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[img]https://i.imgur.com/ziR5Pse.png[/img]
[b][color=FD0000]wordcount:[/color][/b] 1,507 (+3)
[b][color=FD0000]Location:[/color][/b] Forbidden Kingdom - Shinjuku 
[b][color=SpringGreen]Bowser Jr: Level 15 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=SpringGreen]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](280/150)
[b][color=Aqua]Rika: Level 11 [/color][/b] EXP:  [color=Aqua]///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](216/100)
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The kids had escaped the cops. It had not been a fun time. Sewers might make for excellent highways for a pair of people who could sail on water, but they were stinky, confusing and full of annoying monsters.

Truly, the worst kind of level.

What was fun, however, was what the place they’d found to lay low while waiting for the heat to die down: a robot fighting arena tucked away in a random disused warehouse that had been half consumed by a hollow. 

In it, the kids got to see action figure like [url=https://i.imgur.com/OHQqpkR.jpeg]custom robos[/url] duked it out against (super) cardboard armored [url=https://i.imgur.com/FfDwZVf.jpeg]LBXs[/url], kid sized [url=https://i.imgur.com/YuaKaAf.jpeg]medabots[/url] (like Blazermate), [url=https://i.imgur.com/I26aefI.jpeg]autobattling bots[/url] and even [url=https://i.imgur.com/xFGwvp0.png]boxy robots[/url] that managed to hold their own through sheet tankiness. Sometimes. Those were definitely the underdogs.

Not quite as much underdogs as the [url=https://i.imgur.com/maxbBA5.png]Bangboo[/url] that stepped up to the plate though, where it ended up facing down and ready to fight a [url=https://i.imgur.com/10yOZQo.png]Yellowturtle[/url] Medabot. These seemed to cause some confusion among the organizers/audience however. Especially because the Bangboo didn’t have an owner present.

That resulted in a noisy bout of arguing and heckling till the medabot owner, [url=https://i.imgur.com/BADNdon.png]Kubota[/url], declared “Bah! Who cares who’s it is! Yellowturtle! Lets give the people what they want! Robot destruction!” which got cheers from the crowd, and the amateur organizers of the event onboard.

As the countdown started, there came the distinctive sound of capacitors charging from the tanky medabot, while the Bangboo kept waving at the crowd as if they weren't all cheering for its imminent scrapping.

Then came the signal to start, a mechanical voice declaring “Activate!” and the battle began.

Out the gate, the penguin Bangboo took the crowd by surprise as it surged forwards with surprising speed, webbed feet producing a chilling effect that let it skate across the arena. It did so in a slight arc, letting it dodge out of the way of the slower medabot’s pair of high powered laser bursts (which slammed harmlessly into the bulletproof glass of the arena wall).

It then pirouetted to avoid a third lasershot (one of the bot’s cannons having been rapidly recharged by its battery headpart) and got in nice and close where it began to twirl, producing a larger ice effect around it as it performed a spin attack. 

It promptly bounced off the tank of bot, landed face first on the floor along which it slid till it smacked into the arena wall, where it was promptly pinned to said wall by a staggered trio of laser blasts leaving it crying out “Ehn-ne! Ehn-ne! Ehn-ne!” after the final shot. From Jr’s phone, Seek helpfully translated this as “Ow! Stop! I give up!”

Someone on the team running things apparently had a translator on hand as well, as the signal was given for the fight to “Cease!” before the Yellowturtle could recharge its cannons, much to the disappointment of its owner. 

The crowd’s opinion was a bit more mixed, as it had sounded really pathetic while being shot up, and so there was some sympathy for the thing. Jr wasn’t among those, but he still headed down when an adhoc crew formed to try and fix up the battered thing.

When Rika asked [color=Aqua]”Why?”[/color] this was, he reapplied [color=SpringGreen]”Because those things can get around hallows, and if we need to make a run for it…”[/color] before nodding for the black void at the other end of the warehouse.

Rika shrugged and accepted the answer. Her next one was for the Bangboo itself, namely: [color=Aqua]”So why are you doing this anyway?”[/color] which she asked while Jr and a LBX owner [url=https://i.imgur.com/Q7mRSKD.jpeg]Ban Yamano[/url] poked around its insides.

It replied “Ehn-ne Ehn-ne Ehn-ne Ehn-ne Ehn-ne” which once again got translated by Seek. Apparently its owner had told it vaguely to make money, and it had then seen on a tv how the fighters over in Esaka made loads of money, but had gotten lost trying to get there and ended up right back in the city. So then it found out about this via the interknot (just like they had), and thought that, well, it was a robot, so clearly this was the best place to fight for it, right?

Unfortunately for it, as it turned out, it needed its owner to actually be here to earn any money, given otherwise there was no-one to pay out if it lost.

[color=SpringGreen]”Maaaaybe we could soup you up a bit, and give you a shot at winning?”[/color] Jr suggested, which Rika thought was unlikely. Still. She pitched in where she could, and then got badgered into grieving a lot more help at her brother's insistence.

A little while later, and the Bangboo was back on the field, and ready for a rematch, much to the surprise of anyone who’d not been keeping an eye on the little corner of the warehouse they’d been tinkering in.

“Ha, ready for another beating you dumb bot?" Kubota said to it after getting over said surprise, before scoffing at Jr, Rika, and Ban and saying “What, you feel sorry for it? That’s dumb, because now your Zenny’s all mine!”

The other kid, Ban, seemed to have been motivated by sympathy more than anything for sure, while Jr just insisted that [color=SpringGreen]”No, your Zenny’s gonna be all ours!”[/color] 

Rika meanwhile just shrugged as she stepped up to the spot for the bot drivers/commanders, and then said [color=Aqua]”It seemed like it’d be fun”[/color]

“Yeah, it will be. For me!” Kubota retorted confidently, but Rika wasn’t phased, simply saying  [color=Aqua]”Maybe? Let’s find out”[/color] before any other talk was cut off by the timer starting up.

On “Activate!” The Bangboo burst to the side at Rika’s direction, but the move was predictable after the first time, and so a single laser cannon was aimed and fired its way, only for it to slam into a little cardboard shield that Ban had made for the bot that tanked the shot. It then whipped around its other flipper, into which a simple handgun unfurled thanks to the buff granted by Rika’s Col. Droneman.

“That all-”  Kubota began to say, before the weapon unleashed hell in the form of nine bullets every single second, forever, and a steady stream of mini missiles to boot. 

Still, the enemy bot was built like a tank and so it endured the hail of shots as it aimed its laser cannons again.

[color=Aqua]”Take those out!”[/color] Rika commanded, prompting the hail of fire to slip to the side of the center of mass and hammer one of the lasers, causing it to misfire and throw off the aim of the other.

Then the BangBoo got in close and performed its icy spin again, only to once again rebound. This caused a confident bark of a laugh from Kubota that he choked down half way as the BangBoo kept steady in its spin away this time, having expected that result, and having also left a splatter of electric goop on the Yellowturtle, which sparked and hissed as the shock screwed with its circuits.

“Shoot it down, shoot it down!” Kubota yelled at his bot, losing his cool, while Rika commanded with cheer [color=Aqua]”Keep sailing! Wear down that battleship!”[/color] as she got the BangBoo to fight like a shipgirl, all mobility and upgunned firepower. 

The result was, at that point, while not inevitable, but certainly predictable, as Rika and the BangBoo wore down the Yellowturtle till it was unfit to go on. Still, each near miss from a laser got a gasp from the crowd, and with the stylish grace of the ice skating bot, it was hardly a poor viewing experience, winning both it and Rika cheers at the end.

The BangBoo waved merrily at the crowd, while Rika flushed and tried and failed to hide behind the two boys and insisted that their rebuilding was what had got them the win.

She came a bit more out of her shell over several more fights (including some two vs twos alongside Ban’s diminutive [url=https://i.imgur.com/5NugnpX.jpeg]Achilles[/url] LBX) and started to maybe see the appeal of all this if, again, like the cassette beast fights, there was some dissociation between herself being the center of attention, be it a disguise or minion.

By the end of it, they’d raked in a bit of cash, though most of it only really covered the repairs they’d needed to do to the BangBoo. That, and get the little bot some of the cash its owner wanted it to get.

What they really got out of it was the contact details for a BangBoo to get them through (or out of) a hollow, and a whole bunch of contacts in the local bot fighting scene. Plus a bunch of killed time where they didn’t worry about the lack of contact from a certain pair of recently freed citizens who might have all the answers they needed, and a child whose orphaning Galeem had prewritten the moment her parents were written into its world with an expiry date tamped on their souls.