[center][h3]Forbidden Kingdom - Warfang[/h3][/center]

Even though it had been a terribly long time since Anais had last ridden, it felt good -natural, even- to be back in the saddle. Kayna’s Velocidrome might be a far cry from a dragon, but they had plenty in common, and it probably worked to the seamstress’s advantage to get reacclimated using an easier, terrestrial mount. Avmar -whose vivid scales Anais happily stroked- proved a delight to ride, and kept up with his peppy partner with long, easy strides. 

Though the two women originally set out to talk about Warfang’s resident consul, R, the conversation quickly turned back toward Avmar. Like any good pet owner, Kayna had a vast catalog of stories to enthusiastically share about her crested companion from years of partnership. She told Anais about their friendship with a talking parasaurolophus named Ralph, the time they found the giant omelette and Avmar ate so much he got a tummy ache, and their terrifying close calls with the colossal sauropod known as Dreadnoughtus. It sounded like the two had cultivated an ironclad bond, but while Anais couldn’t help but be jealous she never got the chance to befriend a ‘monstie’ like Kayna did, she mostly just felt happy for them.

She also knew, of course, that ‘storied’ individuals like Kayna and Avmar had certain ‘plot points’ in their lives laid out for them, a pattern they were always meant to fall into. Those two were meant to be together, and the logic behind the World of Light would always try to make it so. Things were never so simple for Lost Numbers like Anais, whose one-off lives were anyone’s guess. Lost Numbers could be anything…or nothing, which was so often how Anais ended up feeling.

With great reluctance, she turned the conversation back toward R. He apparently traveled often, never lingering in Warfang long despite it being the seat of his rule. When here he never held court or heard petitioners, and when not entertaining himself in the city arena his chief pastime was constantly squabbling with the city’s four guilds. Even then, though, R never evidenced any kind of policy or even objective, just a fervent desire to obstruct and sabotage the dragons’ efforts for no real reason. R seemed like a temperamental, irresponsible, and dangerous sovereign–in short, a typical consul. At the same time, his overwhelming concern with his own satisfaction rather than actual governance left the matters of day-to-day life in Warfang with the four guilds, which worked well enough for the citizens.

Sadly, Kayna just didn’t know that much about R. By the time she, Anais, and Avmar reached the Beast Makers’ guild, their conversation had turned back toward monsties. Before they could get into it again, though, Anais spotted Poppi jetting over the buildings and waved her down. “Poppi! Over here!” The artificial blade swooped down and landed close by, kicking up enough dust to make Avmar sneeze. After giving the Velocidrome a wary glance, and saying hello to Kayna, Poppi got down to business. “Poppi find out probable transportation for consul,” she reported. “It sound like upper-class Warfangers travel atop big-big creatures with platform saddles large enough to build mobile houses.” She crossed her metal arms. “If there no spaceship or limousine hidden nearby, that Poppi’s best guess.”

Kayna clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “Oh yeah, those things. I don’t really get ‘em. Being a rider’s all about the special bond between monstie and rider. Those rich folks buy critters, then work ‘em to the bone without even getting to know ‘em. Plus, sticking a whole house on their backs? That’s just cruel.”

“It does mean he should be hard to miss when he goes,” Anais surmised, turning toward Warfang’s fortress. “Unless he comes to visit the stables he must be going by air. But there’s no flying beast big enough for something like that, is there?” Her gut told her that only one creature could possibly fit the bill: an ancient dragon, perhaps brought to heel by R’s Moebius control powers. If that was the case, ambushing him on the road would be a lot more difficult. She pursed her lips. “I wonder if Grimm’s found anything yet.”

As it happened, Grimm had just entered one of the citadel’s largest and most well-guarded areas: the hangar. Situated behind one of the enormous stone faces that adorned the rotating fortress, it had housed the battle dragons of the Sky Guard in Warfang’s Mokai days, but nowadays harbored reptiles that better suited R’s tastes. Rows of saddled pteranodons, to be ridden by Argonian bowmen and sorcerers, made up the bulk of the agile fighting force although a few argentavis added extra bulk and firepower to their ranks. In the middle of it all, however, rested an [url=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/G6Oyh2CWsAAun3g.jpg]enormous quetzalcoatlus[/url] outfitted with an extravagant platform saddle sporting a house, complete with chimney, porch, and flower boxes. To the beast’s credit it actually seemed to bear the considerable weight, but that couldn’t be comfortable. It was an absurd enough sight to prompt a chuckle from just about anyone but Grimm.

The humorless bug made his approach. Crush was already among the workers as they made the finishing touches to the house, unhelpfully threatening and distracted them. At least his green quadrupedal counterpart, Gulp, helped move materials around. Most of the argonians here were either involved in the project or tending to their pteranodons, so Grimm knew that he could skulk up to the house undetected. If he stowed away, though, he would be unable to share his discovery with his teammates, and they were the ones who could actually communicate with the Avenger and thus Seekers.

This was a solvable problem, though. He withdrew into a corner and summoned a [url=https://i.imgur.com/mA97ORo.png]Grimmkin Novice[/url], then whispered his underling’s purpose to it in a raspy tongue. The masked bug withdrew in silent obedience to find the others and report to them. Grimm watched it go, then turned as the doors to the hangar flew open and R himself strutted in.

“Alright, we’ve wasted enough time!” the consul yelled as he approached the quetzal. Behind him followed a personal assistant, an elderly [url=https://pets.neopets.com/cp/4vkd3cgf/1/7.png]Tyrannian Yurble[/url], hauling a huge suitcase filled with R’s stuff. “Guards, mount up! I’m sick of this place already, we’re moving out!” He turned to bark at the struggling butler. “Hurry up, Smithers! I’m gonna need a good washing to get all this dragon-stink outta my scales!”

“Y-Yes, sir!” the Yurble gasped.

Grimm scuttled out of his hiding spot and made a beeline for R’s mobile home. Well before he reached his destination, the plateau’s rotten ruler would receive a nasty surprise.

Back outside, Poppi and Anais -having bid farewell to Kayna and Avmar- were startled by the sudden appearance of a Grimmkin. The ghostly bug whispered to them, almost impossible to understand, but Poppi did her best to interpret the razor-sharp, slithery rasps made by its inhuman mouthparts. “Giant quetzal leaving soon with consul?” She blinked at the Grimmkin. “How soon?”

As if to answer her question, a loud rumbling, grinding sound issued from the fortress. The mouth of one of the huge stone faces was opening. After a few seconds, the batlike silhouettes of mounted pteranodons began to spill from within, at least a half-dozen pairs in total. Then a huge flying beast as big as a stealth bomber emerged with a house on its back, soaring into the air. “That our cue,” Poppi declared, boosting into the air with her leg thrusters. She gave Anais an apologetic wave. “Am going after it. Call for pickup from Avenger.”

With no time to waste, she rocketed off into the sky to follow the aerial convoy from a distance. As she ascended, she dialed up her first contact on her built-in communicator, hoping that the roaring wind would drown out her voice. “Masterpon, let commander know. Target is on move. We have our heading.”

[center][h3]Forbidden Kingdom - Swopes Farm[/h3]
[b]Setting:[/b] Cloudy Friday Afternoon
Lvl 15 Ms Fortune (289/150) Level 11 Big Band (224/110)
Bowser Jr, Rika & Amaterasu’s [@DracoLunaris] Primrose, Therion & Pit’s [@Yankee] Sakura & Juri’s [@Zoey Boey] Captain Falcon’s [@Double] Yayama’s [@Chevaleresse] Grima’s [@Goggy]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1253[/center]

The flooded farmland presented a tricky challenge with disastrous consequences for failure. To Nadia, getting punched to pieces by Kazuya sounded like a much better fate than taking a tumble into that rancid, polluted water. Unfortunately, the feral wasn’t all that familiar with the jumping ability of her chocobo steed just yet, so she couldn’t trust it like she could trust herself. This was one situation where the gung-ho catgirl knew she ought to slow down, be careful, and think about the best course to take.

Junior and Rika were bound for the central pig barm, using a series of floating or half-submerged objects as stepping stones to get across. Their steeds were not the most agile creatures around, but their gas masks meant that the vile smell pervading Swopes Farm didn’t bother them, so they could focus fully on the task at hand. That said, Nadia figured that she shouldn’t follow in their footsteps. Crowding any one route would make it that much easier for the Seekers to run into one another, mess with a required platform, and so forth. Plus, it looked like they’d already managed to attract the attention of some men in little hovercrafts, fitted with the same masks that adorned the Koopa Kids’ horses. That smelled like trouble -insofar as Nadia could smell anything other than pig muck- so the feral wisely decided to steer clear. 

After giving Grima a curious glance, wondering if the swordswoman’s hidden depths would come into play here, Nadia took a look around. A little ways to the north, near where the ridge of low mountains on the western side of Qingce Valley, Nadia spotted a handful of familiar blue shapes carefully hopping down a steep trail to arrive at the water’s edge where there happened to be a handful of large, yellow toads. “Oh, those guys again. And…” She narrowed her eyes, then prodded her chocobo to move forward. She’d seen plenty of critters throughout the journey thus far, but these toads didn’t look like ordinary wildlife. They sported interesting patterns shaped like flowers, green lilypads of various shapes, or stripes of solid color. In front them, a [url=https://i.ytimg.com/vi/-d7Ot17i5iE/maxresdefault.jpg]great many lilypads[/url] floated atop the floodwater, each with its own shape and colored flower.

As Nadia approached, she watched a zoombini climb up on a toad with the classic lilypad shape, the circular one with a triangular cut-in. The toad immediately set off, bounding across the field of lilypads. At certain points it made a sharp turn to the left or right for no reason that Nadia could see, but eventually it reached solid ground, where the zoombini got off.

Next, a zoombini mounted a toad with a pink stripe. It too began to spring from pad to pad, and this time Nadia noticed that it seemed to stick to only lilypads with pink flowers. After a few moments, though, the toad reached the end of the road. Surrounded by only cyan, yellow, and red flowers, the toad leaped onto a red one, only to plow through it and dive headfirst into the water along with its passenger. Nadia watched for a few seconds, but neither reemerged.

Nadia crossed one arm beneath her chest, rested her elbow on it, and then rested her chin on her fist in a thoughtful pose. The lilypads looked promising at first, but there was clearly something up with them that meant getting across wouldn’t be so simple. As another zoombini stepped up to try its luck, it looked more and more like each toad could only use lilypads that matched their patterns in some way, so Nadia turned her attention to the lilypad array. While she might be able to snag a toad ride herself, she didn’t want to leave her friendly, obliging, and expensive chocobo behind. But would the lilypads work for her?

She gave her mount a good look, stroking his feathers. “Well…you [i]are[/i] yellow, like the toads.” But what was her chocobo’s ‘pattern’, which dictated the kind of path it could take? If its pure yellow plumage meant it could cross atop yellow-flowered lilypads, there did seem to be a winding path that offered a way across.

It was definitely a gamble, since Nadia had no way of knowing how this world’s logic worked, but she supposed that even if her chocobo splashed down, she could still probably leap off its back to safety. [i]No way it can’t swim,[/i] she told herself. [i]And it already kind of smells![/i] It was worth a try.

Nadia drove her mount forward, toward the edge of the nasty water, where the chocobo slowed down nervously. The feral glanced at the remaining zoombinis dramatically. “If I die, just remember that Ms Fortune was toad-ally awesome. And don’t frog-et it!”

With a squeeze, Nadia urged the chocobo forward, and with a panicked tweet the big bird jumped. For a heart-stopping moment, Nadia thought both of them were headed for a smelly splashdown, but when her mount’s talons touched down on the yellow-flowered lilypad, it held. Nadia breathed a sigh of relief, patted the chocobo’s head, and praised his courageous spirit. “Good job, bud. Despite appearances, you’re definitely not chicken!” From there the two hopped onward, careful to steer clear of titanic tattooed toads, until they finally reached the other side.

Once on the far shore of the floodwater, Nadia reconvened with the other Seekers. Others could conceivably use the trails blazed by her or the Koopa Kids if they didn’t find their own ways across. It wasn’t long after the feral arrived that the team got their long-awaited phone call from Sandalphon via her angelic sigil, conveying what the team deployed to the Tyrannian Plateau had learned.

“R is officially en route, traveling via air from Warfang, the plateau’s capitol,” Sandalphon reported. Wherever she was, there seemed to be a slight echo, as if she were in a large cavern. Other voices could be heard faintly in the background. “He is traveling via quetzal, a giant flying reptile, with a house on its back. He is accompanied by a retinue of twelve airborne guards. Two agents, Grimm and Poppi, are on hand to assist with downing him once he nears you.” The archangel paused. “Proceed due northwest through the borderland between Tyrannia and the Fields of Gold. By my calculations, he’ll be in eyeshot within thirty minutes.”

[center][img]https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/a2246ce6dbf1.jpg[/img][/center]

Up ahead, the terrain beyond Swopes Farm dried out significantly as the temperature increased closer to Tyrannia, becoming a rugged badland patched with scrubby grasses and dotted with towering, windblown pagoda ruins. Yellow Wind Ridge appeared to be an inhospitable borderland with few to no settlements, making it an ideal battleground. It was still too early to tell exactly which dusty hill R would crest, but the Seekers could still make preparations for the ambush. This region offered several threats that could interfere with their business, after all. These were the froglike [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/eafb49544cd6.jpg]Lang-Li-Guhh-Baw[/url], who wielded the power of lightning from his little oasis, the freakish, fossilized [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/33752ba4f9a3.jpg]Earth Hound[/url] in a large gravesite, and bands of roving [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/132c2985b466.jpg]rat warriors[/url] around the area. Nadia decided to head for the nearest pagoda in the hopes of attaining a vantage point from which she could keep watch for the incoming consul. 

[center][h3]Frozen Highlands - Moon Mountain[/h3]
[b]Setting:[/b] Frigid Friday Afternoon
Lvl 10 Sandalphon (107/100) Level 9 Heismay (8/90)
Edward’s [@DracoLunaris] Blazermate & Sectonia’s [@Archmage MC] Ace Cadet’s [@Yankee] Roxas & Ganondorf’s [@Double] Ramattra’s [@XoXKieroBombXoX] Mokou’s [@Goggy]
[b]Word Count:[/b] 798[/center]

A quick once-over of the hollow moon’s insides by Heismay confirmed what Sandalphon’s sight and scans had indicated: this strange space was totally empty, save for the cold, stone sun that floated in the middle. Of course, that did little to set the eugief’s heart at ease. Throughout the course of his life, he’d developed a strong, trustworthy instinct for impending danger. Combine that with a pessimistic streak that proved accurate all too often, and Heismay often seemed to possess a sixth sense for where and when fighting would break out. And right now, his instincts told him that this place, barren though it seemed, was the perfect spot for a battle against something very, very big. In fact, though he was tempted to dismiss it as mere paranoia, he could swear he felt some sort of presence here. As if something lurked nearby, unseen, for a chance to strike, just waiting for some kind of trigger. As for what that might be, there were only so many options.

Maybe the others felt it too. Though on the surface it seemed like a good time for a break, out of the bitter wind and the reach of remorseful memories, none of the Seekers really settled down. Instead they sharpened their blades, reloaded their firearms, used consumables, and kept a sharp eye out. Even the cats remained alert, their ears twitching at every echoed footfall as their tails curled and uncurled restlessly. So when Mokou volunteered to try and ignite the dead sun with her immortal flames (which made more sense thematically rather than logically but suited the end of the Midnight Walk in Heismay’s mind) all eyes were on her as she floated forward. Once in position, Sandalphon gave her approval, and the kindling began.

Mokou blazed bright, pumping a torrent of fire into the seven-pointed stone from below. Gritting her teeth, she mustered her own scuttled spirit and gave it more and more of her power. To Sandalphon’s surprise, the sun actually drank in the phoenix fire, increasingly aglow with radiated heat as Mokou continued to burn. Around it the air began to shimmer and swim, and the hollow moon filled with light.

Much to its chagrin.

The incandescence illuminated something within the darkness that hadn’t been there before: a [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/811cf950a787.png]mask-like face[/url] of cratered moonstone, with black eyes, a long spike of a nose, and a huge, leering smile. Sandalphon’s eye widened as she saw it, and a quick scan told her that this was no illusion. “Contact! Repeat, we have contact!” she warned the others, an exclamation point in her eyes as she summoned her hexagun.

Heismay’s blade was already unsheathed. “I knew it.“

[center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-KkGGgRGyY[/youtube]
[h3]VS the Man in the Moon…[/h3][/center]

The hollow began to shake as parts of the floor began to crack and splinter upward. From the moonstone emerged four [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/7395457d1306.png]giant hands[/url] the size of trees, each with an eye on their palms. Those eyes began to glow, and after a second a barrage of three crimson orbs shot out of each for a total of twelve, all with slightly different trajectories. “Hup!” Heismay dodged away from one, then backflipped out of another’s pass. When he saw a projectile headed for Sandalphon, he bullet-jumped the archangel’s direction in order to parry the shot with his scythe.

Unblinking, the Man in the Moon unleashed a thick wave of spikes, as pitch-black as his own body, that spread across the floor like a giant ripple. Sandalphon grabbed Heismay by the back of his coat with her off hand, then used Vault to sail into the air, where she slowed her fall with Heavensent to stay safe from the spike wave. Heismay saw an opportunity and took it. “Here we go!” He leaped off Sandalphon, glided through the air, and brought his scythe down on the Man in the Moon’s mask like a pickaxe. A few light gray chips went flying, and Heismay kicked off his foe’s face to get some distance. “Hah!” He shouted as he landed. “Is that all?”

A burst of white noise rang out from all around, and in the shadows opened a dozen giant, aberrated eyes. Surrounded in smoky blackness, they hurtled through the air of the hollow like vengeful spirits, leaving dark trails behind them.

[center][h3]...& the Dark Itself![/h3][/center]

Heismay gritted his teeth. “The darkness…it hungers for her fire!” He took off running, determined to stay one step ahead of the abundant spikes and projectiles.

As the Seekers scrambled, Sandalphon called to Mokou. “Whatever you do, keep burning!” she instructed the Phoenix. “Beckon a new dawn, and banish the darkness!”