[center]
[img]https://i.imgur.com/kNmO8zV.png[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/ziR5Pse.png[/img]
[b][color=DarkOrange]wordcount: [/color][/b] 760 (+2)
[b][color=DarkOrange]Location:[/color][/b] Forbidden Kingdom - Fields of Gold
[b][color=DarkOrange]Amaterasu: level 9 (1 level up stored) [/color][/b] EXP: [color=DarkOrange]////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color]////// (83/90)
[b][color=SpringGreen]Bowser Jr: Level 15 [/color][/b] EXP: [color=SpringGreen]//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](357/150)
[b][color=Aqua]Rika: Level 12 [/color][/b] EXP:  [color=Aqua]/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////[/color](196/110)
[/center]

While Amaterasu had managed to handle the first watery obstacle for the seekers, she wasn’t going to be able to do much about the next. No amount of repairs was going to unflood the landscape, nor was it going to be possible to purify the putrid waters given the sheer scale of the devastation.

Instead the others were going to have to do some mounted platforming, something Rika was deeply displeased about despite her brother’s confidence in his abilities. If the awful smell hadn’t ruined her appetite, then the justling in her stomach resulting from clinging onto the back of their gasmask wearing horse for dear life while it leapt from sunken truck to flooded house roof certainly would have. As such cooking practice had very much been put on hold.

Unexpected saviors came her way however, though at first it did not seem this way.

Upon scaling to the top of a sunken building to try and spot an optimal way forwards, few hazmat wearing people driving hovering  [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/73450805b175.png]bumper cars[/url] spotted them in turn. There was some distant shouting and pointing from the group, who then proceeded to zoom their way over.

Amaterasu had been quite some way away from them, her lighter form and ability to draw lily pads allowing her to take a different route from the steed riders (and thus reduce traffic on said rout), and so she only managed to overhear the very loud prince's side of the following argument.

[color=SpringGreen]”What do you lot want! Coz if its a fight you’re not gonna stand a chance! … We didn’t steal nothing, we bought em fair and square from some stable back that way! … Yeah, well, so what if they stole em before selling em to us, we didn’t know that! Go take it up with them! … Wait for real? One crummy horse for one of your cool bumper cars? Sign me up!”[/color]

By the time the worried wolf had made her way over, the deal had already been struck, and rather than getting in a fight, the koopa siblings had instead traded up, swapping the stolen horse for a hover car. Well, Amaterasu wasn’t entirely sure if this was an upgrade given she had no idea how the vehicles would operate on solid or bumpy ground, but both children seemed delighted with the arrangement. Jr loved the carnival aesthetics of the machine, while Rika appreciated not being jossled around by the living steed.

As the electric riders (and one horse rider) headed towards the next of the seekers who had one of their steeds, the koopa siblings zoomed ahead of the pack in their new ride, hovering over the putrid waters and clearing them in no time.

The wolf would have made good time chasing after them, no doubt, had she not come across a small barn mercifully spared from the floodwaters by its elevation. This would have been little solace for the occupants, however, given they were thoroughly locked inside it, with no owner in sight.

This the wolf rectified as soon as she became aware of the predicament, cleaving open the barn doors, and allowing the trapped pigs to trot out into the sunlight. Of course, once there, they didn’t exactly have anywhere to go. Not safely anyway. Pigs might like a bit of muck, but the filthy waters were too much, even for their standards.

As such, Amaterasu spent a fair amount of time painting the world, mainly by cleaving a side of the wooden barn off such that it landed upon a set of large lily pads she’d created in advance. This resulted in a relatively stable little raft, onto which she herded the pigs, before setting them all adrift across the waters, sailing their way through the wreckage till they came aground near where the koopa siblings had parked to wait for the others.

After growling at Rika who came to ask [color=Aqua]”Can we have one of those to go in the stir fry we’re gonna make”[/color] she then sent the swine off on their merry way, taking naught but their Praise in return for her aid. She might not exactly be opposed to meat eating, she was a wolf after all, but she was also allowed to be a little selfish, and to her the strength gained from the pig’s Praise was worth far more than the single pork chop the child would have gotten out of her request.