wordcount: 2699 (+3 exp and +2 rapport for all)
Bowser Jr: Level 14 EXP:
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Rika: Level 10 EXP:
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Blazermate
Level 13 Blazermate (Holding 2 level up) - (106/130)
Location: The Dead Zone
The Kids drew back a step as A came towards them, but fortunately that was when the others caught up with them and laid into him, giving the pair the space to back off, the pair running past Juri and taking inside the entrance to O’s moonbase. They tried to use that space to steady their breathing, but all of a sudden, it was over. Primrose ripped A apart from the inside using her magic, and Ganondorf had shredded the gravemind with his own.
Both glanced up at D, but it seemed like he was done, and proceeded to bail on the situation rather than fight to the death.
And, just like that
”It’s over”Both children sighed with relief and as one slumped to the ground, consideration of what they needed to do next was not really on their minds, though in the backs of their minds Jr’s paint portals were there to facilitate an escape should it be needed. But the sky was empty above them, no moon of doom descending, and so they had time.
Well, they should have. Then Sandalphon popped in to get them to fulton themselves back home to the avenger, forcing them to get up again with a pair of fatigued groans. They where joined a second later by Peeka, who’d been very confused and alarmed by their fusion and only just now found them again, prompting the mon to tackle hug the duo.
”Alright alright, chill out Peeka” Jr told his mon, raising a hand to pet her without a thought, and in the process releasing the grip he’d had on Rika’s gauntlet the whole time since they’d become two people again.
”oh, uh” he said as he realised this consciously, glancing towards his sister, only to find her faintly smiling as she freed a hand from her gauntlet and used it to pet Peeka as well. Then she caught him looking, turned that smile to him, relife visible in her expression about the fact that they had made it through all the nightmares of the deadzone in one piece.
He shared that smile, then both faded at once as they were reminded that not everyone had. It hurt. They might not have known Midna, Goldlewis, or the Witch too well, but still, it hurt, and it hurt no less than the times it had happened before. Plus, unlike with Omari, there wasn’t even anything left of the people they’d lost.
Or at least it seemed, till Grim and Geralt retrieved Goldlewis’ coffin weapon. It was much too large for either to use, however, so they passed up taking on his legacy.
Then it was back up to the avenger whereupon they fell upon the snacks with such reckless abandon that both children were plenty distracted while the adults were offered opioids to dull the horrors they’d witnessed.
After acquiring a small pile of goodies, the question was: now what? They had 18 hours till they were needed, which was plenty of time to kill on the ship. Thing was, last time they had been on here spending down time it had involved a lot of wallowing in their room, and after after they’d escaped from that (or in a way been tricked out of it) neither wanted to go back
Then again, most of their toys and things were in their room, making it a bit of a conundrum until Jr came up with an idea after having glanced at the ship’s map:
”Oh! There’s a common room! We could grab some stuff and go hang out there instead in our room!” ”How’d that be any different?” Rika asked, to which her brother replied that
”It’ll be bigger, and there’ll be other people there we could see who can join in” ”Oh. Neat I guess” Rika replied, though, ultimately, she didn’t really know any of the others well enough to be enthused about this too much. Still, in the spirit of the idea, she turned around and asked the ever reliable Blazermate
”Would you like to play some games with us?”Blazermate, as one of the few members of the group who couldn’t restore her stress by eating, drinking, or drugs, perked up when the koopa kids came to her asking to play some games.
”Yeah sure, a lot better than just mulling over what happened and uh, yeah. Thanks.” Blazermate said, happy but annoyed that while she did save everyone she could, A had something that just superseded healing. Especially since all the people that ‘died’ before A were saved due to Ace.
Jr had’t exactly expected this from Rika, she wasn’t exactly the most outgoing, but recovered swiftly and enthusiastically saying
”Yeah! Then come on! Let's go grab some stuff!” before leading the way to the kids room.
They had not tidied it before leaving, and between being kids and being in a bit of a bad state mentality before leaving, meant that Blazermate had to wait while the pair picked between wrappers, unwashed plates, assorted tools and random bits of machinery to find the fun stuff.
Soon enough however, they reemerged, with handfuls (and with Rika’s gauntlets that was more than it sounded a lot, despite one of them holding an entire cr-tv) of games and consoles they’d nicked from Consul P.
”There’ll be something in all this you’ll find neat I’m sure” Rika said to Blazermate, the girl finding herself putting more emotional weight on that statement than she’d expected she would. She did not, she found, want to disappoint.
”For sure. P had all sorts of stuff, but he only had a bunch of robots to play it with” Jr added, then realized what he’d said and to whom and added
”Uh, dumb robots not people robots””Yeah I get you. The little toy things that just move forward. Granted Medabots are a kind of toy but uh…. I try not to think about that.” Blazermate said, scratching her faceplate.
Soon enough they were heading back up to the common room where they’d had breakfast only a few hours ago. It felt like it had been longer. There, they commandeered a table, and then spread the various games and consoles out across it for perusal. The Consul’s collection had consisted of all sorts of odds and ends, and as a result of the hast and ignorance involved in the splitting of it between the royal kids and the orphans of the home of tears, further filtered through what the kids had thought would be interesting to bring up, made for quite the eclectic selection.
It certainly did not help that a lot of it consisted of what the phantom thieves would have recognised as legally distinct knock offs of games from Earth. From Minecroft to the Legend of Lonk and Pacmon, everything was ever so slightly off. Still, despite this, they were fully formed packages of fun in their own right if the player didn’t know any better, and the koopa kids certainly didn’t.
”So! What you wanna play?””Oh, you guys found video games! Uh… well, I don’t know if any are from my world so what you find with a decent name will work. What we’ve got here is like some random grab bag sorta deal; we don’t know what we’re going to get! Although I used to play fighting games a bit. I was pretty ok at them.” Blazermate said, looking over all the weird games. No meda fighter or Medawing or anything like that. But this was like a merging of tons of worlds and with how little medabot stuff there was in general, she really shouldn’t have her hopes up for stuff she sees.
”Fighting game huh? Like, hmm, uhhh” Jr replied as he started to pick through the games, but got a bit blindsided as Rika hopped in with suggestions
”We’ve got smash bronx, path fighter and skullguys” she replied, finding games respectively about bunches of new yorkers, country folk and skeletons duking it out. Upon getting a look of confusion from Jr about how she knew this explained that
”I read all the boxes and manuals while you were working on my gauntlets” ”Well I’m just telling you what I’ve played before. I’m fine trying new stuff. We kinda fight like… every day or thereabouts? I’m pretty sure we’re better fighters than anything we can do in a video game.” Blazermate said, although she had another idea.
”Wait…. Wasn’t one seeker once mumbling about how some of the other seekers were video game characters in their world? Could we like, learn something super cool we could use somewhere in the world from these video games?””They did? Who?” Jr asked, while Rika wondered if it was
”like that book that Kamek found that had the Angel in that prison pit place in it, that that angel really didn’t like knowing about?” referring to Robin Goodfellow who they’d met and killed in the Under.
”I dunno, maybe?” Jr said, which worked as an answer to both questions, before thinking about what they could learn
”Like, a secret cheat code? Oh, or how to break those stupid clocks?” and then adding offhandedly that
”Huh Kamek really should looked those up in that other book he got””Well, I’m more thinking of cool loot or something. I doubt they’d have anything that specific. Although cheat codes might be a thing too?” Blazermate said, scratching her head.
”Someone smarter like Kamek would probably know yeah. I’m just taking a shot in the dark.””ohhhhh like a super fancy magic sword or something? Yeah that’d be cool” Jr agreed, but Rika pointed out that
”Wouldn’t it be kinda hard to find where Galeem put that kind of thigh though?””Thats what the video games are for! If something looks similar to the video game, we might find something cool!” Blazermate said, which got a pair of
ohhhhh’s from the pair of kids, who both thought this was very smart.
”So where do we start?””Uh…. I guess we can just pick something and start from there?” Blazermate said, sorting through the games and picking out Skullguys first. Although this one almost confirmed Blazermate’s theory as it seemed to be a warped version of the story of the Skullgirl that Blazermate had actually met in the Dead Zone.
”Oh huh… We already met this thing. It was called the skullgirl and if I remember right Bowser tried to adopt her, before Linkle absorbed her and went off on her own adventure.” Blazermate said. Continuing with an idle thought.
”Your dad loves to adopt kids Jr. He's a real family man huh?” Blazermate said, more impressed with Bowser giving everyone a chance than making light of the situation. If she didn’t act like this mix of kid and adult, she was sure Bowser would’ve probably adopted her at some point too. Or maybe he did and that's why he let Blazermate ride on his shell without much complaints?
”Hm… Maybe we should stick away from the fighting games then. What about this one?” Blazermate said, grabbing a game named Marsria that everyone could play instead of there being 1 person left out that was about digging through the ground to find treasures and items to make gear that let you beat stronger and stronger things.
Rika, for one, was sold as soon as the prospect of treasure came up, saying it
”seems neat!” with a fair deal of enthusiasm, to which her brother nodded with agreement before he set about plugging and setting up the specific console said game would run on.
Soon enough, the television crackled to life, its screen began to glow, and the gaming session began in earnest.
There was a bit of a floundering start as they tried to get a hang of the game, particularly when they encountered the first night time and got swarmed by zombies in space suits, and flying saucers with big ol eyeballs. They proceed to repeatedly respawn and die again, dropping tombstones on every death that converted their spawn point into a haunted graveyard which made the game basically unplayable.
They promptly restarted said game and, now forewarned of the dangers of night, built a defensible home. From there they made a bunch of progress, exploring around, digging into the ground, recruiting a little colony of NPCs that performed helpful functions.
The entire colony was then wiped out when Jr impulsively used a ‘suspicious looking saucer’ item, which summoned the game's first boss, an even bigger flying eyeball saucer, right into the heart of it.
Rather than lose heart, they now had a clear goal in mind and proceeded to geared up for the challenge. Alongside gold plated space suits for everyone, they also diversified their gear, with JR acquiring a bunch of bird shaped drones as minions, Rika a golden air rifle and Blazermate a magictek staff.
With these, and a prepared arena away from their colony, the trio faced down the eyeball ufo again and this time emerged victorious, and there was much rejoicing. Along with 2 rumbling stomachs from the kids, which demanded actual sustenance instead of the snacks they’d eaten for lunch.
”Do you think they’ll be using all that crab we got with dinner?” Rika asked, wondering what the Bracket Brace would be cooking up in the kitchen
”Dunno, but whatever it is gonna be I really want some now” Jr replied, also feeling the pangs now that the focus invested in beating the first major obstacle in the game had been passed.
”I don’t eat so… I guess I’ll go check on everyone while you two get a snack? Make sure people don’t need heals? Should probably get a tune up as well after such a big fight come to think of it.” Blazermate said, not really into the whole eating thing but knowing people got pleasure out of it.
”Oh... ok” Rika replied, sounding just a bit upset about this
”Sorry, not sure what else to do at the mess hall but chat.” Blazermate said, shrugging.
”I mean everyone’ll be coming here anyway, right?” Jr pointed out
”Good point! Well, assuming they’re still not in the shower. That place was nasty.” Blazermate said, nodding and following the koopa kids.
The pair of kids, who had not had a shower, nor washed their hands before eating their snacks earlier, and who where only not visibly dirty due to spending a lot of time not being themselves, glanced at each other, then themselves, before Jr said
”uhhhh, actually I just remembered we gotta do something else real quick. See you here in like 15!” and then practically dragged Rika out of there.
”Right uh, I guess I should get this stuff off me too. You guys distracted me!” Blazermate said with a bit of sass as she wandered to the workshop to run herself through the pressure sprayer to get clean lickity split.
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