The big man was happy to dance it seemed, hammering in with a mechanical fist and sending it towards her. Right as it got close Midna socked the ice golem in the back with a ”Shatter sucker!” causing it to reel right into Big band’s ... trumpet solo?
She hadn't been expecting that, nor how time seemed to halt for everything but the little performance. Just as soon as it had begun it ended, and Band showed that he didn't really need Midna’s own big fist to deliver a devastating combo, because he had an unending barrage of his own up his sleeves.
Within only a few scant heartbeats the frozen brute had been reduced to splinters of ice, and then ash which exploded outwards all over the area they were in.
”Damn big man, if you wanted to make the finale a solo all you had to do was say so,” Midna joked, mighty impressed by his punching action, as she used her shadow hand to waft the falling ashy cloud away from them. Then she shrugged and added ”Guess I shouldn’t have had tried to grab the spotlight if I didn't want to get show up huh”
”Anyway, chains free, so we should finish up here and head up soon as possible,” she said afterwards, looking over the burning wreckage and minor avalanche of ice she had created with her fire un-safety, which had buried the skelly spirits more than she could be bothered trying to dig them up.
There wasn't much other looting to do either, other than the ice golem that was which she most certainly had not earned a claim on, because apparently the other creatures hadn’t died normally, and had instead turned into ghosts and fled away to who knew where. Worse, they’d apparently torn up the members of the group they’d gotten their claws on something fierce, and they weren't able to gradually patch them up using Sectonia’s little passive restoring aura either. Yoshitsune had especially taken some of the worst of it, something that Midna felt a bit bad about.
”Be safe you too” she told the samurai and his key wielding escort and then, unsure what else she should add, simply watched them go, the friendship bracelet on her wrist slowly dimming as its twin got further and further away.
There wasn't time to dwell on that sad little moment however. The specter of the monsters that had hurt her friend still loomed threateningly over the group, and the gnawing cold wasn’t going to stop its relentless clawing at their extremities. So they had to move on.
Onwards and upwards.
For most people, that meant riding in the cart gripped by the big claw of the crane. As they piled in and started ascending Midna wasn't quite sure who’s nerves were going to be more wracked by the end of the climb, the pile of people inside it fearing for their own lives, or her, floating right beside it, worrying about all of them.
At least she knew Raz would be fine if they dropped, along with someone closest to him, and Theon too, because it seemed like he was confident he could also have survived that drop they had both had on his own, but that left an awful lot of people who could still plummet to their doom if things went south. The question that Midna did not want to think about was who would she try and catch if they did fall, or, rather, who she would allow to fall to prioritize some one else.
To distract herself from that line of thought (after the sight of Band propelling himself through the air via fiery expulsion got old) she picked on the other thing they had to worry about instead ”So. Those ugly bat things. Must have been tougher than they looked from afar huh?” she said, having missed the entire apparently pretty horrific experience due to her boat adventure. Considering the state of Yosh, Tora and Laharl, those things had not been a fun time to fight and, if they were still on the loose, then she wanted to know what she’d be up against.
The other fighters wisely got out of the way when the koopa king and his crew of clones came to cause crippling carnage to the child of kos. It saw this and in response it raged (which was basically it's only reaction to anything at this point) and attacked, trying to break their formation. The shadowy turtle dragons weren't speedy slouches like Nadia’s water doppelgangers however, and so while the blows damaged the magic binding them together, they kept coming, heedless of harm.
Bowser, once again overconfident, also tanked the damage as he foolishly led the pack of clones, but this wouldn’t stop him either and so the king leapt full on into the danger and crashed down onto the Orphan with a ”THIS IS FOR PEACH YOU COLOSSAL CREEP”. He was followed a second later by his clones, who piled on, and soon enough the king and the copies where clawing, kicking, stomping and punching away at the orphan, who even with its monstrous strength, could not find the space or power to haul them all off of itself at once. Not until its fury and pain built to a climax at lest, because that was the point at which it exploded.
This was no mere pus ball planting detonation, it was something now and devastating. The clones were shattered, hurling a cloud of dark mist around the orphan. Out of this cloud Bower went tumbling, the heavyweight having been launched by the detonation. Flailing and trailing viscera from a myriad of cracks in shell and scales the king flew clear of the blast and then came crashing down atop some of the nearby rocks. Right on his noggin.
“Bowser!” ”Papa!” ”Sire!” went up a trio of heavily alarmed cries as the king slumped down onto the stone. The Troop raced towards his side, and got there only a moment before the rescue cats rushed in and began to ferry him to safety. The king's son tried to grab hold of his father, but the cats were good at their job and would brook no interference with their patient, even by his shocked relatives.
So the prince was forced to watch his papa depart, hand outstretched after him, before all three of them turned back to the monster that had just taken Bowser and their last life line from them.
The shadowy mist of the slain minions fell away, and there it stood, the orphan, transformed. The club of flesh had grown massively, forming into a grotesque scythe-like blade, while the pseudo-cape on its back had transformed into a pair of tattered wings. If that had been it, maybe the second phase could be handled the same as the first.
Then it called the storm. Lightning arched down, striking the carcass the orphan had emerged from, and from there a wave of lightning rolled forth across the beach.
”Quick, run both of you!” Kamek commanded the pair while she floated up and out of the way of the lightning.
“Moving!” Rika called back up, already moving away from the storm wave along with jr who realized ”That's gonna hit my stuff!”
“It’s going to hit Peach!” Rika pointed out rather more urgently.
”yeah that too” jr replied, before looking past her to the cliffs behind the rocks that their retreat from the lightning was going to cause them to run right into, ”I’ve got an idea!”
He spelled it out as they moved, and then when they got close they put it into motion. Jr reached the rocks right by Peach first, then turned and crouched, threading his fingers together and holding them low. As planned, Rika put her foot into this offered boost and was then chucked up the honestly not particularly imposing cliffs, her anti gravity gauntlets letting her get some more air.
Then Jr turned, grabbed the princess and hauled her limp body over his shoulder with well practiced ease, and then followed after Rika, platforming his way up the cliffs.
Kamek, hovering above them, was relieved to see both had gotten clear. Then she panicked for a moment when something latched onto her broom and caused it to lurch down. She steadied herself and then swept her wand down to blast his attacker, only to find the sentient meathook installed in jr’s clown car had decided it did not want to be fried by the storm, and had latched itself onto the convenient hook shot point that was Kamek’s broom, before hauling its base (and the rest of the clown car), up over the lightning.
The mage was about to blow a fuse at this shock, but then got an idea of how to help instead. As she drifted back and dumped the car on the top cliff top she re-summoned her toadies, who floated down to the cliff base to give boosts, lifts or act as stepping stones for anyone who might not be as practiced in the art of jumping good as a denizen of the troop’s world.
Nadia was someone who certainly didn't need their help, the athletic feline flipping right over the top of the thunder wave, and in doing so, ran first right into the Orphan and then, when dodging him, right into the wave of lighting as it bounced off of the rocks (an almost optimal situation for those who had went past those rocks, not so much for those still down on the beach) and went back towards the sea.
As the aqua infused feline shook and convulsed from the lightning, Delsin actively threw himself into it, absorbing the power and once again going toe to toe with the Orphan on his own. And once again it ended badly for him. With Jr and Rika much too far back to intercede this time, the beating the conduit took did not end with him needing to be healed, but with his death at the orphan’s hands, it’s blade coming down again and again until the newcomer’s body failed him and all that remained of the man was his spirit.
And his ash.
Rather than be sad or enraged by this death, for Kamek it was a eureka moment. The missing piece of the puzzle of how the sun princess had done what she had done drifting down and settling in the sand. It wasn't just the spirit that was needed, it was also the body. The ash. Two parts of a whole unmade that needed to be brought back together again.
”I can fix this! I just need space to do so!” Kamek shouted out to the others, informing them of what she had just worked out and then requesting their help in putting theory into practice ”Get the monster away from the spirit and ash and I can bring him back!”
”Yeah, I can do that” Jr replied from where he was standing right next to the floating mage upon the cliff. He set down the fainted princess up there where she could recover safely, and then waved to his minion who was sitting on Kamek’s broom ”Mimi, with me”
”Young master wait I didn't mean-” Kamek tried to protest, not wanting to have jr face the beast that had only moments ago felled his father, but it was too late. With Mimi riding his shoulder once more the prince leapt back down into the fray.
“I’ll keep him safe!” Rika told the mage as she went down after the prince, to which Kamek responded by urging her to ”Stay safe yourself as well!”
As they young ran headlong into danger the mage was left alone. Or rather with Peach, who was another part of the problem. Kamek only had so much medical support she could give, and there were several people in need of it, so she directed her available resources as best she could. Relying on Blazermate to handle the more immediate issues down on the beach Kamek focused on the major patients. Three White mages were directed up to the cliff side, where they used their power on the fainted princess.
The other one circled the fallen Delsin like reverse vultures, waiting for his resting spot to be clear of the conflict. When it was, the two would swoop down, hurriedly brush the fallen ash into a concentrated pile, put the man's spirit on top, and then one would step back, raise its wand to the heavens and cast Raise upon the fallen hero.
This all required them to not be attacked or caught in the splash damage of the orphan’s wild attacks while they were doing their thing of course. Ensuring that did not occur would be up to the others, who needed to draw their foe away without getting killed themselves. With their one tank out of the picture and a portion of their healing support focused on trying to raise Densil, such a fatal mistake it was more likely now than ever.
Still, they had to try.
Jr and Rika’s plan was to try their pool trap again, though this time Jr tossed out a splatter of burning goop instead of shocking, just in case the Orphan calling lighting now ment it was resistant to the same. Hazardous terrain swiftly set up, Rika and Jr spread out a little bit and then they, and Mimi, pelted the monster with projectiles, with Jr hucking bouncing fireballs while Rika (and Mimi via copycat) adding rifle fire to their attention getting volley.
Runt, cherry top, humilover, knightstabba, horserida, the greenest knight, the strangely honorable, rusta o chains, rebel of green, god mounta, the demon lord, the goblin queen, the goblin formerly known as queen, champion of the small folk, devil slayer, she who would break the heavens, first among mortals, the eternal liberator.
Age
Rita is 36, which is impressive for a goblin as while they can live to about 70 at most, they basically never get anywhere close.
Race
Rita is a goblin, one of the most pathetic species ever to have been made, or at least that is how the prejudice goes. They have green skin, very large ears, eye and hair color trending from yellow to red, and generally stand three feet tall, with none of the brawn species like the dwarves have to compensate. Their only real positive traits are an excellent set of senses (having decent night vision, an enhanced sense of smell and exceptional hearing) used to detect danger, coupled with rapid breeding and maturation rates. Oh and in the eyes of anyone looking for minions, the art of enslaving goblins being older than recorded history is quite the boon.
Form
Rita has long red hair that she styles into a set of braids and equally red eyes. She stands at about 2.6 feet and has the functionally muscled build of a lifelong warrior. She has several scars, the most notable being one on her left temple along with several more scattered across her body.
The goblin is most often seen wearing a practical set of relatively plain plate armor adorned with a flowing golden cape.
World
Rita comes from a pretty bog standard fantasy world all things considered. A variety of species, from humans to dwarves dragons and, of course, goblins, dwell in a magically infused medieval stasis. Slightly more of note is the unusual way in which faith and belief impact the world.
In Rita’s world, if enough people believe a thing is true, then it becomes so. If enough people believe a being exists, be it a god, devil or monster, and that can do certain things, then it’s existence and capabilities become fact. Similarly, if enough people are confined another person can do a thing, then they are able to do that thing. More specifically, the act of telling a story about that truth is what engraves it into reality, be it telling it within a person's head or spoken and shared among the people.
This also extends to things like magic and basically any supernatural phenomenon, where functionally you trick large amounts of people and in doing get them to fool reality for you, but in terms of Rita’s story, only gods, devils and heroes are relevant to go over.
Gods are supernatural beings spawned by faith who live in their own higher domains known as heavens, but make no mistake, they are gods, not Gods. They are powerful, but they are not masters of creation, nor sharpers of it. There are many gods, and once formed they do not die, nor do they base their power or vitality on continued belief. Instead, without belief, without their stories being told over an over and mutating and modernizing as the world changes, a god becomes immutable, stagnant, even senile in the worst of cases and, in the games of gods, ultimately easily out maneuvered. A god can still do things of their own accord but, if no one talks about it, if no one believes that it happened, then the very impact of that action will fade, being forgotten or even undone.
Inorder to maintain any kind of fluidity and relevance then, a forgotten god must attach themselves as a bit player in another god's story, generally, though not always, as servant. This means that the equivalent of angels in the world’s heavens are simply gods who are no longer worshiped on their own, and simply play a role in another god’s court.
The dark reflections of the gods are known as devils, beings born of tales of fear, as the pure evil antagonists of gods, as explanations to why bad things happen to good people, etc. Of course, no one wants to worship a being of pure malice, and the other gods don't wish to associate with them either (that would be antithetical to their tales and/or bad pr) and so they are generally confined to their own subset of realms know as hells, where they plot, scheme, bicker and fight amongst each other, all while coveting the power of the gods are freely given, and the source of that power, the mortal realm. The best devils can hope for to remain relevant is to be feared, bought off or bargained with. People believing you are a horrible monster that will bring about the end of days is still belief in the end.
These devils’s most noticeable form of influence on the mortal world is via proxies known as demon lords, mortals made nameless by their pacts with and/or enslavement by various devils, and who’s ultimate purpose is to gather enough power in the mortal realm, spread fear of their master’s name, and to eventually to summon their dark patron into it to wreak havoc. All that stands against them is the might of mortals and their heroes.
Heroes are mortals who, similar to gods and devils, draw power from stories of their exploits and deeds being spoken or sung over and over. A legend about a powerful feat they once performed circulating will make performing that feat again more straightforward with each retelling till it comes with ease. If the story gets exaggerated, or even has details added out of whole cloth, as so often happens when stories are traded around orally, then so much the better, as the hero will eventually be able to do something they never could have done before. As with gods, a hero whose tales fall out of circulation will also not be weakened, they simply don't get any stronger. However, as mortals are people, operating in a purely physical world and using their own hands to do things, they do not suffer the stagnation or fading influence of gods, which is quite the advantage.
Generally however, heroes don’t gain anywhere near the prestige of gods, especially highly worshiped ones, and so the fact that mortals can be empowered by belief is mostly unknown, and the gods, who need and crave belief, aren't exactly interested in sharing the details on this little facet of their universe. The gods are more than happy to insert themselves into the tales of heroes, and to claim credit for their remarkable abilities, as a way of feeding off of their tales and becoming stronger however. Of course, tales of gods granting boons mean that gods can gain the ability to actually grant boons, meaning that their relationships with their heroes isn't purely parasitical.
Mortal lifespans also prevent them from benefiting from generations upon generations of retellings and mutations of their stories as gods do, and instead after their death these tales will generally be co-opted either by an existing god if one has not done so already, or cause the birth of an entirely new god made in the image of the hero.
Legend
Rita was once a faceless minion of a demon lord, until she was forcibly adopted by an adventuring party when she was just a teen (after said party hacked their way through the rest of the various minions in the patrol she had been a part of). From them she became more worldly than any goblin before her in living memory, and was effectively trained and treated as the squire/daughter of the knightly adventurer who had adopted her.
After several years in their company, the adventures aimed to strike down the demon lord themselves, but were hopelessly outmatched. To save her own skin Rika backstabbed them, (specifically her adopted father with one of his spare blades) when it became clear to her that they were doomed, and in so doing reentered the demon lord’s service and gained a minor position of leadership, along with ownership of her dead father’s armor and his horse. She took these, and a burning resentment for both her forced betrayal and the general abysmal treatment of her people, and used them fuel a climb up the ranks through a combination of conquests in her lord's name and the assassination of her superiors.
As she climbed, she effectively dragged goblin kind up with her, empowering them, organizing them and protecting them from poor treatment. In doing so she became their dark folk hero and, as in her world, people believing something makes that belief closer to reality, their belief in her heroism allowed her to perform greater heroic feats.
Eventually her power and influence grew so large that the demon lord began to fear she would attempt to usurp him as well, and moved to strike her down before she could do the same to him.
Rita was beaten but not killed in the resulting clash, yet her near death at the demon lord’s hands sparked the revolution against him she had been kindling.
While recovering from her wounds, the goblin was lured into the realm of the goblin king, a fading god who coveted the faith her kind had in her, and attempted to force her into marrying him to take if for his own. After a dance of words about how she would ‘mount him’ and ‘take his sword’ the Rita exited the goblin king’s domain riding atop a new divine mount and carrying an equally devine blade.
Armed with this new power she rode out and struck down the demon lord, freeing her kin from his bondage at last. She founded a nation out of the remains of the demon lord’s empire, and then quickly resigned her position as its leader when it turned out she was only really good at war. She couldn't find it in herself to retire either, and so instead struck out, racing across the world on a campaign of liberation. First fell other demon lords and corrupt kings. Then as fatih in her built to absurd levels, she launched a crusade directly into the hells and, finally, took to the heavens and made even the gods, who had grown fearful of her power, kneel to her might.
Rita began her life in a goblin clan who were, like many if not most of their kind, enthralled to the service of a demon lord. Though goblins are weak by nature, they breed quickly and the art of their enslavement is older than history, making them perfect cannon fodder for any being higher up the food chain than them (which is basically everyone). Most often they are employed alongside other slave races by demon lords, servants of devils whose names are expunged from existence upon entering a dark pact with their vile masters.
Rita was the runt of her litter, smaller than even the average goblin, but that didn't really matter much other than getting ribbed for it on occasion. During her early years Rita’s life was unremarkable for a goblin. As soon as she could walk she was put to work, toiling away in the small mine she was born in, a slave to the schemes of her dark master.
All that changed one day when she was barely a teen. She was randomly hauled away from work, got a spear shoved in her hands and told to match out along with a patrol of other dark minions, mostly orks whom she and her kin were explicitly acting as cannon fodder for. This wasn't exactly unusual, but what was unusual was that the patrol actually ran into something. She’d fought before of course, but rather than monsters or unfortunate hunters the patrol hit an adventuring party.
For most of the minions, things ended as you might expect, the adventurers slaughtering their way through the patrol with ease. For Rita however, who was hurt but not killed in the opening moments, things ended strangely. Perhaps it was because so small, maybe it was because she made made an effort to make her hair nice today in order to impress a now corpse, maybe it was how she just coward among the dead once the fighting was over, maybe it was pure whim, but for whatever reason, the knight (a man called sir Reginald) among the adventurers took pity on her and decided to, for all intents and purposes, adopt her.
Thus began Rita’s crash course in the human world, a bewildering barrage of sights, sounds and experiences during which she acted as something between pet, daughter, squire and mascot for the party who she traveled with for many a moon as they slowly got stronger and better equipped. To protect her own skin, she played the role they wanted her to play perfectly, but inside she hated them. They had, after all, killed her friends and family without mercy. So she plotted revenge in secret but as her worldliness grew, and her very presence among the party resulted in them and others questioning the validity of their ruthless actions against her kind in their war against the demon lord, the need to scheme fell from burning necessity to reluctant burdening commitment.
Maybe if time had been on her side she would have eventually dropped her plans entirely, but in the end her hand was forced. The party, partially out of overconfidence and partially out of a growing sense of guilt about killing more and more of Rita’s kin, went to directly challenge the demon lord. They were not the first to do so and, tragically, they would not be the last.
As the battle began to go poorly Rita saw the writing on the wall and so she executed upon her schemes and stabbed her team in the back. Quite literally in the knight’s case, sliding one of his own spare swords through a weakness in his armor she knew about from helping him put it on before battles. The revenge did not feel good, but it did save her skin, the goblin being able to honestly say to her old master that she had simply been buying her time while traveling with the heroes, waiting to strike at the perfect moment such as the one presented to her now.
For her cunning she was rewarded with a lowly position of command, barely one step up from common underling. She also, however, got to keep the possessions of the knight, including his horse, Sandy. Cobbling together a suit of armor for herself out of the fallen knight’s own, she became the first goblin knight, and swore a silent oath she would take down the demon lord herself, and end his cycle of death that had taken her first and second family from her. To do that, she would have to become stronger.
She rose her way up the ranks of the demon lord’s forces through force of arms, first by slaying her superiors in one on one combat to get a true command (an entirely permissible and even encouraged act), and then by forming an order of green knights, wolf riders armored with hydra scale leather who hunted both the demon lord's enemies (focusing especially on rival demon lords) and various neutral monsters that stood in the way of him expanding his realm. In doing so, and in focusing her efforts on empowering and actually caring about the survival of her goblin kin, she became something of a dark hero, one who protected the weak minions both from the forces of light and from the cruelty of their dark masters.
As she build up her influence among her people, she also built up something of a repertoire with the forces opposing her lord, changing the name of the game and forcibly ‘civilizing’ their conflict, making herself into someone who was seen as a reasonable, even honorable opponent who could be expected to show mercy and, importantly, expected that to be shown in turn. She built a significant worthy foe relationship with the knights of her deceased adoptive father, one that would eventually prove vital. Casualty rates massively dropped among those who fought in her name even as they remained an effective fighting force, and soon enough she had risen to the top of the demon lord’s ranks. Despite being near indispensable at this point, the lord did not trust her. As he was right to do.
Things came to a head when three of the other right hand minions of the lord attempted to dispose of her, an act that cost them their lives at her hands. The resulting power she would gain was too much, and so the demon lord himself aimed to strike her down. He only succeeded in wounding her, and preemptively sparking the revolution she had been fostering beneath his nose. As civil war erupted among the demon lord’s forces, and it raged the wounded Rita made contact with the forces of light, and convinced them to actively side with her force rather than simply let the war burn to its end and then swoop in to take down the battered victor.
Gazing down upon this war was the goblin king, a lesser deity who was worshiped by the peoples who now saw Rita as their savior. He took notice of their adoration of her and hatched a scheme to take it for his own. As the war raged across the continent, he lured the goblin, exhausted from the stress of brokering her alliance while also being wounded, into his domain. There, in a twisting labyrinthine forest, he challenged her to a series of trials that, should she fail them, she would submit to him and become his bride, tying her influence to his. The game was rigged from the start, of course, and so it ended in a game of words where Rita put on the airs of a flustered maiden who refused to talk of consummating a marriage in straight terms out of embarrassment. Thus, after a dance of words about how she would ‘mount him’ and ‘take his sword’ the Goblin exited the goblin king’s domain riding atop Sandy the 17th and carrying the blade known simply as Fang.
Upon her return to the land of mortals, she learned that the humans had sent a daring force driving into the heart of the war to try and strike down the demon lord, but their fate, it seemed, looked as if it would be going the same way as the adventurers who had adopted Rita. Hearing of this the goblin, still not yet fully recovered, rode to their aid upon her new divine steed. She stormed the demon lord’s fortress with her own knights, linking up with and fighting alongside heroes who were led by a knight who proved to be her adoptive father’s sister. Working together they brought down the demon lord, with Rita striking the final blow that ended his reign once and for all.
The end of the right of the demon lord lasted for all of a minute, as soon as the news got out Rita was immediately hailed as the new demon lord by both sides of the war. As this supposed betrayal threatened to tear apart the alliance of man and goblin, the devils of the many hells that had empowered the old lord to attempt to slip their malignant tendrils into her in his place. In the end, the knight who Rita had only just discovered was her aunt who sacrificed her life to prevent Rita’s corruption, allowing her to beat it back and seal this one piece of access the devils had to the mortal world once and for all.
Rather than a demon lord then, Rita was instead hailed as the first goblin queen, though she swiftly also became the last, as it turns out having the most powerful warrior in the nation be your leader does not result in good stateswomanship. She, fortunately, recognized this before it was too late, and, after transforming her new kingdom into a democracy, resigned her position as queen.
For a time she stayed and helped ensure the peace between the new nation and the human ones it now lived among, but before too long she grew tired of peace, unable to sit still knowing that there were other demon lords out there and other peoples enslaved to their will. Soon enough the goblin set out on a journey of liberation, traveling across the continent and then across the world, freeing her people, and all who were like them, from the bondage of tyrants of all shapes and forms.
As she fought more and more for the people’s freedom, their faith in her grew and grew and, thanks to her godly steed she learned how to harness this power as a god did (a moment that carved their begrudgingly built friendship in stone, for the god did not attempt to steal this power all for himself as Rita feared he might do) and in doing so she became a near unstoppable force on the mortal realm, which only fueled the people’s adoration of her even further.
Armed with the will of the people the goblin looked beyond the demon lords themselves, and instead took aim at the source of their powers, the many hells from which all evil seeped. At the head of a mighty crusade made from all races, and with the backing of their gods, she plunged into those fiery pits and against all expectation succeeded in rooting out the darkness within. The gods, both fearing her powers and empowered themselves by the deaths of their dark kin, attempted to force the liberator of all to kneel to their will. A mistake they soon came to regret.
Rather than kill them however, for they were the embodiment of good things, just lost in their power, she taught them a lesson in humility as she had the wolf god, forcing them to respect a mortal as an equal, and in doing so getting them to respect all mortals in a way they had never done before.
Her story might have ended there, or perhaps in some calamity caused by her being unable to simply sit down and retire after a life of war, if the overwhelming faith and belief in her from all the peoples of the world, combined with the submission of all the gods to her will, had not breached some threshold of power, and ascended her (and her trusty steed) to the wheel.
There, new tyrants stand tall, waiting to fall to the hand of the meekest of creatures.
Will
Rita is driven by the need to end the mistreatment of the weak. She is mostly focused on what she calls ‘the small folk’ (your goblins, imps, kobolds etc) but ultimately she wishes to see all tyrants fall, and all peoples to be free.
Mastery
Rita is the hero to end all heroes, a goblin of a thousand tales, the ultimate underdog. On paper she does not seem particularly impressive, being a goblin in armor with a glowing sword and an unusual steed. In practice Rita has far surpassed any mortal limits long, long ago.
Defensively, her natural senses have been sharpened to such a fine point that she functionally has a 6th sense for danger. The goblin also has an intense resilience in a way that, while she can most certainly be hurt, actually putting her down is frightfully difficult. The stubborn little creature will take her licks and just keep going and going, and if it looks like you've got her pinned down she’ll escape to train and scheme, and then come back for a rematch at the most appropriately dramatic moment.
Offensively Rita’s primary strategy is to stab people with a sword using blows with hundreds of times the strength her body should be able to produce behind them. Failing that she has a small pile of tricks up her sleeves gained from various exaggerated tales made true. She can form lances of light, breath fire (thanks the kobold's for that one), tame any beast, leap across battlefields like a grasshopper and create improvised explosives from basically anything (imps for this one), along with a few other party tricks kept up her sleeve from her more obscure stories.
The ability that is perhaps her greatest and yet also her most often dismissed is the ability to inspire and empower others, particularly those considered meek. This is both a psychological thing, seeing a tiny goblin stick it to those far more imposing than her can't help but inspire, as well as an actual faith fueled power. Those who join Rita’s order of Green Knights, for example, can tap into her legend and the previous exploits of their organization, gaining the speed and power to keep up with Rita’s wild charges. Even more generally, those fighting alongside Rita or in her name can tap into the legacy of the army that broke all the hells and heavens of her world, gaining increased strength, bravery and resilience.
Finally, Rita has been taught the secret power of stories and faith, a frightful power in her home world, one less useful beyond its confines. Functionally the barrier between her soul and the souls of others is soft, resulting in external perception lightly warping her flame. By influencing how others see her, she can use them to mold herself into a stronger and better being.
Ascent
Rita took on her world’s gods, the final tyrants and made them bow their heads to a mortal, and one that she forced them to broadcast to all their followers, predominantly to prove both that she wasn’t going to kill them all like she had all her other foes, and to end their dominance over mortal kind. The unprecedented event made even those ignorant of her invasions of the hells aware of her and in awe of her. Yet what was a heroic liberator with no more tyrants to face in battle? That was the question asked, the universe answered, and ascended the rebel knight to the wheel, where her quest of liberation can continue.
Ephemera
Inherited Platemail Originally cobbled together from her adoptive father’s armor, Rita’s platemail is a simple and unadorned affair that over the years has been ship of theseused into actually fitting her like a glove. It is technically very mundane, but belief in its resilience has given the armor supreme stopping power, withstanding blow after blow without a care. If part of it does break it will shatter rather than buckle, the struck section acting as ablative armor in its last moment and entirely sparing Rita from the blow that breaks that part of her armored shell. Any replacement metal also gains this ability, as long as it does not clash with the rest of the metal aesthetically.
Fang A fine blade the color of dawn. Not remarkably sharp or possessing of any exotic enchantments, but the goblin king’s sword is the only blade that has proved again and again that it can handle being swung around by the pint sized powerhouse, and for that she has kept hold of it for all these years.
Sandy the 17th (aka sandy the last, formally known as the goblin king) Sandy is, or was, a god, born of legends of a long dead king of goblinkind. He now acts as Rita’s mighty steed, uninstalling his innate shapeshifting ability to provide her the perfect mount for any occasion, be it the traditional war wolf, a dashing stallion, a mighty elk or more exotic rides like sharks, giant spiders, lions, rocs, wyverns and so on. All of these forms are absurdly fast, strong and unerringly beautiful perfect specimens of their kinds
As a being of pure belief he is difficult to permanently kill. Which is a good thing, because Rita managed to go through 16 other steeds in the few years before he met her. The fact that she named all of her replacement steeds Sandy, in tribute to the first, means that even if the latest of their name falls, he can tap into the story that Rita always rides a mount with the same name, and can use that to simply return to life near her whenever it is narrative convenient.
Midna fled like the wind as the wreckage of the ship rained down around them. Most of it was burning wood but, as if to seek vengeance for its demise, the detonating ship also hurled one of its cannons her way. The princess just barely saw it coming, tugging her mount’s tufty fur, getting it to skid to a halt just the nick of time. The hunk of rusted metal smashing down right in-front them and showering them both with fine fragments of ice, forcing both to shield themselves from the frozen hail as best they could.
”That was clo-” she began to say, right before an agonizing crack barked out, the ice she was standing on splintered in a reaction both to the blow and under the weight of the rusty weapon now resting on it.
”Ah fu-” was all she got out before the entire sheet of ice her mount was standing on collapsed and she and her wolf-dran were unceremoniously dropped into a short carves filled with vicious blades of ice. Instinctively, she sent her wolf-dran (along with its horde of bones it hadn't dropped) home and slowed her own fall with levitation, the princess coming to a stop in the air just above a particularly nasty looking set of frozen spikes.
She breathed a sigh of relief, gave one of the spikes a kick, and then said ”I really don't need your attitude today karam, ok? So chill out. It was just a boat. And almost dropping two people to their deaths but that was their fault for being there”
She ascended out of her little debacle pit muttering about how even climbing up had been foolish, and then took in what was going on in the cavern. Yoshitsune was in trouble, but her friend only had one monster on him, said monster was being swarmed by allies and, by Midna's analysis (which was ignorant of its only weakness being fire) it wasn't even a tough looking one, so she was fairly sure he’d be fine.
On the other hand, there was Big Band and Therion who were basically on their own (separated from a number of others via some large and maybe magical icewall) vs a big and very scary looking ice monster that seemed to be taking quite a beating and even then going down.
The question of where to go to help out was pretty obvious as a result. The princess found herself a shadow, and there were plenty thanks to all of the burning bits of wood she’d scattered around, and from there hopped her way from patch of darkness to patch of darkness, heading towards the two ice golem dueling gentlemen.
She popped up right as Therion was jumping back and away from the ice golem, announcing herself with ”Room for one more?” as she slid out from the shadow of the wall and got herself behind the golem, so that she and Band were on opposite sides of it.
”How’s about you and me double team this ice cube into powdered snow?” she shouted to him, before winding up a shadow hand into a fist and slamming into the golem as many times as she could, trying to sync up her strikes so that they’d alternate with the one man band’s own. In that way, she’d ensure that the golem was always in the process of recovering from one blow right before the next one came in from the other side, co-op comboing it over and over till it broke out of the pummeling, or simply broke entirely.
More fleshed out backstory of a goblin. Kinda tapers off in detail at the end, but I think the origin story bit is more important than the shonen style escalation/shark jumping that happens after the instigating villein is overcome.
Anyway, enjoy a goblin overturning a generic fantasy universe:
Rita aka: runt, carrot top, humilover, knightstabba, horserida, the greenest knight, the scourge of the forest, the rusta of chains, the rebel of green, the god mounta, the dark lord, the goblin queen, the goblin formerly known as queen, the champion of the small folk, the devil slayer, she who would break the heavens, the first among mortals.
Rita began her life in a goblin clan who were, like many if not most of their kind, enthralled to the service of a dark lord. Though goblins are weak by nature, they breed quickly and the art of their enslavement is older than history, making them perfect cannon fodder for any being higher up the food chain than them (which is basically everyone). Most often they are employed alongside other slave races by dark lords, servants of devils whose names are expunged from existence upon entering a dark pact with their vile masters.
Rita was the runt of her litter, smaller than even the average goblin, but that didn't really matter much other than getting ribbed for it on occasion. During her early years Rita’s life was unremarkable for a goblin. As soon as she could walk she was put to work, toiling away in the small mine she was born in, a slave to the schemes of her dark master.
All that changed one day when she was barely a teen. She was randomly hauled away from work, got a spear shoved in her hands and told to match out along with a patrol of other dark minions, mostly orks whom she and her kin were explicitly acting as cannon fodder for. This wasn't exactly unusual, but what was unusual was that the patrol actually ran into something. She’d fought before of course, but rather than monsters or unfortunate hunters the patrol hit an adventuring party.
For most of the minions, things ended as you might expect, the adventurers slaughtering their way through the patrol with ease. For Rita however, who was hurt but not killed in the opening moments, things ended strangely. Perhaps it was because so small, maybe it was because she made made an effort to make her hair nice today in order to impress a now corpse, maybe it was how she just coward among the dead once the fighting was over, maybe it was pure whim, but for whatever reason, the knight (a man called sir Reginald) among the adventurers took pity on her and decided to, for all intents and purposes, adopt her.
Thus began Rita’s crash course in the human world, a bewildering barrage of sights, sounds and experiences during which she acted as something between pet, daughter, squire and mascot for the party who she traveled with for many a moon as they slowly got stronger and better equipped. To protect her own skin, she played the role they wanted her to play perfectly, but inside she hated them. They had, after all, killed her friends and family without mercy. So she plotted revenge in secret but as her worldliness grew, and her very presence among the party resulted in them and others questioning the validity of their ruthless actions against her kind in their war against the dark lord, the need to scheme fell from burning necessity to reluctant burdening commitment.
Maybe if time had been on her side she would have eventually dropped her plans entirely, but in the end her hand was forced. The party, partially out of overconfidence and partially out of a growing sense of guilt about killing more and more of Rita’s kin, went to directly challenge the dark lord. They were not the first to do so and, tragically, they would not be the last.
As the battle began to go poorly Rita saw the writing on the wall and so she executed upon her schemes and stabbed her team in the back. Quite literally in the knight’s case, sliding one of his own spare swords through a weakness in his armor she knew about from helping him put it on before battles. The revenge did not feel good, but it did save her skin, the goblin being able to honestly say to her old master that she had simply been buying her time while traveling with the heroes, waiting to strike at the perfect moment such as the one presented to her now.
For her cunning she was rewarded with a lowly position of command, barely one step up from common underling. She also, however, got to keep the possessions of the knight, including his horse, Sandy. Cobbling together a suit of armor for herself out of the fallen knight’s own, she became the first goblin knight, and swore a silent oath she would take down the dark lord herself, and end his cycle of death that had taken her first and second family from her. To do that, she would have to become stronger.
She rose her way up the ranks of the dark lord’s forces through force of arms, first by slaying her superiors in one on one combat to get a true command (an entirely permissible and even encouraged act), and then by forming an order of green knights, wolf riders armored with hydra scale leather who hunted both the dark lord's enemies and various neutral monsters that stood in the way of him expanding his realm. In doing so, and in focusing her efforts on empowering and actually caring about the survival of her goblin kin, she became something of a dark hero, one who protected the weak minions both from the forces of light and from the cruelty of their dark masters.
As she build up her influence among her people, she also built up something of a repertoire with the forces opposing her lord, changing the name of the game and forcibly ‘civilizing’ their conflict, making herself into someone who was seen as a reasonable, even honorable opponent who could be expected to show mercy and, importantly, expected that to be shown in turn. She built a significant worthy foe relationship with the knights of her deceased adoptive father, one that would eventually prove vital. Casualty rates massively dropped among those who fought in her name even as they remained an effective fighting force, and soon enough she had risen to the top of the dark lord’s ranks. Despite being near indispensable at this point, the lord did not trust her. As he was right to do.
Things came to a head when three of the other right hand minions of the lord attempted to dispose of her, an act that cost them their lives at her hands. The resulting power she would gain was too much, and so the dark lord himself aimed to strike her down. He only succeeded in wounding her, and preemptively sparking the revolution she had been fostering beneath his nose. As civil war erupted among the dark lord’s forces, and it raged the wounded Rita made contact with the forces of light, and convinced them to actively side with her force rather than simply let the war burn to its end and then swoop in to take down the battered victor.
Gazing down upon all this, wolf god, a lesser deity who was worshiped by many of the races who now saw Rita as their savior and spiritual leader (most notably goblins who referred to him as the goblin prince) took notice of their adoration of her and grew jealous of it. As the war raged across the continent, he lured the goblin, exhausted from her wounds and the stress of brokering her alliance, into his domain. There, in a twisting labyrinthine forest, he challenged her to a series of trials that, should she fail them, she would submit to him and become his bride, tying her influence to his. The game was rigged from the start, of course, and so it ended in a game of words where Rita put on the airs of a flustered maiden who refused to talk of consummating a marriage in straight terms out of embarrassment. Thus, after a dance of words about how she would ‘mount him’ and ‘take his sword’ the Goblin exited the wolf god’s domain riding atop Sandy the 17th and carrying the blade known simply as Fang.
Upon her return to the land of mortals, she learned that the humans had sent a daring force driving into the heart of the war to try and strike down the dark lord, but their fate, it seemed, looked as if it would be going the same way as the adventurers who had adopted Rita. Hearing of this the goblin, still not yet fully recovered, rode to their aid upon her new divine steed. She stormed the dark lord’s fortress with her own knights, linking up with and fighting alongside heroes who were led by a knight who proved to be her adoptive father’s sister. Working together they brought down the dark lord, with Rita striking the final blow that ended his reign once and for all.
The end of the right of the dark lord lasted for all of a minuet, as soon as the news got out Rita was immediately hailed as the new dark lord by both sides of the war. As this supposed betrayal threatened to tear apart the alliance of man and goblin, the devils of the many hells that had empowered the old lord to attempt to slip their malignant tendrils into her in his place. In the end, the knight who Rita had only just discovered was her aunt who sacrificed her life to prevent Rita’s corruption, allowing her to beat it back and seal this one piece of access the devils had to the mortal world once and for all.
Rather than a dark lord then, Rita was instead hailed as the first goblin queen, though she swiftly also became the last, as it turns out having the most powerful warrior in the nation be your leader does not result in good stateswomanship. She, fortunately, recognized this before it was too late, and, after transforming her new kingdom into a democracy, resigned her position as queen.
For a time she stayed and helped ensure the peace between the new nation and the human ones it now lived among, but before too long she grew tired of peace, unable to sit still knowing that there were other dark lords out there and other peoples enslaved to their will. Soon enough the goblin set out on a journey of liberation, traveling across the continent and then across the world, freeing her people, and all who were like them, from the bondage of tyrants of all shapes and forms.
As she fought more and more for the people’s freedom, their faith in her grew and grew and, thanks to her godly steed she learned how to harness this power as a god did (a moment that carved their begrudgingly built friendship in stone, for the god did not attempt to steal this power all for himself as Rita feared he might do) and in doing so she became a near unstoppable force on the mortal realm, which only fueled the people’s adoration of her even further.
Armed with the will of the people the goblin looked beyond the dark lords themselves, and instead took aim at the source of their powers, the many hells from which all evil seeped. At the head of a mighty crusade made from all races, and with the backing of their gods, she plunged into those fiery pits and against all expectation succeeded in rooting out the darkness within. The gods, both fearing her powers and empowered themselves by the deaths of their dark kin, attempted to force the liberator of all to kneel to their will. A mistake they soon came to regret.
Rather than kill them however, for they were the embodiment of good things, just lost in their power, she taught them a lesson in humility as she had the wolf god, forcing them to respect a mortal as an equal, and in doing so getting them to respect all mortals in a way they had never done before.
Her story might have ended there, or perhaps in some calamity caused by her being unable to simply sit down and retire after a life of war, if the overwhelming faith and belief in her from all the peoples of the world, combined with the submission of all the gods to her will, had not breached some threshold of power, and ascended her (and her trusty steed) to the wheel.
There, new tyrants stand tall, waiting to fall to the hand of the meekest of creatures.
Oh, by the way, I was thinking about doing something that our friend Zoey suggested in Discord. I hesitated at first because it seemed indulgent of me, but maybe it would be fun. Zoey mentioned that it might be a better way to celebrate 100 pages (rather than finding things that the RP isn't doing well) to mention what some of your favorite moments have been in the RP so far, during your time here. So if this seems like a good idea and you can think of anything, I would be all to happy to hear from you guys!
Having been in this for the full 3 years there have been so many great moments, so rather than try and pick a best one, I'm going to roll this back to a simple fun one a lot of you weren't here for, which is me and lug simultaneously rping the two different versions of Bowser you get, the imposing big bad vs the ineffectual comedy villain, as a result of megadrgonbowser coincidentally being the first boss. This culminates in his (presently dying) Bowser tying to convince my Bowser to take in his spirit, a ploy that would corrupt mine to be like his. This is resolved by having my Bowser, who had already entirely fallen for the ruse and was going to take the spirit, spending too long bickering with Tora over the issue that his Bowser gives up the ghost and then the dangerous, to my bowser, spirit is snagged by someone else from under the king's nose. post in question
Is it a profound or dramatic moment like some of the other moments? No, not really, but is indicative of something unique I've been having/getting to do for this rp, which is looking at a situation, thinking what Bowser would do, realizing that waht he'd do is perhaps the dumbest thing that you could possibly do in that given situation, and then being compelled to exactly that anyway.
For now try and get me general character pitches so I can give you a thumbs up/down/notes/whatever on it.
If your still open to more slots, and it seems like you are, then i have a char pitch for you:
Shitty cannon fodder Goblin girl that gets adopted by an adventuring party after after they kill the squad of dark lord troops she was in (a thing often done as a joke by players but played straight by the actual chars). She gets stronger and a heavy does of ethics and perspective from traveling. Kinda hate them for killing her kin, but also kinda gets why. Later down the line they get killed and in an ironic inversion of fate she ends up being taken back into the clutches of the dark lord's army, which she now has the context to realize is, well, shit and evil.
Uses stuff she learned from the adventurers to rise up the ranks via superior murdering. Stylize herself as a goblin knight, form goblin knight order, kick ass, take names, mostly in the name of helping goblins out while not letting the dark lord in on her hatred of them. Get stronger. Secretly collaborates with the settings traditional heroes, eventually leads a goblin uprising, adventuring party of heroes dies on her again so she kills the dark lord herself.
Becomes goblin queen. Turns out having the best fighter lead isn't actually a good idea. Institutes goblin democracy to take over and then go around kicking ass and taking names of every oppressor in the land, and then move on to world's higher beings for good measure.
Suffer no gods or masters to live.
Achieve heaven to violence.
Find more oppressors to stab.
Keep on going.
Specifics of how to stab god with a goblin shank will come later.
”You're quite welcome” Kamek replied to Nadia’s thanks while Bowser mainly shrugged in ‘well what else was I supposed to do, just let you die?’ kinda way, and then instantly regretted doing so due to his wounds.
Then the smoke cleared, the moment of respite was over and the monster fight resumed.
Bowser grunted in pain as he tried to square up against the incoming Orphan’s vengeful charge, more gore oozing from his cracked shell that had been over-strained even further by holding and unleashing the light as he did so. Fortunately for him Link was there to save his bacon, tossing a simple spear in-front of him and then in a flash freezing it in the air.
The immovable object met the not quite unstoppable force of the Orphan’s blow and brought it to a dead stop, which had to hurt, or at least be a surprise to the monster. It certainly was for Bowser, but others were more proactive than him in taking advantage of the situation, with Sakura, Ace and the freshly fighting fit feline racing ahead of the king to get stuck right in.
Bowser moved to follow them, but his faithful advisor and long suffering caretaker drifted down and put himself in the way.
”If you’d wait just another moment, sire, and I’ll have you right as rain in just a moment” Kamek insisted, indicating with a free hand up to her hovering heal squad.
”Ain’t got no more time to be sitting about twiddling my thumbs, get outta my way” Bowser replied, a retort that lost most of its impact when he tried to push the mage out of the way only to stumble and cringe in pain.
”Urgh, fine” he relented, and allowed the old koopa to administer his injuries.
As it turned out the amount of time Kamek needed to recharge meant that she ended up using her healing on Bowser right before someone else really really needed it. That person being Delsin.
As the restored Bowser moved to re-engage, the Orphan suddenly dis-engaged, blowing right past everyone and hurtling off towards the back of the cove. Right towards where Jr was, just as his family had feared might happen.
The bark of rifle fire that greeted the Orphan’s assault on those outside the battle proved that their precaution had in fact been well worth it for all it had deprived them of Rika’s firepower during the melee. Not that the ship girl’s fire halted the Oprhan’s advance mind. Even Delsin, who stepped up to the plate for the first time with his flames and chains, only managed to prevent the Orphan from getting to the boy because it stopped to give him a beating and nearly ripped his arm clean off in the process.
”Hey! Get off of him!” came a shout from Jr, accompanied by the water balloon like body of a Swoopin' Stu to splash into the Orphan’s face.
The horror whipped its head towards the boy prince, losing the stinging goop in the process, and proceeded to get a cannon round to the chest from a very nervous looking Rika standing between a retreating prince and the monster. With a howl it leapt at the ship girl, who fired her rigging mounted sixpack of guns as she rapidly sailed backwards, moving as if she was floating on water rather than standing on the ground. And that was because she was floating on a liquid, it just wasn't water for once.
The Orphan slammed down onto the oil stick of goop the prince had spread while it was taking apart Delsin, the same goop that was letting Rika wave surf instead of run, causing the blue and yellow mess to promptly unload its considerable electrical load right into the ocean borne horror.
While the massive charge would have left a certain plummer screaming, convulsing and utterly paralyzed for several seconds, against the nightmarish abomination it merely caused a very brief moment of muscular spasming that cause it to stumble. While not show stopping by any means it did at least unsteady it enough that it was unable to immediately chase the ship girl as she skated away on a trail of goop the retreating prince was leaving behind with his brush, and was left open to attack from the heroes racing in to aid the trio (and Delsin certainly needed some aid that was for sure).
Despite his concern for his son, the less than agile king brought up the rear of that pack, and slowed even more as his quite safe son broke past them, followed by the slime skating Rika.
”Are you both ok?”
”Yeah, obviously!” jr replied for them both before Rika asked “Are you? You keep getting hit really badly”
”Eh I’m tough” Bowser replied simply, which got a nod and agreeing ”mmm, he is!” from his son, but the hovering Kamek, who had had to fix the king up three times at this point, wasn’t looking to have that situation repeated.
”If I may sire, I think you should take some backup in with you this time rather than just suffering through everything yourself” she suggested.
The king glanced sideways at the two younger members of the Troop who he did not want to be taking those hits and then replied ”Yeah no, you three stay safe, I've got this. Ain't no one who can to take those hits the way I can after all!" with pride.
”How about more of yourself?” Kamek replied (talking over an objection form Jr about how he was tough too dad!) with a grin, having a plan that had been inspired by Nadia’s tactics.
”More of myself?" Bowser asked, briefly confused, but then snapped his fingers as he got it ”Oh! Yeah! Let's do it!'
”Marvelous, now then” the mage replied, before floating up above the other three and facing the (currently embattled with the others) Orphan and half taunting half chanting ”You might have easily cracked my king’s shell like an egg”
”Hey!”
”But let's see how you deal with a full carton of carnage!” Kamek cackled as she finished his spell and a quartet of massive dark portals opened up and then, with a “Mi mi!” from the little copycating pokemon on his broom, the four were joined by a fifth, slightly smaller, portal. Out of these dark voids five copies of the Koopa King dropped, their steel capped boots hitting the sand heavily, before the five dark mirrors of the king's already dark heart raised their maws to the sky and roared dramatically.
Said roar was the first warning the heroes fighting the Orphan got of what was going down behind them, and of what was about to come bearing down on them all.
Bowser stepped into the line of shadow hims and said to them ”Follow my lead copycats. Let's see how this smuck can handle six of me dogpiling it!" before giving a battlecry of ”CARGE!" and then doing just that.
The King went storming towards the Orphan with his five doppelgangers flanking him, sending an entire scrimmage line of heavyweights bearing down on the lone Orphan (which could prove to be a problem for anyone who didn’t get break off their duel and get out of the incoming royal rampage in time) with the express intent of collectively pinning it down and then kicking the ever living snot out of it.
Elemental goop: Jr’s magic paintbrush can now create two new types of goop, shocking goop and burning goop, which do additional elemental damage. Shocking goop is a mix of teal and yellow, and will electrocute enemies that come into contact with it, damaging and stunning the foe. Burning goop meanwhile is a molten mix of oranges and reds and is superheated to the extent that it can ignite foes who come into contact with it, which can cause them to run around in a panic trying to put it out. Both goops can linger as a dot, dealing additional electric/heat damage over time until removed.
The first thing Bowser got when joining back up with the rest of the troop was questions about Jr’s well-being from a concerned Rika and Kamek.
”He’s good, no sweat. Kid’s tough as nails after all, plus I made a pretty good catch. Looks like all that sport finally paid off” Bowser said, getting a “kyu!” in agreement to the first part from his shoulder, reminding him that, ”Oh, also he said you’d know how to use this one” before holding out a hand towards Kamek, whereupon Mimi ran down his arm, onto his palm and then hopped onto the tip of Kamek’s broom, where it sat itself down like a witch’s familiar. Which was quite appropriate given the gender swap.
Rather than worry about whether she should be augmenting her attire with an appropriately pointy hat however, Kamek was instead a bit worried about Jr now that his main minion was here with them and not covering his back, and she said as much to Bowser.
”Yeah he’ll be fine…” Bowser replied, only for a worm of worry to push itself inside his mind and start wiggling around creating mental images of all kinds of grim possibilities, mainly centered up the question of what happened if the brutally effective monster went after jr while he was on his own, working on his machine? True, it hadn't actively attacked anything not been attacking it, no healer murdering attempts had been made for example, but still, Bowser’s mind was none the less presented with some very unpleasant imagery of his son being on the receiving end of blows even he had barely withstood, much to his displeasure.
Judging by the looks on the other two’s faces, he wasn't the only one getting those intrusive thoughts.
”ah… maybe I should” kamek began to suggest she go baby sit him, but Bowser had other ideas.
”Rika go keep watch on Jr, ok? Make sure he stays safe”
“Who me? But I just-” the ship girl who had almost died after failing to dislodge Jr’s attacker tried to reply, but the king was adamant, clapping her reassuringly on the shoulder and guiding her away from the battle.
”Off you go, I’m counting on you!” he told her, practically pushing her away from active danger before turning to his old advisor and telling him ”Now let’s go pay that ugly mug back tenfold!” which got a determined nod from Kamek (and Mimi). Soon enough Bowser was tromping back into the fray at last, joining the Ace while Kamek and Mimi hovered above, laying dark mines (which involved Kamek casting and Mimi copycatting him) as traps to turn the Orphan's erratic movement against it.
This worked remarkably well as after getting ice smashed and fortuitously failing to trounce the child responsible the Orphan dropped down onto the minefield, causing a bevy of blasts to briefly tip it over. Sizing the opportunity the king leapt forwards and delivered a meteoric punch right to the Orphan’s chest, only to back up as Ace got stuck in, which gave him just enough space to avoid the first retaliatory blow from the monster.
He tried to come back in after that, but the Orphan started to put its range avoidance strategy to use in melee as well, using its fast movements to dodge around the slower Koopa, while also keeping the faster monster hunter between the king and itself, causing him to not be able to go forwards, and ace to have less room to back up in.
The brief moment of frustration came to an end when the Ace got himself clipped and sent hurtling towards Bowser, who did his best to catch the hunter, but he still got sent sliding backwards through the sand a short distance as he absorbed much of the cadet’s momentum.
As the Orphan left the pair behind and raced off to smash the engineer’s turret the young prince was having difficulties with his own broken machine, and was at that moment waist deep inside it's hammer space glove box, grumbling away as he looked for an item that was no longer in his possession ”where is it? Where is it?! I know it was in here somewhere!”
“What are you looking for anyway?” Rika, who was agitatedly standing guard, the ship girl unable to actually stand that guard still as she watched the battle from a much too close vantage point.
”The stupid hammer! I can't fix my car quickly without…” Jr was saying before pausing, having an idea and pulling himself out of the car ”oh wait I know! I can get Blazermate’s wrench guy to fix it!”
“I, ah, think he just got sunk” the ship girl let him know. It had been far too quick too, just one shot and the once mortal man had been a goner. That had almost been her.
”Oh come on!” the prince threw up his arms in frustration at this run of bad luck.
“So is it just broken for good now then?”
”What? No, I can fix it myself. What do you think all my technical brains were in that hammer? Ha no. It’ll just take time without it, time we ain’t got” the boy said, and on that he was surly right. Every moment the Orphan got was another moment it had to deal a singularly decisive blow on any one of them, and next time it might not be a striker who bit the dust.
”So forget trying to do that,” he declared, grabbing his gadbrush and giving it a twirl, before fiddling with a little hidden control mechanism which flushed the tip of the brush with burning goop ”Instead, let's go paint the town red!”
“That’s mostly orange” Rika pointed out before asking “Also why are we painting a town? And what town?”
”Less questions more butt kicking” Jr replied, taking off at a run back towards the fight.
There, while Bowser and Ace had been untangling themselves, some of the ladies had taken their palace in the fray, with Sakura hadouken and Bella’s tripping supporting Nadia’s full frontal assault supported by her dopplegangers, which was going well right up until she was overwhelmed and knocked down by a colossal blow that knocked both copies out of commission and almost destroyed Nadia outright.
What stopped it finishing the job was aid from Bowser and Kamek.
Bowser stormed in roaring ”GET YOUR UGLY MUG OFF HER!” before physically grabbing the still half prone Orphan and hauling it above his head while it raged. With a wild swing it smashed the king in the back with its mace, causing the king to cry out in pain as he stumbled, but he soldiered through and with a roar hurled the monster into the carcass of a washed up whale, who’s rotten body gave way with ease, burying the Orphan in a mire of gore and bone.
This costly throw gave Kamek enough time to direct his white mages to heal the fallen catgirl, giving her a burst of healing on top of her natural regeneration that would likely have her right back on her feet, but that left the King’s back wound unattended to.
Not that he was going to let that stop him. Though his shell was cracked and oozing gore it still held the light he had absorbed earlier. More was drawn in now as the king raised his maw to the sickly moon and devoured its light, causing the shadows to twist as the light faded, and then grow long as the power coalesced into in a glowing orb of pure white light held between the King’s bestial fangs. As the orphan was on the verge of clawing its way out of a prison of blood and bone for a second time in its life the king violently snapped his head towards it and unleashed the charged up energy in one singular strike.
Light streamed fourth in a beam wider than the Orphan was tall, bringing a brief dawn to the cove as it hammered into the horror, as well as the corpse holding it briefly captive within its shattered ribs. The whale, which had been dead even before its bloated body was stolen by Galeem, promptly exploded, sending smoldering chucks of blubber and bone fragments showering across the area.
”How do you-” the wounded and winded king had to pause for air for a moment half way through his taunt ”-like that ya shmuck!”
The smoke and cloud of kicked up sand and vaporized blood cleared over a few tense moments, and as the veil slipped away it revealed the form of the Orphan simply standing there. Despite its chest having been burnt by the core of the energy beam, the viscera soaked horror’s perpetually exposed teeth made it look as if it was grinning at the king, as if the blast had simply done it a favor by freeing it from the mire of gore he had tossed it into. Then the half imagined moment ended as the monster screamed and came rampaging out of the blast crater, sprinting forth to finish the job of breaking the presently gobsmacked king’s back.
Midna found herself nervously chewing on her lip as she watched the pair ascend past her up to the top of the chain, and her nerves where in no way helped by the way the ship shuddered beneath them at one point, which almost tipped her and her wolf-dran off of their perch on its near vertical deck.
”Goddesses,” she murmured after steadying herself, before then calling out ”are you both alright?” to the climbers.
Fortunately it looked like they were and soon enough Raz had climbed up into range of the frozen chain, and offered a (big) hand to Therion to get him up as well. One they were up she drifted over to follow them and found Raz chipping away at the ice binding it using psychic blasts. It was an impressive amount of power, coming from a kid, but chipping away was definitely the right description.
”That might take a while” she noted, and then offered ”want me to try and take a swing instead?”
She got her chance when the boy got distracted by falling skeletons. She wasn't sure what was up with that, but she was fine with taking over the ice freeing. After all, her wolf-dran was down there, and if the kid wasn't find on his own, she was sure the dragon dog would be able to keep him safe.
She was too focused on thinking about how best to deal with the chain to put two and two together as to why there were skeletons falling out of the ship until a little while later.
Down below the wolf-dran pelted through the ship’s hold, an lovely selection pile of juicy bones held in its jaws while a veritable swarm of very, very, very angry glowing skeletons chasing it, who either ran after it and tried to grab it with their one remaining arm or did their best to crawl or one leggedly hop after it to do the same. This did not end well for them, as the twilight bone thief was agile as could be and lead them on a merry chase, dodging to and fro and, intentionally or not, matadoring several right of the edge of the ship as the limb lacking undead failed to compensate for their new weight distributions and went plummeting down onto the ice below.
Back up at the mast, Midna had given the ice a few good punches, and then thought of a better way to deal with this that involved less exertion. The less energy she burned on action, the more she had to keep herself warm after all. Plus her new plan would help with the cold problem in its own way.
”Goddesses, I can smell it through the mask. Who in their right minds would ever drink this stuff?” she complained as she emptied the bottle of dwarven rotgut all over the ice holding the chain, the incredibly alcoholic booze freezing on contact with the frozen water. But not for long. The princess summoned two weapons, in preparation for her cunning plan. The first was the clubba club, which she held in her shadow hand, ready to use it as a ball and chain again in the same manner that had proved so effective against her new chillfos minions. The other weapon she summoned was the smaller of her two knives. This little blade she pressed the flat of the blade of to a gloved palm and charged with lightning for a moment, and then with a thrust hammered a bolt of lightning bolt into the ice. It chipped away at it meekly… and also caused the frozen rotgut to ignite violently.
”Ahahaha yes, burn!” Midna giggled a little maniacally, pausing for a second or two to enjoy the heat of the fire she’d started, while letting it work away at the ice for a few moments, before winding up the clubba club and swinging it around in a 270 degree spin and sending it smashing into the ice, before turning and rotating it all the way round again a full 360 of momentum building in the opposite direction before hammered into the rotgut thawed ice once more, this time shattering it int a million pieces and sending a shower of burning ice all over the area.
Including the wooden boat.
It was both a good thing and a bad thing that Raz came out when he did. On the one hand the force of the chain breaking loose played havoc with everyone who wasn’t floating like Midna, causing both of the humans to both go plummeting towards the ground, with the princess able only to futilely try and chase them down towards the icky floor below while crying out in horror. Fortunately, the boy psychic proved to be full of yet more tricks and though his bubble left things far too close for comfort for Midna’s heart, it did save them from being shattered on the ground like the skeletons.
”Goddesses, that was too close” she called down to them and then landing down beside them to say ”I’m glad your both safe, but maybe don't stand on a mast while it's being hammered on next time?”
She was going to actually apologize for nearly killing them with her reckless plan next, but sadly that was when the other half of the consequences of her reckless plan caught up with her. Or rather, her Wolf-dran did, still hauling its bone based loot, and then promptly bumped its head into her back and tried to shove her away from the ship.
”Hey, what’s gotten into you? And what is with those bones that’s gross!!” she complained at first, turning to swat at its head, and only got it when she followed its snout and gaze when it looked pointed up at the glow of light coming from the ship.
There found the reason why it was a good thing Raz had left the ship when he had, because said ship was currently in the process of catching fire due to the almost napalm-like qualities of the scattered dwarven rotgut causing it to refuse to go out and managing to heat up and ignite even the frost bitten timber of the ancient ship.
”Oh… fuck” she swore, this bad enough that she forgot Sectonia’s comment about her unprincessly language for a moment, before mounting up and telling the others that ”Time to go!”
If it was any consolation, the rest of the yellow team’s battle with the creatures of the dark wouldn't be lacking for light much longer as the ancient vessel began to really burn as the trio of chain freers left it in the dust. Especially when those flames found some of the old black powder stores, because that was when the fireworks really started.
Fetzen
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Shadowheart
