages or temple compounds where the Pandawa, more humanoid pandas with a great love of their [url=https://i.imgur.com/lbt5JnI.png]bamboo milk[/url] and taking the drunken in the drunken boxing fighting style literally as they protected their farms from the poke-panda gangs. 

It was this latter group that the koopa kids got into trouble with first, mainly because they were the other people using the roads. In an echo of their traveling to Esaka, the kids once again found their progress blocked by a milk wagon heading towards the city of fighters, this one pulled by a pair of oddly burly [url=https://i.imgur.com/ow5Hws0.png]pandas[/url]. Unlike the previous one that had been driven by a polite young woman who’d found herself in a spot of trouble, here the pair of pandawas (one male, one female) riding along were far more on Jr’s level in terms of roadrage.

They even started by yelling at the kids to “Get of the road!”

[color=SpringGreen]”You got off the road! Move it!”[/color] Jr leaned out the door to yell at them, which just started a whole back and forth of yelled demands and insults that got neither of them anywhere.

“No way” “get lost!” “we’ve got right of way!”

[color=SpringGreen]”I’m the koopa prince, and I’m driving a tank! I’ve always got right of way!”[/color]

“Wouldn’t care if you were a god on a cloud, go back to the passing place!” “Or better yet go back to the field of gold with that tractor!” “Yeah! I don’t care if you stick bamboo shoots on it, you aren't fooling anyone about where you belong!”

[color=SpringGreen]”It’s a gun and I’m his close to blowing you away with it!”[/color]

“Yeah right!” “who let you drive anyway kid!” “Go home to your mommy!” 

[color=SpringGreen]”I don’t have one yet!”[/color]

“Oh” “uh” “what does that even…?” the pair said to each other with confusion before one settled on just shouting “then run home to your daddy then!” rather than trying to work out Jr’s weird family dynamic.

Needless to say that accidentally poking the prince’s current inability to do that due to not knowing where his pappa was didn’t diffuse the situation at all, just made him seeth and yell with increasingly incoherent rage.

[color=Aqua]”why don’t we just go round them?”[/color] Rika suggested casually, having only been half paying attention to the ranting, the rest of her focus instead on an oversized handheld she was playing while wearing her gaulets. As she pointed out [color=Aqua]”it’s just big sticks most places, just weave around some trees and we’re good”[/color]

[color=SpringGreen]”You know what! Yeah! Let’s wreck it!”[/color] Jr agreed, slamming shut the door, gunning the engine, spinning the steering wheel, and ramming headfirst into a bamboo thicket at the side of the road, demolishing bamboo in the process.

“Uh oh” “idiots” the two Pandawa commented, both knowing exactly what was about to happen, namely the kid’s vehicle running straight into the gang of panda pokemon that had been shadowing the noisy machine while it had been rumbling along outside their territory.

Into, but not over, as the Pangoro squared his stance, endured the impact, grappled the front of the Kuebiko, and then performed a Vital Throw that hurled it back onto the road, where it cashed down onto its side.

While outside of Galeem’s world, things might have ended with a (non verbal) “and stay out!” in its world the battle continued. The rest of the gang, half a dozen Pandachams, ran out of the woods, leapt onto the Kuebiko, grappling it and began to kick and slash at its body as their boss stomped forwards towards them.

“Now you’ve done it!” One of the Pandawa yelled at them, before both dismounted and popped the corks of large tubes they wore on their backs, and began guzzling bamboo milk from them.

As the drunken boxers got their drink on, the door of the Kuebiko popped open once more. A Pandacham immediately leapt into it, only to immediately come flying back up as Rika came vaultbreaker punching up out of the machine, the magic propelled punch carrying both of them up into the air.

Her rigging mounted hull claws then whipped out, spiking the half meter tall panda pokemon to the ground a meter or so away, before she maneuvering thrusters over it and using her H3AD-5T v2 cuffs to slam down on top of it, creating two meter wide explosion in the process.

A moment after she landed, a pokeball did as well, as Jr sent out Peeka (his Flutter Mane) to aid in the battle, calling out for her to [color=SpringGreen]”Dazzling Gleam them!”[/color]

This she did, unleashing a blast of fairy light that drastically harmed three of the fighting type mon while barely affecting the steel machine they were beating up.

Presented with a challenge, the Pandacham leapt into the fray. Two tried to punch the ghost type pokemon and failed utterly to harm it, blows phasing straight through the specter. That still left Rika in a three on one fight Rika, which was a bit worrying, only for the female Pandawa to land by her side to improve the odds, having been tossed into the fray by her friend. 

Said pandawa delivered a triple thrust of strikes that knocked a Pandacham back, while Rika blocked one’s one flurry of arm thrusts with her hull claws, and blasted another with electrical ink from her grizzco blaster, blinding and shocking it.

“Your way more fun than that shouty turtle!” the Pandawa gal informed her cheerfully, to which Rika [color=Aqua]”Um, thanks?”[/color]

[color=SpringGreen]”Hey!”[/color] Jr yelled in complaint as he pulled himself up out of and onto the top of the tipped over metal attacker, before then also yelling [color=SpringGreen]”watch out!”[/color] as the big Pangoro boss caught up and entered the fray.

Rika pivoted in response, and transformed and teleported her shield into her hand right in time for the Pangoro to bodyslam his entire bulk into it, slamming the shipgirl back and sending her skidding across the dirt road till her back collided with their tipped transport.

[color=SpringGreen]”Gotta be fighting”[/color] Jr said to himself,  before commanding Peeka to [color=SpringGreen]”Psybeam it!”[/color] only for the malevolent mind of the fighting and dark type mon to shrug off the mental blast. 

As Jr went for his phone rather than a weapon in response to this, the bralwers kept duking it out, only to be interrupted when the pandawa guy hurled a flask of bamboo milk at a group of three Pandacham, which exploded with fiery power.

That only took a handful of threats off the gal pandawa, who was low kicked in the shins by another Pandacham, and then grabbed at Vital Thrown at Rika by the Pangoro. The ship girl hopped over the living projectile (who slammed into the tipped tractor as well leaving Jr juggling his phone) and then H3AD-5T v2 slammed down into the burnt foes, an explosion blasting them aside.

As the guy pandawa entered the fray to go fits to fist with the other two still standing Pandacham, Rika clashed with their boss, going fist to fist rather than trying to use her lance on solid ground. She caught a swift bullet punch in an open gauntlet, steel-type move clanging against the metal, only to have her own punch caught by the towering two meter tall bear. They struggled for a moment, neither willing to let go, before they both fought dirty. 

The Pangoro lunged his head forwards, crunching down on Rika’s own head, which set her energy shield humming as it brought her just a moment before it bit her head clean off. That moment was just long enough for her to fire a volley of disruption cannon shots into his gut and at the same time as her hull claws slashed at his knees. Both of these unsteadied the boss bear, letting her wrench free from the grip of claw and jaw, his teeth snapping together just an inch from her face a moment later.

Rather than pull back, however, she maneuvering thruster dashed forwards, shoulder checking his chest and helmet headbutting those teeth, before a blast of poseidon blessed water burst out from her and pushed him back, giving her space that way. Space enough to pull a fist back and vaultbreaker right back into brawling range.

Around her, the formerly argumentative but now allied Pandawa kept the smaller Pandacham mooks busy, on an even footing thanks to the latter’s repeatedly aoe’d sate, their stumbling stances making them unpredictable and hard to pin down. Behind all this fighting, Jr had caught his phone, scanned the Pangoro, and realized his mistake regarding the pokemon’s type.

[color=SpringGreen]”Close in and use dazzling gleam Peeka, it’s dark type too! Just be careful not to hit Rika!”[/color] he commanded his mon. The fluttermane swooped down from where she’d been hovering, waiting for commands. As she did so, Rika glanced back, and then tapped her featherfall rune, launching herself up and out of the way of an attempted grapple by her foe. She did this just in time for Peeka to get into range and to blast fairly light into the dark-fighting type’s face for quadruple damage. 

That, combined with the damage from the brawling with Rika, was more than enough to knock him out like a light, sending the fainted mon crashing to the floor. The Pandacham goons that hadn’t already joined him there did so a few moments later, after which the Pandawa had a fun time hurling them all off the road and back into the bamboo forests.

Rika ended up joining in, both with the Pandacham chucking, and then with working together with the Pandawa to hurl the massive Pangoro out of the way too.

A combination of the bamboo milk they’d drunk to get fired up for the fight and the fight itself had made the Pandawa far more jovial, and their fighting to protect his sister made Jr far more reasonable on his own end, so the former yelling about right of way was now a thing of the past. 

The Kuebiko was tipped back onto its wheels, its dents punched out, and its green paint reapplied by magic brush. Then the two sets of travelers made use of the newly created passing place that Jr had rammed into the bamboo to get around each other and set off on their ways once more, trading Rika and the Pandawa waves as they did so.