Spirit absorbed: Tigran Sorceress (head) The host's beak has become shorter and more square, still still hard, but more of a snout, with sharp teeth inside. The eyes beneath the mask are leonine, and cat ears now exist beneath the two prongs of the host's hood. There are strips of fur among the scales on his head. In terms of personality, the host is somewhat more outspoken and egotistical. This spirit confers the Power Summon Wisp, allowing him to summon a Wisp. These sentient mana loci are capable servants, attacking with electricity while being immune themselves; they can teleport short distances, including through obstacles, and though weak to poison, they not only resist physical attacks but shock anyone who lands such a strike. This spirit also confers the Weakness Frost Weakness, increasing damage taken from ice and cold based attacks by 20%, as well as lowering resistance to the slowed or frozen statuses by a similar amount
1 refunded skill and 1 level up:
Sphere of Protection (Tigran Sorceress): Channels a sphere around a target friendly unit (either a single hero, or a group of minions) that slows down incoming physical attacks. The unit gains 80% Physical Damage Protection for 16 seconds, allowing them to (mostly) shug off mundane attacks. However this shield offers no protection against non physical damage, and so elemental attacks such as fire, electricity, etc. will not be hindered by this barrier.
A fairly substantial cost in mana and cast time prevents this from being spammable.
Magic Fist(Tigran Sorceress): Compresses magical energy in order to create a strong physical force comparable to a Trebuchet hurled rock. This attack forms next to or above the target, making it difficult to avoid.
Spirit absorbed: Nameless Spartan Deserter Rika's features have gotten a bit rougher and her hair shorter. She's gotten a default Recruit helmet with black, white, and red coloration, adorned with cat ears. Her personality has gotten somewhat geekier, with an interest in otaku culture, and a bit less loyal. This spirit confers the Power Partial Shielding, giving her an advanced Mjolnir shield that only covers her head. This spirit also confers the Weakness Headshot, which means that once her shields are broken, a single shot to her helmet from any precision weapon is fatal
Level Up: Power: Maneuvering Armor: Rika gains a set of spartan armor that covers just her chest and which comes in the same black, white, and red coloration as her new helmet. Along with extending her shielding down, also comes with an attached thrust pack that user perform a forward dash every 4 seconds. Useful for engaging, repositioning and dodging.
Level Ups: Holy Offense (B’giotahmo Bravha): Jr against the spell Repose, which inflicts sleep on an enemy for 30 seconds, and Stone, which rips rocks from the surrounding environment and then hails the foe with a shower of earth element damage.
Healer Basics Plus (B’giotahmo Bravha): Jr gains the spells Medica which heals himself and all allies in an circular aoe with a 15 yard radius, and Presence of Mind (usable every two minutes), which increases attack and casting speed by 20% for 15 seconds.
The first thing Jr did once everyone was on the train was put some of his new magics to work, the boy prince casting Medica a few times which pushed through all of the passengers of their carriage and fixed them all right up from any cat scratches, or worse, that they had received.
With that out of the way the Troop as a whole settled in for the public transport ride, enjoying the opportunity for a bit of rest before they got to this ‘under’ place. Unfortunately it turned out that the train did not actually end up taking them there, but instead to a spot that was above it.
”Guess you could call this the over, huh?“ Bowser Joked as they piled out of the train and into some worn down station that was not built for mass transit, if the limited surface access was anything to judge. The koopas took no part in that dinky little elevator, Bowser Mewoser scrambling up the wall while Kamek and Jr just flew up, leaving only Rika to to take up space on the various rides up.
Once everyone had ascended they all gathered up in a sad little town that was barely worth a look in the Troop’s collective opinion. So instead of taking a look around, the Troop trooped past the elderbug without a second thought and went to havea look down at what the unfriendly locals were also interested in: a massive, sprawling ravine.
”So, the Under’s down under all that somewhere then?” Jr asked as he raised a hand over his brows and spied down into the canyon and catching sight of a big ol dark pit all the way at the bottom. ”Probably that” he said as he pointed it out.
”I guess? Looks pretty rough going to walk there though, no, uh, direct path or anything down there” Rika said, before lifting up her gauntlets and deploying a pair of abyssal scout planes to go check it out. ”Ill see if I can find a good route” she explained as the two little aircraft hovered above her.
”I’ve got a new spell that will provide some excellent assistance in this situation” Kamek informed her, taking out his wand from a robe pocked. Rather than give it a wave, he instead pressed it rather gently forwards and then drew it back, somehow ‘pulling’ a few motes of raw mana from the ether. The wondrous raw magical potential likely caught the eyes of the numerous casters among the group, particularly when it did not get used up or fade away, but instead seemed to take on a life of its own.
As the little motes of light whispered to the caster, asking for his command, the magikoopa grinned to himself. The Sorceress may have fallen in the end, but her arrogance had not been without its merits. Her school of magic truly was masterful and full of nearly unlimited potential, and now that potential was all his. He could not wait to see how far he could push it.
”Go forth, and help Rika’s planes find us the best way down into the caverns” he commanded his latest creations. A sound like a mix of song and laughter came as a reply, before they took off, floating above or phasing through obstacles as together magic and machine worked together to devise an optimal route down into the pit.
”There we go, that should make things easier once they get back with some survey data. Now then, if we are going to go spelunking, it would be wise to pick up a thing or two for such an activity, yes?” Kamek suggested to the group at large, and got a slight agreement from the Troop.
They could, at the very least, likely make use of some extra light sources down there in the dark. Maybe some digging tools. They weren't going to need ropes or any other such navigation tools, other than maybe Rika, and her gauntlets made using such things tricky anyway, so she’d likely be getting carried if anti gravity gauntlets, shell jumping and new jet boosting couldn’t see her through.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
You have acquired: Charr Pirate Musket A somewhat primitive, somewhat fantastical smoothbore rifle with less-than-spectacular accuracy and reload time, but boasts the property of infinite ammunition. in the form of metal slugs
Therian Viral Rifle A long-barreled marksman carbine that utilizes compressed air to launch projectile syringes at high speed, long range, and high precision. The syringes can be loaded with a viral compound, which causes bothersome irritation on the skin around the infected point of biological targets, or a hyper-restorative compound that circulates healing medicine throughout the bloodstream. A cumbersome reload process and the limited number of syringes limit its frequency of use
Midna arrived too late to assist the bloody knife fight that Roxas and this Geralt guy had. She frowned a little at the bisection of one of the street cats that occurred right as she caught sight of them, but given the state of the pair, she could not blame the guy for acting as he did.
She could, however, blame him for the absolutely revolting striker he had apparently acquired. She had to stop briefly in her rafter traversal in order to clutch her stomach and press a hand over her mouth to avoid being sick upon seeing it. Not to mention smelling it even from on high. If anything got the cats off his back as he hauled the downed keyblade wielder, she thought, it was the stench of rotting oceanlife mixed with that of human remains rather than the threat of more violence.
Was she a hypocrite who had in her possession her own undead and psychic terror-cultists? Yes. But at least they didn’t stink.
At any rate, once she caught up and got on the train, she gave Geralt a look and then did her best to briefly explain things to their newest member, Roxas having been set into a state where he could be freed from his blinkers as part of his run in with the panther.
Fortunately he seemed to have remembered the basics, so she confirmed those details and then added some more:
”Yeah that is about it. Or, about it about who Galeem is anyway. It destroyed every reality, stitched them back together again into the world we are now living in, and then blinded everyone to the fact that it had done that. We call those still blind to the reality of the world, and to their own true past, the Galeeming. They are also compelled to put their all into any fight, and are more likely to get violent too, so be careful around them, OK?”
”We, meanwhile, are the seekers, and we, well, seek to destroy Galeem’s guardians so as to leave it vulnerable to direct attack. Taken down 4 already, but there’s 13 in all, so plenty more work to be done” she concluded, the princess leaning with her hands behind her head as she very casually explained this.
Then she had a thought, and pulled out one of the new rifles she had acquired, specifically the one she had gotten from the Therian. ”So I stole this from some cat who was trying to shoot you all, and, question, what do these symbols mean?” she held it up sideways and tapped at two icons next to a set of triggers, icons which were also found on a pair of canisters of green fluid on the gun, as she asked her question.
”One shoots healing stuff, and I think the other one is kind of nasty considering it did try and use it to attack but, uh, any idea which is which?” she asked.
If anyone was familiar with contemporary symbology, then the biohazard and medical plus symbols would have been obvious to them, but given the diversity of weird and wonderful worlds the party came from, there was no guarantee that someone with that knowledge was present.
Interestingly in a somewhat related fashion it turned out that the place they spilled out into was a modern looking town, full of numerous large buildings apparently used for the education of the youth for close to a combined 20 years of their lives. The princess found this very altruistic, and also wondered how the local lord or princess could afford such a thing, let alone how the common folk could afford to have their children attend for so long.
As interesting as the town was, it was not what they were here for, as she understood it, but rather a city called ‘Midgard’ which, as it turned out, was rather hard to miss, though the princess did at first not comprehend what she was seeing.
”Wait… That’s a city? Not a mountain or… or… or something? Goddess how in the world did anyone manage to build… all of that!” she declared in amazement once she found a little vantage point from which the city was visible. She took a few moments to just, acclimatize to the fact that mortal hands could apparently build something that big, and then turned her eyes to the vast stretches of land in between this town and there.
That was going to be a very long hike if they tried to take it on foot. Fortunately there were roads, if a bit ones that were rather snaky, but unfortunately their motor pool wasn't exactly the largest.
”I have a ride, but it fits three people comfortably, and even if we stack on in its not going to fit all of us I don’t think” she informed anyone who was listening, waving a hand and briefly showing off her warthog, the princess now rather wishing she had insisted on grabbing more vehicles or kept her technical from the races (she’d considered the warthog a direct upgrade).
”So, guess we’ll need to find more rides? Or maybe we can attach a coach wagon to the back, if we can find one” was her thoughts on that matter. It was certainly something she was going to look for. That and, well, just a map of the local area which might be handy for navigating from here to the city, something which she assumed would not be too tricky to get her hands on. These places of learning surely had libraries that might contain such a document, she thought, not considering that a simple bookstore would be a thing that would also exist in a town like this, one that might well sell local maps alongside its arrays of overpriced textbooks, unless she happened to run across one of those when the group went about exploring the town.
The Rirakuri, those misshapen tentacle blobs of the abyss, poured through the tunnels of the Labyrinthine City they had been created in, driven by one thing.
Hunger
The black mass of eyes and tendrils looked like a monstrous abomination, but there were minds there, not those of some feral pack. These, despite, their nightmarish appearance, where people.
In some cases, they were scouts, picked out by local leaders to seek out the surface their goddess had told them of, and to then bring its knowledge back down to the rest of them. In others, the front runners, had gone off on their own initiative, unknowingly trending the path of the [adventurer] as they sought out new sights and sounds. Others were refugees, fleeing violence in the depth.
Yet, ultimately, it was that raw basic need that drove them. Hunger. A hunger so deep it bordered on obsession, on addiction. For these creatures fed on souls, and truly, there was no fare sweeter than that essence of life, sucked from its body, fresh and virile.
Their goddess had brought them into a world where souls were bountiful, found in every stone, let alone every thing that might be described as alive. Yet the depths were mostly barren, and the fickle souls of stones were poor fare, bland and lacking in nutrition, and they did not renew themselves. Nor did the spirits of divinely crafted architecture, and though those were rich and nutritious, more than one fresh spawning of Rirakuri had ended their own existence by devouring the soul of the structures of the labyrinth they found themselves, only for those dead monuments to come crashing down upon them with vengeful ire.
Last of all, when it came to souls found down in the dark there were, of course, souls already eaten by other Rirakuri. Never mind that drinking all of the life force sustaining another Rirakuri was lethal to the victim.
There were murderous monsters stalking the deep now, and wars raged, between groups of seeking to consume each other’s stores of souls, yes, but also between those sudo-cannibal clans and those that had formed the first moral laws of the Rirakuri: to steal the souls of another was a sin.
Unless Rirakuri in question was a sinner of course, in which case it was fair game to ‘reclaim’ their stolen souls as a form of justice. Who was cannibal and who was upholder of the law, then, became rather difficult to discern.
Thus, the surface, a story, a fable, a promised land. The tendriled tide sought it, rising up, exploring the maze, seeking exits, and find them they did. But not all exist where created equal.
Many born in the east emerged from the castles surrounding the labyrinth’s exits, and found lands only touched by the lightest of divine brush, a wide, flat, featureless expanse covered in dry grasses and slim pickings when it came to wildlife, with only the odd herd of zebras galloping across the land in the distance. Others emerged in barren wind swept mountains or into unpopulated natural tunnels holding no life at all, only yet more sorry stones to sup upon.
Others were luckier, and came out even further east, finding the seas bountiful and flourishing, their tendrils forms taking perfectly to the salty waters. The luckiest of all emerged into the dark woods, a realm full of aged life and untold souls, living and dead.
Yet all of them did find one thing in common, and that was an ocean of ghosts drifting about, undisturbed since the dawn of time except for the passing of the boatman and his collecting of mortals. That service, slow as it was, had not the time to worry about the souls of everything else, and so here they sat, souls of beasts, plants, bugs, bacteria, stones and objects all, simply idly existing.
Waiting to be eaten.
The explorers who reached the surface immediately began to gorge themselves on this bounty, devouring the sea of souls, tendrils reaching out and plucking flavors untasted from the veritable buffet on offer.
Those in the darkwoods themselves would have thought themselves to be the most blessed and lucky among their kin, for the ancient wood was simply overflowing with spirits, and indeed they were the luckiest, all except, perhaps, for one group who ended up meeting a strange fate that would leave scars upon their kind’s psyche for all eternity.
These Rirakuri where simply doing as the others did, peartching upon the battlements of the castle like a horde of sea anemones, their tendrils reaching up and grabbing souls from the sea, gorging themselves on the delicious floating seafood and vegetation that was too dumb to realize what was going until it was too late, when they where rudely interrupted.
“Well well well, what’s all this then?” came a voice from atop a tower in the castle looking down at them all, and when the creatures turned (or formed) their eyes to see where it came from they beheld the form of the one they would soon come to know was Jeon Du Termas, god of these here woods. They only got to do so for a moment before he was gone in a flash, a gust of wind the only sign of his passing as he dashed down into the labyrinth he had created only a bevy ago.
The Rirakuri were left confused for a moment, and then as suddenly as he had vanished Jeon had vanished he returned right up close to one of them that was in the midst of slurping up a shark ghost.
“Tsk, you look away for a second and your labyrinth dungeon gets squatters,” the god harrumphed, before leaning in and looking the Rirakuri right in the eyes. Well. In an eye, it had too many to actually engage in a stare down. The rest of its eyes looked to and fro at its fellows, then at the speedy goat thing staring it down again and then, after a moment, its eternal craving insisted that it resume slurping on the shark again. So it did, awkwardly sucking on that spirit a bit like an ectoplasmic juicebox.
“Ew. Gross. You really are kinda disgusting looking, you know that?” Jeon said as he leaned back away from the monstrosity, only for his eyes to go wide when the form of the creature suddenly shifted, tendrils shifting and changing, growing, shrinking, intertwining and finally changing in color and texture till he was looking at a (larger) copy of himself.
Then, it said “is this… better?” to the shocked god, who looked around and saw that he other’s had copied this one and that he was now standing a small sea of doppelgangers.
He was silent for a moment, and then, to hide his discomfort at seeing this, joked ”you know, I think taking on the image of a god is probably blasphemy”
Unsurprisingly the Rirakuri did not see this as a joke, and so the god got to watch his own form collapsing into a horrific mass of tendrils and eyes in a dozen different ways as they fell to what counted as their knees as they begged for his forgiveness.
“Ah, jeez, that’s not. Urg” the god scratched the back of his head awkwardly and then said “Look, you are forgiven, and, uh, the you being horrible thing was a joke. Yeah” for which the tentacle creatures, or rather, the tentacle people, were forever grateful.
“So… Your deal is that you're tentacles, you shape shift and you... Eat ghosts?” the god asked, “did someone make you too clean up all the non mortal souls? Because if so I don't really get why they made you sentient. No offense”
The Rirakuri looked at one another, and then the one Jeon had first started down asked “Mortal souls?” with the tone of someone hearing about an interesting new type of food they would oh so like to try. Desperately want to try. The, slightly tipsy himself, god thought you could maybe best describe it as the tone of a gourmet alcoholic, which was concerning.
“Oook that is going to be a problem. So. I am going to cut this off at the chase and stop you being declared foe of all mortal kind, or being run over by an irate boatman” Jeon said, before telling them to “wait here for just a second” before dashing off for a second time.
He returned a few moments later holding the shoulder of a very nervous looking elf ghost (who he’d found conveniently nearby due to them spying on the god and the tentacle people) in one hand, and a rolled up sheet of paper in the other, and found that the Rirakuri had started eating again already.
“Yeesh. Ok. you lot have a problem, but whatever, I’m not here to fix that, just this” he said, presenting the elf to them.
“Um. ah. Hello-” pre-instructed elf started to introduce himself (as MacaronEye (named after a type of penguin) specifically) but got rudely interrupted by a tendril reaching out to grab him by the arm
“Ah!” he cried out in alarm as he got pulled towards the mass of eyes, tentacles and, worst of all, a spike toothed maw, which opened wide and bit off his arm, causing MacaronEye to scream “My god, help me!” in horror and pain, a thing he had not felt since he was alive.
That, fortunately, had always been the plan, as Jeon said “tch, disappointing” and stepped in, raised the rolled up paper (which had a detailed contract drawn up on it by an Umbral [pact broker] that boiled down to a self expanding list of mortal races, all of which where listed as ‘do not eat’ on pain of pain) and smacked the Rirakuri with it with divine power, repeatedly, whooping every one of its tentacles and then it’s finally ‘head’ in the space of a heartbeat.
Every Rirakuri, and it really was every Rirakuri everywhere, not just the ones here, flinched reflexively as they all were forced to empathize with their punished member. That Rirakuri let go of the now one armed ghost and curled up in a ball of pain, tendrils wrapping around its moaning form as it started experiencing just the worst hangover imaginable.
“And let that be a lesson to you all. No. Eating. Mortals” he told them “because it’ll now suck… also its highly unethical anyway, but this should teach you all nice and quick”
“Un…ethical?” one asked carefully
“Yes. a thing it is bad to do. You have those rights. You know, don’t kill others… whatever you are”
“We’re Rirakuri… and, we have a rule, which is don’t kill-steal other Rirakuri’s soul-food” that same one offered after a moment of thought
“Oh. well. Here, just extend that rule. Mortals have the same rights as a Rirakuri, and so you can’t steal their souls either. Got it?” Jeon suggested
“But… soul-food is soul-food. We eat. That is how it is” another one replied
“Ok, let me put it another way. If you eat mortals, they will get mad, gang up, and try to kill you in, I assume, the same way you treat ‘soul-food’ stealers” he tried, but they still did not seem convinced. A few even chuckled at the thought of soul-food being a threat.
“Here, let me demonstrate” he said, before turning to MacaronEye and saying “hey you, your mad that that one at your arm right”
The elf made an affirmative noise before adding “I mean I’m kinda mad that you let it do it too” and then swiftly biting his tongue
“Good good, let the anger flow through you, and then take this” Jeon encouraged him, while offering the ghost a wooden stick. He looked confused for a moment, then reached for it with his remaining despite the fact that he shouldn't have been able to touch it, and then his eyes litt up as he heard a level up notification in his head for the first time since he died, and he could suddenly grip the stick.
The new [poltergeist] grinned viciously, and then did what came naturally, which was turn on the hangover stricken Rirakuri and proceed to beat the crap out of the eater of his arm.
“And there you go. Now imagine nations of people coming after you. Not worth the hassle right? And if you go around eating their souls, you make yourselves the enemies of every mortal, not to mention the gods who made them. And you don’t want that now right?
“N-no?” one preoffered
“Good lad” Jeon said, patting it on the tentacles, before adding “now, let it never be said that I’m not willing to use a carrot as well as a stick, so… you lot are explorers right? Traveling out into the unknown, finding new things, going on an adventure right?”
“Y-yes?” the one he had pet replied
“Well it just so happens that I’m the god of adventurers, so here, let me introduce you all to the wonderful world of levels as a reward for sitting though my lecturing on ethics” he told them, and snapped his fingers, prompting a little notification to ring through all of the present Rirakuri’s minds
“Now then, with that, I’ll be off. You might be squatting in my labyrinth now, but that isn’t going to stop me finishing up what I started and making it more interesting” Jeon said, dusting off his hands and turning to go, giving them a parting “you lot play nice now” before dashing off down into the labyrinth once more
The Rirakuri [adventurers] were left behind, standing there in silence interrupted only by the thunk thunk thunk of the [poltergeist] thwacking one of their number. That sound gradually slowed as MacaronEye realized he had been left alone with the soul eaters.
“I, uh,” he said as the stick slipped through his spectral hands, the anger needed to allow him to interact with the mortal world slipping away and turning to worry and fear “I have friends watching. They’ll know. Besides, I taste icky right? And you don’t want to be unethical, yeah?” he said as he backed off slowly. Slowly. And then made a break for it, sprinting away from those many ire filled eyes.
There was a long pause as they processed this turn of events internally, punctuated by the moans of their beaten and hung over fellow.
“God banned us from soul-food. Now we starve again” one eventually said, like a cat who’s food bowl was empty in the middle. They got a well deserved smack from another who rightly pointed out that there was still an absurd amount of soul-food to be found. They hadn't even seen a mortal soul till being introduced to one after all and yet had eaten what felt like more soul-food in that time than they had in their entire lives.
“So, we need to go back and warn the boss right?” one concluded after they had finished mocking the idiot
“You can go, but not all of us. Much left to explore on surface” another said
“You mean eat” the first added, knowing what the other really wanted
“Also eat. And spawn. With so much soul-food, we can have young at last. I always wanted some little ones” a third said
There was a ring of affirmation, they could indeed now spawn many many more Rirakuri. Many more. Far more than the forest could support once the ghosts were all gone, though this would not occur to their kind till later.
“Also much to learn about mortals” a fourth said suggested
“Why learn? Not soul-food any more” the one who had claimed they would starve retorted
“Dangerous” the fourth replied, pointing at their beaten associate.
Another round of affirmations
“So, how learn?” one asked
“Obvious” the fourth replied, before its tendrils rose up, transforming again as it took on a familiar shape that, like the Rirakuri, had a mass slightly larger than a human. “Walk as one, be one, meet others,” said an elf identical to MacaronEye in appearance before concluding its objectives with “and learn their weaknesses”
The Rirakuri, the shapeshifting tentacle people of the abyss, send scouts out their labyrinth city home due to a lack of souls found within it (to such a degree that some have turned to stealing the eaten souls from others bellies). They pop out all over. Some pop out in the darkwoods and are found by Jeon. he learns a bit about them, curses them with hangovers if they eat mortals, teaches them levels, and also makes [poltergeists] so that the ghosts can fight back if they have too.
He then goes to add stuff to the labyrinth, while the Rirakuri he has lectured resolve to report back, spawn more of themselves, and turn into elves to infiltrate mortal society to learn more about them (such as their weaknesses).
Jeon: 5mp-5ap
2 mp: curse the Rirakuri so that if they eat mortal souls they instantly get really bad hangovers
1 mp: create/teach the [poltergeist] class, which ghosts can gain and which allows them to interact with the mortal world in the way a poltergeist would when they are angry. Ment to let them protect themselves from soul eaters, will likely result in the odd vengeful haunting.
wordcount: 1,333 (+3) 1,123 from part in koopa troop post (+2) Midna: level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////(100/80) Location: Twilight Town Warp Charges: 0
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
Midna, who’s destination was the dystopianscape via the black line rather than the Under via the purple, had split off from the troop’s route well before they even got to the race circuit, and so was ignorant to all that went down there. Instead she had her own path to follow. Specifically she took to the walkways, rooftops and any other vertical space she could fly, teleport, or leap too, which gave her complete immunity to cat hordes below and a nice overview of the battlefield. Such as, for example, of queen Sectonia heading off on her own, sailing through the skies and becoming a brief target for a number of shooters till they figured out she could just take the shots, and moved onto other targets.
Well, Midna thought, it looked like she had something to deal with, and that was clearing out the spiders and the cobwebs up in the rafters. Or getting the cats down out of the tree. Or. well. Some other metaphor for going up high and punching some sharp shooter kitties in the face.
To get there she blinked from shadow to shadow and then up into the rafters to her first target. The twilight princess’ eyes, adapted over the generations of her ancestors to the dark of her home, made spotting the sharp shooters' secluded shadowy sniping spots ironically a fair bit easier than if they had been in some brightly lit spot that would have hurt their eyes.
The first of her targets was some hunched over brutish looking cat that, if she had asked, she would have found out was a member of a species known as the Charr. She did not ask questions however, and instead leapt out of the shadows, interdimensional ax raised to strike down the pirate sniper.
They turned on her with a growl, keen cat ears having heard something, and raised their weapon to block the blow. Her new blade’s hilt hit the weapon, but rather than be discouraged she hooked the blade around it while stabbing her spiky shield forwards into the cat’s hand, forcing them to let go one of her handholds on the weapon and allowing Midna to wrench the it free of the charr’s grip.
Midna’s grin at having disarmed the sniper lasted till the Charr punched her in the (masked) face with their good hand in retaliation, forcing the princess to stumble back. Still, she had the cat on the ropes. Or so she thought before, first, a shot rang out and hit the Charr in the side, delivering a payload of rapid regeneration medicine to the sniper that fixed her cactus spiked arm, and second, another one of the snipers kicked down the door carrying a shotgun while their rifle was slung over their back.
”uh oh” Minda intoned as she realized that there might be some kind of solidarity between assassins, or at least a desire to not get picked off one by one.
at least their worrying about me instead of shooting at the others she thought to herself as she took a half step back to avoid an incoming arrow from a fourth sniper who leapt into their balcony party, while she also flicked a finger and summoned a pair of chilfos strikers to bodyblock the shotgun blast from the adorably small super persian sniper.
The pair of icey undead stepped forwards to try and impale the cute cat, which she felt really bad about, but things were kinda desperate with how outnumbered she was. She raised her shield and blocked the next arrow, causing the archer to flinch as the Sabo Shield reflected half the damage it would have done right back at the sniper via a launched spine, and then sicked her wolfos on the pirate charr.
The one eyed cat had been in the process of picking up her gun to try and shoot the princess, only to have to use it to block again, the twilight beast’s jaws being filled with the length of the barrel, which it then bit down onto. While the wolfos gripped the gun and wrestled with the charr for the weapon, Midna locked blades with the archer, who had drawn a short sword to do battle with her.
Another shot from the medical sniper rang out and struck the archer just as Midna was getting the better of her wounded foe, giving them a burst of vitality to keep up the clash of sword vs ax.
Behind her minda summoned her other two chilfos to keep the persian busy, the cat getting very frustrated that having to dodge roll out of the way of yet more spear thrusts.
Just then the wolfos won the contents of strength and ripped the gun out of the Charr’s hands. The one eyed pirate made a grab to try and get it back, but the wolfos just jumped back while growling, and then hurried over to Midna with the stick it had fetched. The archer backed off as the wolfos, not wanting to fight two vs one, and shouted “Help Kajite stupid” at the now weaponless charr.
Said charr took one look at the ax wielding princess, and her many minions, and then down at their empty paws and decided “screw this, she can keep it” and made a run for it, much to the indignity of the other snipers who had come to help her.
”Hey get back-” the princess started to shout, only to realize that: ”wait… I don't need to kill you or free you,” while grabbing the musket from her wolfos’s mouth because she had just worked that all she had to do was: ”just to get rid of these''
The musket vanished into the twilight realm, meaning that even if the Charr came back, she would no longer be a long ranged threat to the party.
The princess grinned toothily at the remaining snipers, and then rushed forwards, just narrowly avoiding some kind of viral payload coming from the medic sniper. She dodged to the side of the khajiit she had been attacking’s own blow, and then swung her axe down, narrowly missing the archer. Or so it seemed, for there came a snap and a twang as the axe cleaved through the end of the archer’s bow, leaving her, functionally, as an archer no more.
She turned away before the Kajite worked out what she had done and lashed out with a shadow hand that could have splatted the short persian, but instead the hand paused above her and then carefully pinched the barrel of its sniper between two fingers and then crushed it completely flat, rendering it useless.
”And that’s me done with you'' she declared, hopping into a shadow before she got blasted by a shotgun, leaving the two briefly confused and then incredibly mad about their broken equipment.
A heartbeat later and she appeared next to the final cat sniper, the one that had been supporting the others with his healing rifle. The therian also tried to swing his gun around on the appearing from nowhere Midna, senses as sharp as the others, but he did not manage to get a shot off before she slammed a shadow hand into him and pinned him to the floor.
”I’ll be taking that'' she told him as she patted the gun and sent it to the twilight ream before rather rudely searching his pinned form and pulling out a number of canisters marked with either pluses or biohazard symbols. Symbols she did not recognise the meaning of.
”Wait. Hmm. healing remedy… or deadly poison'' she asked, holding them up one of these for him to see, which got her just a nonverball hiss. So she shrugged and said ”Eh I’ll just ask someone else'' before stepping back and vanishing once more, sniper threat dealt with, and with 0 casualties too.
She felt pretty good about that as she skipped through the shadows to catch up with the others.
Before the gang set out for another adventure, flashes of light blasted repeatedly, as the Troop did some rearranging of spirits, and Midna upgraded one of her minions.
Notable spirit consumed: B’giotahmo Bravha The host has gotten taller with more humanoid proportions. His tail is longer, thinner, and has a mix of blue and orange fur running along the top of it. The host's hair is the same, a mix of blue and orange, and is a bit longer, with cat ears poking out the top. The host has a more human face, and is now wearing a white long coat with red lining. In terms of personality, the host is more calm and gentle. This spirit confers the Power Healer Basics. As long as the host has some sort of staff-like casting catalyst, he can cast Cure to restore a burst of HP, Esuna to cleanse minor status effects, and Lucid Dreaming to gradually restore a third of his own MP. It also confers the Weakness Dedicated Healer, decreasing the power of offensive magic by 20%
Notable spirit consumed: Cia (Head) The host's hood has taken the shape of Cia's hat, with the pointed end now going off in two directions. The scales on his face have changed color, texture, and hardness, taking on the likeness of Cia's mask, including new 'armor' plating over the top of the host's beak, which is now sharper and longer. Beneath the hood are some tufts of white hair. His glasses are now thinner, rectangular, and red-tinted. The host also has Cia's necklace. Powers and Weakness are the same
New Striker spiritbound: Tonberry An enigmatic green critter, small in stature but inherently menacing. It has a long activity period, but also a long cooldown. When summoned, it will slowly shuffle toward its target in order to use Chef's Knife, an attack that deals immense damage. It's also very tanky, so a lot of damage will need to be dealt to it to deal serious damage to Kamek. However, its slow speed and lack of stealth means that it will be difficult for it to get into stabbing range against an opponent that is not immobilized. This makes Tonberry best used as a critical attack in conjunction with stun or down on an enemy
Spirit absorbed: Rampaging Cyborg The host is more bearlike in terms of body shape, with a thicker torso. Metal plates also adorn the legs, head, and lower back. In terms of personality, the host is more brutish and less intelligent. This spirit confers the Power Metal Wolf Chaos, granting a cannon on its back. The cannon can fire projectiles loaded into it at high enough speed to explode on impact. If not manually loaded with actual ammunition, it will extract a chunk of the host's flesh at the cost of HP to use instead/ It also grants the Weakness Powered. If not powered by an energy cell, the host's cyborg parts remain inert, rendering the gun unusable and lowering its movement speed
”Ahhh, that’s better” Kamek sighed as he, and it was he again, stretched and enjoyed being himself again. Then there was a crack and an ”ak, my back” as the return of his old age caught up with him.
Jr meanwhile was leaning out over the rim of his clown car while looking back and admiring his new longer cat tail, flicking it to and fro with a great deal of amusement. It was fortunate that he’d up gunned and upscaled his clown car because his slightly lankier proportions that he’d gotten, presumably due to having the fusion in more than just one place, would have been pretty cramped if it was still boy sized. Then he pulled out his paint brush, spun it around and pointed a finger at Kamek as his new cloak fluttered dramatically and cast ”Esuna!” causing a light blue aura to flare up around the mage before it burst away and took something with it.
”Oh. Oh my. hmmm” Kamek said after the light dissipated, patting his shell and then standing straight once more ”Well I don’t think you fixed my old bones, but you did make it stop hurting for the moment. Thank you yonge master, that was quite thoughtful of you”
”I, uh, well…” Jr foundered, not really knowing where that had come from despite the fact that he’d talked Kamek into giving him the power specifically so he could help and not get stuck in the same situation he had with Anneta, and so defended his ego with ”I am pretty smart for working out that that would help, yeah?”
He’d also gotten it because it would let him help out his minions when they were battling, and also so he could heal them after fights like the one he had had with Bede.
Speaking of minions, Midna had modified her own one to help herself using one of the ones the mercenaries had acquired, and had gotten some kind of abominable bear pendran robot wolf hybrid thing which had lost any cuteness despite still having it’s Shiba like tail, but was just the toughest dogo now, with armored plates and scales adorning it’s body all over.
Oh and it also had a massive cannon which the princess hopped up onto the back to inspect while the dumber cyber wolfbeardran huffed mechanically below her. She pulled open a hatch and found what, based on her limited knowledge, looked like a chamber for ammo, and an odd round one at that. She scratched her head, wondering what the shells were like and where they even were, before she found just the tiniest inscription of instructions handily scrawled just above it, which depicted a load of junk being shoved into the back of the bear’s turret, before same said junk was blasted out the front.
”Wait, so it can just fire anything?” she asked, before pulling an aluminum tube out of the twilight realm, putting some electricity in it, and then finally popping it in the chamber. Then she shut the door, and there came some mechanical sounds before the hatch popped back open again.
”Guess it’s loaded..?. Is it?” she asked her minion, and got a growl of, probably, confirmation
”Right, so, like the train then. Two ‘shells’ one in this chamber, on in the, uh, shooty bit” she guessed, before saying ”Well, only one thing to do now” and then doing it.
There was an electrical sound and a wumf as whatever non gunpowder based system the cannon had for launching its improvised ammo went off, followed by the thunderous sound of kinetic force and thunder striking as the tube smashed into the ground a ways off hard enough that it exploded.
That certainly got some attention, notably that of Jr came over to admire the mecha beast and then, once he had had it explained to him, quickly got to work on an idea he had to give her infinite ammo. His ingenious idea turned out to be a jar (the most valuable of items) with a bit of goop from his magic paintbrush at the bottom and enough space in the rest of the jar left for a single swoopin stu to form out of said goop.
”Then you just grab this” he explained, picking the stu up by its weird head tentacles, before shoving it into the chamber ”and use it as ammo. Then you wait a bit and boom! More ammo”
Sure enough, after a little bit, another stu formed, ready to be loaded.
”Well, if i ever run out of junk, guess i can fire these chuchu at people” Midna said doubtfully as she picked up another and shook it about
”Hey, I bet they'll be really powerful” Jr insisted and, sure enough, when they launched the poor thing off it made quite a splash. Literally.
”Huh, that’s a lot of slime. Does it hurt people or something?”
”Yup, and it comes in three flavors. What do you want, poison, electricity or fire?” jr asked, and was just a bit disconcerted at how quickly and a little unhinged Midna replied with ”Fire!”
And that was the last bit of tinkering and tweaking they had time for before it was time to head off to the action. Unfortunately for them, the action decided to come to them ahead of (train) schedule.
They headed down into the metro, Midna walking so as to not upset the kitties (and finding herself just a bit heavier in her steps which was a little disconcerting), and found themselves back in the bizarre and brilliant Nyakusa Metro.
”Oh wow. There’s so many cats, it’s like Lake Lapcat up in here. Or down in here” Jr marveled, before joking ”Guess I fit right in!” in reference to his new ears and tail. Then there came a little jingle as Bowser clipped a bell to his collar and joined in with his son’s a-mew-sment with a ”hey, me too” which got them both gawfing and giggling.
Whether this was culturally insensitive to the cats of the metro would remain a mystery, because right that very moment they all turned hostile anyway (those that did not turn and flee at any rate) as rush hour set in and prompted the cats seeking a quick payday to rush them at the behest of the local crime boss and, of all things, another helmeted figure.
”What? Oh come on! Another one? Is this just going to be a thing now?!” Jr complained, recognizing the evil doer’s attire, but there wasn’t really much time to do anything about that because, as Princess Peach rightly assessed, it was time to go, and go fast.
Preferably without massacring every stray cat they came across.
While some, like Midna upon the back of her newly summoned wolfos (the cats were trying to kill her, no time for sensitivity) took to the rooftops to avoid the masses of the kitty swarm, the troop stuck to the streets and walkways, Bowser using his shell mounted as a mix of water cannon and squirt bottle to clear a path.
Rika sprinted along after him, flanked by a pair of shadow clones of the king acting as bouncers, while up above hovered Kamek and jr, with the prince having Dazzle aid his father’s riot control with his own water attacks.
It was somewhat slow going, but it worked quite well, and then perhaps too well when the suddenly burst out of the crowd and into a wide open plaza, the center of which rapidly cleared before them. Well, before them and at the behest of a cat-eared likatu floating around above them, which signaled something the cats were familiar with, but that Bowser just took to be a signal of his own success.
”Gahahaha, that’s it, run kitties!” Bowser laughed, spraying a poor unfortunate strangler before storming out onto the wide avenues of the plaza, stepping out between the two fountains that dominated the large room and pausing there in-order to try and work out where they needed to go next to catch their train.
”Hey, do you hear that? It sounds like… roaring?” Rika suddenly asked, causing Bowser’s ears to perk up, and indeed, he did hear that sound, right before the source, or rather sources burst onto the scene.
A mass of metal and fury driven by a kung fu catgirl suddenly burst into the plaza and gunned straight for them. Upon spotting this Bowser grabbed Rika and pulled her aside as the hotrod careened towards them, meaning it only slammed into and road killed one of his clones instead of the ship girl who had been standing next to it.
”Hey, watch where you're driving!” he roared after the catgirl. If that wasn't enough, the corridor she had come careening out of wasn’t done divulging roaring machines as hot on her heels came a whole bevy of motorized followers inducing:
It wasn’t just mechanical roaring that came either, because there were also a small host of sabertooth tiger pulled Charioteers the most prominent among which was a pharaoh looking sorceress who used a lightning firing staff to actively attack the troop instead of just trying to run them down, the sorceress blasting sparks up at the two fliers, forcing them to take evasive action.
These various drivers came careening after the lead driver, taking their own pass at the Bowser as he held Rika aloft. None of them had the same metal mass as the lead driver to just ram the stalwart king, but they did have gangs of street cats riding with them, double dash style, who swung at them with improvised weapons which hurt a bit, but not nearly as much as the hail of gunfire that came from the Spartan’s quadbike mounted rifles, which hammered Bowser in the chest.
After they had zoomed past the king put down Rika and clutched his chest
”Gah! That hurt. But at least it's over” Bowser complained after Rika thanked him for the save. Kamek was in no way so sure, because from up on high where had flown to avoid being zapped he could see the true shape of the plaza. Two large fountains, one at each end, gave the room a somewhat 8 like structure of pathways, ones, now that he cared to look, he saw where they were marred with skid marks, both old and new.
”Oh, no” he said upon realizing what was going on, before shouting down to the ground pounders ”Look out sire, we've wandered onto some kind of street racing circuit!”
Jr had figured the same thing. Only instead of analyzing the environment he had just kept an eye on the races as they all went drifting round the outside of one of the fountains and came looping back around the top of the figure of 8, ready for another pass.
”Here they come again!” he called out in warning
”Run!” Rika cried out as she turned to do just that, sprinting away as the races came bearing down on them once more. Bowser and his one remaining cone turned to do so too, only for said clone to also become roadkill as the kung fu catgirl ran it down as well and then yelled “get off the road!” as she blazed by.
”Up here up here!” Jr shouted ahead of them, waving his arms floating above a high wall that led to a walkway above the plaza, which some of the cats were using to watch the race/bounty claiming attempt.
As the rest of the racers bore down on them Bowser and Rika made a mad dash, and then both made a great leap up onto the balcony just in time to avoid a second drive by beating. Cats scrambled out of the way to avoid the king’s landing, but then immediately re-coalesced to beat and claw at the pair, the nimble blighters avoiding retaliation frustratingly well.
”Gah!!!” ”Ow ow ow, jerks!”
”Up here, up here!” Jr called out again, floating above a row of stores lining the avenue heading towards their desired trainline.
With another leap and a bound, the pair got themselves above the vagrant packed streets and could, at last, take a breather.
Or so they thought
As jr used his new white mage magics to patch up his pappa and ship-girl companion, two of the racers showed themselves to be a bit more committed to the bounty than the rest, and they where, perhaps unsurprisingly, the ones who had brought ranged firepower to a street race.
A grappling hook line shot up and tethered to the railing of the balcony, and up came the cat eared spartan, using their momentum to launch themselves up into the air and performing another grapple once they saw where their targets were to bring them closer.
A moment after that, a flash of light came from below, and then the sorceress acceded up upon the back of a bizarrely fluffy griffon with eyes on its wings.
The Spartan immediately opened fire, while the sorceress called out to some of the cat mooks “fight for me, and I shall give you stretch of arms and body that these fools won’t stand a chance!” while dramatically brandishing her staff.
Rifle fire pinged off of Bowser’s shell as he gave the troop cover with his body, while at the same time a set of brave or foolhardy cats clambered up onto the roof, and where rewarded for their daring when the sorceress followed up on her words, waving her wand and engulfing their improvised weapons with a shimmering shocking star filled aura and their bodies with a glowing spheres of protection
With the spartan moving to flank them, the empowered cats surrounding them far more daringly, and the sorceress flying above them on her swift steed, there was going to be no escape
“We have you cornered, you little scurrying rats” the sorceress gloated “Give up now, and maybe we’ll let you live just long enough for us to collect that reward for your oh so valuable heads”
”Ha, as if! You know what they say about cornered rats? Well cornered koopas are ten times worse!” Bowser shouted back before thrusting a finger forward dramatically and commanding ”So no more mr nice guys! Koopa Troop take them down!”
Rika, who had never really understood why they weren't just slaughtering the cats, was first to open up, targeting two cats and unleashing a volley of fire at each. Jr meanwhile deployed his car’s wrecking ball and swung at another, Kamek blasted one with a fireball from his wand and Bowser himself just tried to punt the closest cat to him off the roof with a steel toe capped boot.
Unfortunately, the shimmering spheres of protection worked as advertised. Shells and bullets thudded harmlessly into the barriers, while the wrecking ball and foot strikes were soffend from crushing blows to light knock back.
Emboldened by their seeming invincibility, the cats lunged forwards, raising baseball bats, chains and a folding chair, all engulfed with starlit power that did a mix of elemental damage on top of testing Bowser and Rika’s electrical defenses as they tried to inflict shocks on them. A test Bowser failed spectacularly due to the water typing he’d gained from one of his pokemon spirits, electricity coursing through his nerves and slowing his movements greatly and making him vulnerable to further electric damage. Such as more shocks.
One of the cats, however, had not joined in the beat down. Instead that cat had been sent running away, his pants on fire, as Kamek’s fireball had cut right through the sphere of protection.
”Burn them, your royalnesses!” he called out, but unfortunately Bowser was getting zapped too much to follow through, and Jr was too concerned about his dad to go on the offensive.
”Esuna!” the prince called out, using his new magics to relieve his father, only to be forced to duck down a moment later when gunfire rattled his clown car chassis. The spartan was, after all, still out there, and he was taking potshots at the fliers, forcing them to concentrate on their own survival rather than helping the ground troops. Which meant the cats could just reshock Bowser with more blows.
Then came some far too close range explosions as Rika started furiously punching cats with her gauntlets. The actual blows did little but the impacts did splatter them with slime that detonated into fiery chemical explosions a few moments later.
It was at that point the cats realized they weren't invincible, causing some to bail, and the rest to be more evasive, avoiding Rika’s big swings and frankly just the girl herself entirely, focusing instead on the big easy target.
This opened Rika up to start trading fire with the spartan, the ship girl blessing off gun and cannon fire across the street, only to have the spartan activate some jet boosters on their suit to launch them to the side and out of the way of her shots. They then returned fire, which Rika used a combination of gauntlet and hull blade blocking in conjunction with her bullet slowing sunglasses to avoid the worst of.
Free from suppressing gunfire due to the shooter being engaged in a gunfight with Rika, Bowser’s family could now help hi., Jr recasting Esuna on his pappa while Kamek summoned copies of the king to help him. Three swaths of flame burst out, sweeping over the cats and sending them, in a manner reminiscent of a certain plumber, running and jumping away while clutching their burnt butts.
”Ha! What are you going to do now that your help is gone!” a beaten but still in one piece Bowser gloated up at the Soruceress, only for a hypnoytic swirl around the heads of his two shadowy dopplegangers
“Why, then I’ll just take yours!” she replied, as the two clones turned on the original
”Aw not again!” the king moaned as he was assailed by foes wearing his image for at least the second time in his life.
“As for you, little wizard, let me show you how little your magic compares to the power of a sorceress!” the woman declared, brandishing her staff dramatically.
”We shall see” Kamek replied, brandishing his wand as the magic duel began in the air above the rest of the troop.
Below, Jr and Rika were both contending with the lone Spartan, who was causing them no end of trouble. Between grappling hook and maneuvering jets they were highly mobile, while a personal energy shield and a deployable energy barricade meant that even when they did clip them with their own shots the futuristic warrior could simply take cover and renew their own defenses without getting even a scratch on the paintwork of their armor.
Meanwhile, the pair only had evasiveness and Jr’s new healing magics to keep themselves alive, and the latter was rapidly running out. He’d already used lucid dreaming to start restoring his mp, and if they did not finish this fast they were dead meat.
Still, the amount the battle had dragged on did have one advantage on the Troop’s side:
”All out assault, next shot” Rika called out to the prince, but holding out on unleashing it in case he could come up with a plan, and come up with a plan he did.
”Hold it. Hold it. Now!” Jr commanded the next time the spartan deployed their wide forcefield barrier.
Rika pulled the trigger, and an impossible wave of shells blasted out of her cannon from that single pull, annihilating the barrier and sending the spartan running. Then grappling, only to have to jet boost another way when Jr had Dazzle fire off a slew of explosive bubbles.
At this point, with all the sparten’s tools spent, Jr could have tried to gun him down, but the shield was still up and it would give their foe enough time to find cover. So he didn’t use a fireball, or his new crank operated machine gun. No instead he launched out Hook, who soared through the air, hooked around the spartan's waist and hauled them closer. Because he was pretty sure their foe had no major melee capability to speak of.
He was somewhat wrong in that assessment, as Jr got a rifle butt to the face for his efforts, allowing the Spartan to escape the grapple. They did not escape the second, however, as Rika slammed a gauntleted fist home, breaking his shield, hacked down their foe’s gun with her hull blades, and then introduced hyper advanced armor to the industrial tool attached to the front of her rifle.
Metal and then a person screamed as the chainsaw bayonet tore through everything, and then there was silence and ash.
Behind them, Bowser wrestled with his dopplegangers, but though he was hurt, these stooges could not stand up to the OG Koopa king. Ironically, this was because they were clones of his original form, while the king himself had an absolute pile of enhancements on top of their base forms. Cat and power claws racked at one to his side, as it came in and then when it grappled him the king deployed guns from the side of his shell and blasted it straight in the gut, causing it to dissipate.
The second didn't even last that long, as Bowser fired up his kinetic strike module and punched it clean off of the roof and into the crowds of kitties below.
He was in the midst of celebrating his victory when a fist of magic energy formed and then smashed into him.
”You witch! Focus on me” Kamek called at his magical nemesis, or rather, 5 kameks called it, before they all added ”If you can” tauntingly.
“Humf. I don’t need to, you are just that far beneath me” the sorceress huffed, before swooping forwards and trying to have her griffon mount claw Kamek and his indistinguishable clones, only for them to scatter, blasting at her as they went, and then form back up again a ways away.
“Coward!” She cried out, before meyowling in alarm as gunfire clipped at her mount’s wings as Rika, having finished sawing her foe in half, turned on the one remaining one while Jr rushed to aid his hurt Pappa.
“On second thoughts, I think your heads are beneath me. Others are certainly more valuable than your ugly vissages” she decided, before hypocritically beginning to turn tail and run.
”Oh no you don’t. You set this cauldron a boiling, you deal with the consequences when it overflows!” Kamek called after her
“Be quiet” the sorceress yowled as she backed off, retreating strategically while covering herself with blasts of lightning from her staff and summoned phantasm warrior who formed a defensive shield wall between her and the troop, their ethereal nature allowing them to shrug off Rika’s gunfire much the same way the barriers had let the cats do the same.
”No, you” Kamek retorted childishly, or at least that was what it seemed like right up until a gunshot rung out from Quiet (one of Kamek’s strikers)‘s rifle, the expert sniper placing the bullet right between her guards, shields, past the griffon mount’s wings and head, and right between the sorceress's eyes
She dropped without a final word, ash and spirit falling onto her steed’s back. The summoned beast and warriors went wild at the death of their master, charging forward with reckless abandon, but without her magical support they were quickly cut down.
Being magical constructs, they left no spirits, but the troop did retrieve the sorceress herself, and the one of the spartan. Oh and also the two street cats Rika had blown up. The ship girl pocketed her own kills without comment, while Kamek took the sorceress’s spirit that her steed had helpful delivered to them in its death charge.
They took a few moments to get Bowser back on his feet and more or less in one piece, and then set off once more before any other determined hunters or racers could come after them, leaving the street circuit behind as it turned from bounty hunt to actual race.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
After the troop came her majesty Sectonia, whom everyone but Rika knew. The ship girl’s impression was that she was amusingly similar to Bowser. The king himself meanwhile got a bit of a nasty shock upon seeing that she had the potentially multiverse annihilating chaos heart in her possession.
That was going to need watching. By Kamek. Who Bowser handed the responsibility off to immediately.
Next up were a pair of bots who were new to Midna. The princess became ever so slightly envious of the excess of magical healing the other party had apparently had (a whole two sources), but that was about all she learned about Blazermate, and a little inkling of her personality from her enthusiastic descriptions of abilities. The second bot, Susie, who sounded oddly similar to Sectonia it had to be said, was mostly all business, as befitting the business bot, but the cute flirt with the oblivious Bowser threw everyone else for an absolute loop.
Next up, the pair of street fighters. The first, Karin, gave quite the impressive hype up of herself, while poor Sakura was a bit of a flop in contrast. Well, other than the 40 pounds of hot dogs part, though Midna had no idea what those were, and so she mainly spent the short intro suffering secondhand embarrassment for the poor woman.
After that was Geralt, followed by Pit, a pair who could not have been more contrasting if they tried. A grizzled veteran who certainly knew his stuff by the looks of things, and even if he hadn’t been able to talk the talk, Minda would have still assumed he was good based on experience alone. You did not, she expected, grow old as a monster hunter if you did not know your stuff.
Pit meanwhile was all youthful energy, and yet he also claimed to be experienced as well, which Midna felt a bit dubious about till she remembered he’d been in the smash tournament, and an old enough hand at that to have been through the ordeal that had apparently happened during the one before she had started taking part. The little display of his floating weapons certainly helped build her confidence in him as well, and over all, by the end he left her with a good impression.
Next, Omari, who Jr stuck his tongue out at ever so maturely. The rest of the troop where a bit mixed, Kamek feeling a touch guilty about bringing him along, both for what had happened and the grief Omari was getting as a result. Bowser meanwhile was quietly backing his son’s opinion of the other boy, but mostly leaving his own boy’s budding rivalry to its own devices, while Rika didn’t really get what the big deal was due to a lack of immediate empathy for anyone involved in the grandpa stabbing. If she stopped to think about it, she would have supposed she did not like him because he made Jr angry. But there were plenty more introductions to go, so she did not dwell on it.
Midna had no knowledge of said grandpa stabbing, though she would have both disproved of the act and yet would have also noted from experience that you couldn’t save everyone when lives were on the line. Allies first, enemies second. As for the impression she actually got, well, she certainly raised an eyebrow at his alluding to the event, but then let it pass and listened with interest as he explained some kind of emotional combat system, complete with diagram (which she could see just fine in the familiar twilight), which was very thoughtful.
After they got Jesse’s short but perfectly informative introduction. Here seemed to be a competent woman entirely in her element, and for whom adventure wasn’t any kind of chore or duty. None of them could argue with that certainly. Kamek and Midna also made little mental notes about Jesse’s people to see if they could work out how to help her with that in future.
Last, but not least, was Bede, who immediately caught Jr’s attention with his profession. There were no bones about it, if he could, Jr was going to get the measure of this other trainer in the group, especially after being challenged like that by his boast of superiority. He certainly seemed competent, though the fact that he was entirely reliant on his monsters was a touch concerning to those who cared. He’d have to prove he could handle himself in Midna’s eyes at least, and till then, if they were together, she’d be keeping an eye on the kid.
After the meet and greet wound down it was time for the most important part of this meetup: Lunch!
And boy, did the Troop need it. Never mind the fact that Bowser and Rika had stopped off for a second breakfast. Or first lunch. Or maybe this was Bowser’s third lunch if you counted the shrimp. Really it was hard to keep track, and the king did not bother, seeing as he had the metabolism to match his appetite, and, besides you couldn't save the world on an empty stomach now could you?
Rika meanwhile had the excuse that she had nearly died, which also built quite the appetite, while Kamek had emptied out all of her energy reserves transporting the ship they had immediately lost, and as for Jr, well, bickering with Omari was tiring in its own way. As such the troop went straight for the nearest shop with their allowance, practically cleared it out, and then headed for picnic hill.
That food consisted of a wide variety of different things acquired mainly to sate Rika’s curiosity, although it was tricky not to get caught up in her enthusiasm for trying out new stuff. There was everything from chorizo & cheese quiche, BLT sandwiches, fish finger hot dogs, pork pie, sausage rolls, cheese scones, chickpea salads and to top it all off, some donuts.
Rika and Jr sampled their way through all of these, while Kamek stuck to the veggies and Bowser hoovered up everything that went spare.
Midna meanwhile took a bit of a detour, and just like Nadia, it was done in the name of aesthetics, though unlike the cat girl the princess wasn’t trying to impress anyone specific, just generally being aware of her appearance. Specifically, how kinda messy it had gotten clothing wise. The snaktivator plan had, mostly, worked. She hadn’t noticed any real mental changes, although they would soon rear their head, and the transformation had been quite localized physically too.
She was however, it had to be said, a bit annoyed with what had happened to her skin on her torso, though she supposed it could be worse given the inhuman nature of the spirit. Now the outfit she had gotten on the other hand? Yeah, sure, it covered up the minor skin blemish, but otherwise it was quite unsightly, and it really clashed with the rest of her everything. The rest of her outfit was shiny and fun, this? Very droll. So, a bit of clothes shopping was in order.
Part of her did consider trying to get armor of some kind to really lean into the shield and toughness combo and go full on knight, buuuut that might be stretching the other princess’ generosity just a tad. So instead she popped into a simple clothes store, and emerged a bit later wearing only her sandals and a warm, green and slightly oversized hoddie. It was, in her opinion, the absolute height of comfort, which is why she had gone ahead and bought a few spares while she was at it.
How she had survived this long without having changes of clothes on hand was something she now very much asked herself. She wasn’t ditching all the other garments mind, but they were in an effective laundry pile now (well except for the priest's robes, which was in an emergency only pile all of its own).
With that out of the way, the princess rejoined the group for a very comfy picnic under the endlessly setting sun, where there was light food and light chatter to be found in abundance. She moved to and fro, trading words, and fuling her ongoing seafood mood with some tuna pasta.
Eventually, however, the time for leisure was over and business came a calling. Specifically it came a calling for, of all people, Jr, who was reminded that he’d said he’d make them all a portal back to smash city by Vandham, who very much wanted to check back in with the place to see what had been up while he was away. The prince did what he had promised after only a bit of complaining, finding a nice central but secluded spot and engaging in a bit of vandalism (though the mercenary captain had gotten permission for that from the relevant city authorities while visiting the town barracks) and away they went.
A little bit later, the prince returned… carrying a crank operated minigun and a assult rifle with a chainsaw slung under the bottom of it like a bayonet.
”You guys have got to see the absolute pile of guns and vehicles and stuff they’ve just brought in through there” he informed the others, before moving over to his clown car, pulling out a toolbox and engaging in a quick tune up session to first install his wind up mingun in his car, before moving on and upgrading Rika’s bayonet into a Chainsaw Bayonet for her.
Midna, upon hearing this, also popped through for quite a while, and only returned once Vandham heard she was practically emptying the armory into the twilight realm and forced her to choose a more limited selection. At the very least this got her some instruction as to what she was acquiring. Her new instinct for flames inevitably drew her to the Flamethrower on offer as her main pick of the day, which she complimented with the Interdimensional Axe as a light one handed weapon, and a Revolver for some basic ranged capabilities she’d found herself lacking.
She also took a pile of aluminum tubes to be used as improvised lightning filled grenades and, last but not least, an entire warthog which she tucked away in the twilight realm for later.
A pile of dubiously useful melee weapons such as Aluminum Tubes, nailboards, a Double Staff a Peasantly Pitchfork and a Dwarven Wifflemaul from the diggles.
The lot of them hung around a bit longer to see if anything didn’t get snatched up, and then, after that, it was off to the trains where danger awaited.
The mission was not so much to simply make it to the fabled godly gift that was Impyra, but to also fully establish a working route for wood elves to tame the underworld beneath their very feet. Their entrance was made throughout the lake region that had initially stopped Pieapple and co from heading deeper, and where the whole series of events leading up to the [monarch]’s crowning and quest had begun. They had been prepared for this even before acquiring Pumkin’s help, the elves having slipped into the water in large wide leaves grown into the shapes of canoes and then paddling across the waters, the trip unremarkable sans making official contact with the Umbra that had made the watery cave their home, and negotiating a deal to set up a pair of ports on each side of the lake to facilitate future travel.
After reaching the other side, the path split, with one that went the way they intended to go, while the other led to a cave system that traveled much of the central area of the woods. Two issues however kept this underground forest disconnected from the elven society, first it was its depth, too far below the world with only ravines and sinkholes leading to it, second was its jungle like constitution, creeping roots and branches inhabited by nastier sorts of plant creatures, including the somewhat nasty Barkobra, which had poisoned, strangled and devoured a fair share of unprepared explorers.
The queen’s group avoided such a region, but they did accompany a few [druids] who would start to create a forward post of the adventurers guild to tame the area. Similarly, they had been connecting the many underground bases and camps of the elves with a single road system, ‘Pathroot’ was a plant created specifically for the task, its foliage spread evenly on the ground first, creating a stable path, then it created a half wall of bark and leaves to its side and finally branches would ground up in a C shape, with light giving leaves to illuminate the path.
All of this made the initial path very easy for everyone, enjoyable even, outside of the boar brothers almost losing their animals after they became infatuated with one of the giant tubbers that had started to grow in the area, no major incidents happened.
Such joys were quickly dashed as they made their way to the abyssal area, Pumpkin had described it before, yet the group had always had the somewhat implicit belief she was perhaps going a bit overboard, she was not.
The mossy growths, the creeping plants, the curious creatures, it all ended quite suddenly as the cave opened up into pure darkness. Most of the rocky floor was left behind as if it had been cut by a sword, a perfectly 90° degree cut downward, with the exception of a jagged path forward, going endlessly forward into the void until the elves could no longer see them.
The ceiling was somewhat visible, far up, with a luminous growth on it, dark masses passing by, hopefully just gentle manta rays instead of the eventual school of void piranhas.
“Alright, lights off everybody, no torches, no magiks.” Pumpkin announced. “We don’t want to go about announcing ourselves for the creatures that live here. I have a plan to make a safe path… Hmm. Sleeky, come with me, you are gonna be my pal on this!” she grabbed Sleektooth by the arm and moved to a nearby rock infested with glowing worms.
The plan was quite simple, she filled a bag with them, grabbed up a handful, gently placed them on the ground, then stomped them. This gave her boots a nice, mushy, glowing coat, each step forward leaving a footprint that could be seen in the dark but still had that buggy stink most void creatures wouldn’t bother with.
“Oh this is so gross” Sleektooth said as she followed suit, though the fact that the way she said gross was with the same tone someone might call something cool. The rest of the elves were less enamored with the whole thing, but they pinched their noses and carefully followed after the glowing trail, stalking low and using their ubiquitous forest material cloaks to mask their shape and movement.
The path had gone for hours without much trouble, outside of the psychological pressure of traveling into the deep dark. It had been carefully set to be the shortest path possible, and even so the leading duo found themselves tired. The [vagabond] called it a day and using her [find shelter] skill she was able to locate a nearby cave for the group to rest for the night. For a given value of night.
The elves of the darkwoods might be used to a perpetual gloom, but the lack of any shifting in the light had started to disconcert some, as had the unfortunate mexi of claustrophobia and agoraphobia that the void bottomed cavern induced.
“I almost wish we could keep moving. It feels like standing teetering above a great maw of darkness, and that at any moment the ground below will drop away and leave us all to plunge into whatever lies below. If anything even does” Pineapple murmured quietly, confiding in only her confidants and not wishing to spread her worry to those beyond.
The fact that they had to go down to find a cave, creeping along a thin sheer cliffway path that led to a cavern overlooking the nothingness certainly did not help. Fortunately everyone was skillfully footed enough that there were no falls, merely a close call or two where an elf foot slipped, sending shards of stones falling into the nothingness while the mortal’s own life was saved by their alert comrades.
Even the cave dwellers were increasingly weary, including Pumpkin, when she sat down to rest she let out a deep sigh with uncharacteristic weariness. “I hope the tree warping dudes can find a way to make this place more palatable. Or make a tree that digs a route to elsewhere!” she confessed to Sleektooth.
“Around would be best. This place is exiting, it’d be really boring if we just made a road right through it” she replied, entirely missing the point
“Making a new cave path would require a lot of boring as well~” Pumpkin jested, to which Sleektooth gave a snort of a laugh, “yeah, i guess”
Then she taught for a bit and thought “well I mean, I don’t know if we can really dig through rock? But maybe we could, I dunno, grow a road along the wall maybe?” a suggestion that made Pieapple’s cheeks blow up, close the vomiting at the thought, before recovering and exclaiming “no thanks”
Pumpkin gave a resigned look at that topic. “I don’t know, the entire point of my class is not really building much stuff. But I also think the path across the foul lake and the green glowing cave will also become more viable once the lava lake is settled. It's just that right now the stuff there is a bit scary and poorly understood, but it is a less tiring place than crossing the void. Plus the green rocks are so pretty, they say to put one under your pillow for good luck.” the girl who didn’t understand radiation very well said.
As she started to take a half-meditative stance, part of her skillset, [light sleep], she turned to Sleek with a slower and more chill voice, only one eye open. “So… What do you intend to do in the Berrypie Kingdom once it's settled?”
“If you mean after we’ve carved it out of whatever wilds there are?” she asked rhetorically, “I dunno, seeing as queeny here’s planning to settle down, I’ll probably try and make my own adventuring party, go out, see the rest of the caves. Head to the surface, that kinda thing. Had to settle down when I lost my hand, didn’t like it one bit”
“Mmm.” Pumpkin nodded. “Well, I’d be up to join some adventures with ya later. Though I don’t really plan to live in the city, or uh, anywhere in particular, I should always be around the overall area, especially once they get their markets and guilds going.”
“Eyy yeah that’d be fun, I’d be more than happy to have you party around with me. Plus I bet we could make stacks of coins from doing that whole ‘find news stuff’ quest that the guild has on, seeing as you’ve been all over. I head the discounts you can rack up are nothing to be sniffed at” Sleektooth said, the goddess Ashe’s idea having worked quite perfectly in incentivising the acquisition of any and all newly discovered plants and animals.
“Can’t say I very much understood what happened over that, since it happened in moons I was very far away. But if it is nice it is nice.” she stretched and started to focus more on her meditation and recovery.
All was going fine, until the more sensible elves, such as [rangers] would feel something stirring, the air started to flow oddly, as if something was rushing towards them, yet no sound. Tensions rose up, some started to wake up and other elves continued to sleep unaware of trouble, then, all of the sudden, a massive humanoid creature that could be best described as some sort of cave gorilla dove towards the group, slapping at the two nearest elves, the lucky one being hurt as he hit the wall, the other ending up going out of the cave, into the abyss.
Pieapple, who’s [danger sense] had started going off just a few heartbeats before the creature was on them, was first to move among the lead group, the [adventurous thrower] grabbing a large dart from a belt of them she was carrying and hurling it at the gorilla, before shouting [rapid reload] which caused a second dart to jump from her belt to hand without her having to reach for it, an allowing her to get another toss in far faster than she should.
The two poison darts were joined by a few knives, javelins, and one spiky plant of some kind from a small number of other elves who had been woken by their own [danger sense] or had been on guard and alert enough to act. The yelling of skills and the rapidly vanishing screams of the pit tossed elf then woke everyone else up, [adventurers] scrambling to get into the fight while the small number of [druids], [settlers] and other civilian classes scrambled in the opposite direction trying to get away.
The beast had no greater ill intent than just being extremely violent and territorial, it found itself hurt and cornered, though with a large muscular body it was still an immediate threat to all, it was not going to win, but everyone was at risk of being hurt. That risk only increased as it, as if to try to scare the elves alway, started to pound at the ground, causing the whole of the small cave to shake, gravel and rocks starting to fall from the roof.
“[stand behind me!], or, uh, beneath me” Barkbear called out as he raised his tree bark shield up above the 3 ladies, which protected them from concussion from falling rocks, but wasn’t going to do anything if the whole place fell down. That still put them in the best position, as the others where pelted with stones and the fear that there would be more coming.
Sleektooth was last to get up and she was, unfortunately for her, a bit useless at this distance, an issue shared by many as the cramped confines of the cave limited everyone but those closest to the beast from really doing anything, and totally fowling up the maneuverable hunter style of combat they preferred.
“Form up, spears to the front, everyone else to the back, and give it an opening to get away before it brings the roof down on our heads!” Pieapple attempted to command, but unfortunately, [adventurers] were not disciplined [soldiers], and the companions of the dead and injured elves were out for blood and vengeance.
“Die monster!” cried out one holding an oversized axe and wearing a rather grisly assortment of bandit skulls on his belt. “I’ll [take your head!] for what you’ve done to Ghostpear!” he yelled, becoming engulfed in some red aura before leaping, kicking off the cave wall, and launching himself at the ape, aiming to swing his axe at its neck
The ape could not hold back against the attack, but the adventurer also did overestimate his ability to kill the beast with one swoop. Red splashed against the floor as blood started to flow down from its neck, and yet, the creature found itself with enough stamina to still grab the two nearest elves, one being obviously the head taker elf. The crash of the two to the floor as well as the use of the roof of the cave further compromised the structure of the location, which now would not stop shaking, risking not only collapsing itself, but also bringing down a whole sweep of the cliff-face path along with it.
“[Druids] reinforce the cave! Everyone else not fighting, get to the surface” Pieapple commanded, and this had better results for sure. As plant mater shot up to act as support pillars the rest of the civilians immediately making a run for it, which was its own problem that she solved by ordering “Leaf sharks, jump up to the top and make sure the surface is clear”
The fish scaled elves did as they were ordered, darting out of the cave and then using their Tonnikala mutation to defy gravity just enough that they could jump or climb up the top side. That at least ment the noncombatants weren't going to get slaughtered if there were more of these things out there.
It did not, however, solve the problem of the one in here, but a kind of impromptu sorting algorithm of people who did not think they could take the beast backing off and those that could push forwards had haphazardly brought the Titan blades to the front of the pack. Greatswords did those towering elves wield, and acting in tandem they drove them forward, point first with greater range than a [hunter]’s spear could reach, aiming for the beast’s arm muscles in an attempt to release their comrades before they were crushed or tossed.
Finally, the beast gave away, its muscles torn it laid limply, allowing the two to start their escape, at the same time, the sound of loud crashes started to resonate, as the cave started to crumble into itself, center first, while the vines of the druids held up the sides for a brief moment, though that would clearly be short lived.
“Oh no no no. Everyone move!” Pieapple gave one last command before she was grabbed rapidly hauled forwards by Barkbear and Sleektooth who both shouted a variation of “you too, you idiot!”
The elves fled as best they could, but it was a narrow pathway up the cliff back to the surface, and even with the Leafsharks having chucked ropes down to create additional ways up, there were bound to be losses.
The community tried its best, and for that effort most had made it to the end, to the safer ground above the cliff, but at one time an entire rock platform collapsed, taking with it an elf [ranger] who despite their agility did not have the sheer ability to walk over falling stones. A brother tried to help their sister, all others trying to give him a rope, but all hope was dashed as the rock gave away, sending both to the endless dark. One more careless elf found themselves sitting too close to the action, they were supposed to be safe, but a simple shaking of the edge sent them tumbling forward and down.
It was a terrible death, the screams of desperate elves ever stopped, there was no thud, no end in sight, it continued and continued getting increasingly faint, until it was impossible to distinguish it from the howling and bemoaning winds.
And yet the trouble wasn’t over yet, the dread continued strong, but some people’s danger instincts were flaring up like never before.
Pumpkin, who had been distant during the whole ape battle, found herself standing and listening to the wind. “Blast. It's the piranhas.” she tsked her tongue, took a stance, readied her wine. An idiotic elf readied his bow, trying either to show off or merely mad with rage at the recent losses, he rushed ahead past Pumpkin, despite her protest, and fired an arrow with some sort of aura forward, it seemed venomous.
It flew with a green glow and then vanished, as if it had taken a dive into a dark cloud. There was but a moment to contemplate before the same cloud engulfed the elf, taking off again, leaving behind a trail of bones and blood. As it approached, the [vagabond] went “Poh!” and spat her wine, turning it into a wave of flames, wide and intense enough to break the cloud, the smell of cooked fish filling the area.
“We have been too noisy, and some of y’all are bleeding too. They won’t stop coming.” she said with an absurdly casual tone, matching her half-smile. “Guess I will have to be the bait!” she carelessly cut at her shoulder, letting the blood flow down her arm. “I hope Queen Pie remembers what my plan was, cause this will take a while to fix, if I even fix it, yeah?”
“Hey, no, you are not going off on your own” Sleektooth, who had been next to useless throat this whole ordeal, stepped beside Pumpkin to insist, before copying the shoulder cut and informing her “Because I’m coming with you”
Pumpkin looked at her with a very concerned look “Are you an idiot? You don’t have the means to help, you will just be putting yourself in harm’s way.” Yet seeing how serious she seemed… and that she had made herself into piranha bait already, the [vagabond] was forced to give up. “Oh well. I guess you never know what may show up later. Let’s go then.”
She rushed ahead and spat the flames once again, breaking a smaller wave of the deadly fishes, waving at the main group to continue on their way before they ended up flanked by something lured by the noise, blood and flames.
“They better come back,” Pieapple swore as she watched Sleektooth flipping over the top of a wave of deadly fish and dart after Pumpkin, the [rouge] leaving a puff of poisonous smoke in her wake, before she turned her focus back to the people, urging them forwards into the dark once more.
It looked like she was getting her wish after all, there would be no stopping till they cleared the cave.
Queen Pieapple and her elves start their underground expedition to the promised (by Lektor) land. They cross the lake that stopped their first expedition using canoes, and then head deeper, laying down a protected road of plant matter behind them as they travel.
The big obstacle of the post is the void cave, a large, and seemingly bottomless, cave filled with hostile creatures and traversable only by thin pathways. Pumpkin leads them through it safely till they need to rest, only for them to be attacked by a giant cave gorilla who’s cave they had used for camp. It is killed, but brings the cave down in the process, and both the ape and the collapse kill a few elves between them.
The swarms of void piranhas that come in response to the violence are worse, and so Pumpkin runs off to act as bait, a mission Sheektooth insists on accompanying her on. As they do that, Pieapple leads the rest of the group onward in a hard and restless push through the cave towards safety.
-- Adventurer’s Guild:
Start 8
-3 to invent plant prosthetics: the ability to use animated plants as replacement limbs. Requires at least a few levels of [druid] or other plant friendly classes to pull off, and higher levels in those will generally give extra skills related to using them better, going from just a bit better than pegleg/hook to cybernetic augmentation esce bodily enhancement (although a person that high level would probably be superhuman anyway)
+1 for significant role +1 for colab +1 for 10,000+ chars
-2 for living bark roads: a type of plant that can be cultivated into a self enclosed protected pathway, complete with lights to guide the traveler’s way.
End 9
-- Pumpkin
Start: 5
+1 mentioned +1 featured in a post unrelated to their creator god +1 collab +1 5000+ characters +1 10000 characters
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town
After waving goodbye to Cortez and ignoring any cursing of their names he did despite their generous gift of a broken airship, the troop promptly piled into a corner of the tinker slug and collectively took a nap. Blazermate’s healing beam might be miraculous, but just as it couldn't solve extreme damage (incidentally Jr slept a touch worse than normal, his underdeveloped consciousness weakly kicking him for Annetta’s fate) it also didn’t resolve fatigue.
As a result when they awoke they were already in twilight town. After a bit of confusion about how long they had slept due to the permanently amber sky, the troop piled out onto the docks and added themselves to the disorganized mess of people there, trading a wave or two with the few people they knew from the other party who had been with them before they split apart, an event that felt like it had happened years ago.
Most of them however, were complete strangers. No other denizens of the mushroom kingdom or world’s they’d crossed over with could be found save except for:
”Hey, didn’t I throw you two off a stage a bunch of times last time there was a smash tournament on?” came a voice from down below Bowser’s level of sight, and when he did look down he found an imp of a woman looking up at him and his son thoughtfully.
Midna had gone through quite a lot of changes. Physically, she was a bit taller and more muscular, had a human shade of sun kissed skin where it wasn’t the shade of night, had gained an orange flygon tail, lost a finger on each hand and now wore her hair in a set of twintails. Garb wise, her fused shadow helmet was gilded, and she had actual clothes on, namely an orange and red waist wrap over her lower half, an orange jacket with a big collar flanked by two blue shoulder pauldrons and finally a pair of green slippers and striped kneesocks.
It was certainly a look, and it took the pair of royals quite a while to place her. Or rather, to be more exact, Minda had to pull out a shadow hand and ask ”Remember this?” at which point both intoned ”ohhhhh” together
”Yeah I remember now. Big hand, grabbing people and tossing em about” Bowser said as he walked through the memory, to which the princess replied ”I mean there’s more to me than that but sure, yeah, that was me yes”
”It wasn’t a buncha times, it was a few” Jr then wheeled back to her initial statement to correct it, which got a snort of a laugh from Minda, followed by her snidely commenting ”Yeah, sure, just a few”
Before the prince could start arguing with the princess however, there came an explosive wailing sound as Peach shot off her gun into the air to get people’s attention, which certainly worked. Bowser, who had been on the firing end of that thing and knew it hurt quite a bit, had to stop himself from instinctively trying to dodge out the way, which would not have gone well in the crowd that was for sure.
As for why she’d felt the need to spook everyone with her spook gun, well, apparently it was organized introductions time.
The princess herself naturally went first. The troop of course already knew all about her, so it was only an introduction for Minda who gleaned just a little bit of kindredness from the whole ‘taking up the fight thing’ as she hadn’t exactly been a fighter when she’d first been banished from her kingdom.
”So she’s the boss huh?” was what she actually commented however, because her inner analysis was just a bit too personal to share with strangers
”No, I am!” Bowser retorted, being roused from an admiring stupor by this insinuation. The princess gave him and his crew a look, and saw no decent from his sub group except for a wiggling hand from the robed turtle woman with the broom which signaled merely ‘kind of’ which she took and ran with.
”If you’re in charge why aren't you the one organizing this whole meet and greet then?” she needled him, to which the king retorted ”Uh, well, because she’s… she’s the one who does the people stuff. Yeah. and I do the bossing!” in a floundering fashion, and when Midna retorted that ”Sounds more like she’s the brains and your just the brawn to me” he swiftly pointed out that ”Oh hey look the next person’s gonna talk”
Midna rolled her eyes at that, but she shut up so that Band could play his piece without disruption. Well, mostly without it. Marie Korbel (the former skullgirl and now Bowser’s striker) inviting herself out for a moment to give the big guy a wave at the mention of her probably caused a little bit of disruption, as did Bowser saying that ”Yeah, uh, we might wanna talk about that later”.
Once he was done with the bit of backstory he showed off his musical ensemble, to which Rika commented ”Wow, that’s a lot of guns”
”Ah, no Rika, those are instruments” Kamek tried to correct her, but she didn’t quite get it right away ”Instruments of war?”
”I mean with how he uses them, they might as well be. Man hits like a runaway cart” Midna joked, though she found it a bit odd that this ‘Rika’ didn’t know what musical instruments were.
Next up was Tora and Poppie, and well, they all knew the cheery robotic warrior and her lovable fuzzball of a creator quite well after all. Well except Rika, who wondered if Tora’d be able to tune up her gear even more, still dwelling on her twin defeats but having enough distance from them that she was on the hunt for ways to not repeat those failures rather than being deliberated by them.
After that was the pun slinging Missfortune who had Minda groaning with her jokes. Still, she did have to ask the question that was on a lot of lips, which was: ”What did she mean about splitting apart”
”She can shoot off her limbs and stuff with blood. And even if she goes splat she can get put back together. It is super gross, and super cool. Gross-cool. Grool? Coss? ” Jr informed her, and then went through a couple more combos of the words till Razputin stepped up on stage, though not before bombarding Nadia with a longer form of Midna’s question.
The kid himself turned out to be a brain fixer upper, which was not what anyone in the troop had expected.
”Urgh, no thanks. I’ve had more than enough people knocking around my think pan” Bowser loudly turned down the offer, then felt a bit bad about it and added ”But, uh, thanks for the offer?”
Jr had no such (spirit acquired) empathy and so his thoughts on the matter where ”Doesn't sound like he’s very useful huh”
”Hey. Not true” Midna snapped at him, before defending one boy from the other ”he’s a tough kid. Came all the way up this goddesses awful mountain with us, and then fought this giant worm boss with us too. So trust me, he can handle himself just fine”
”Eh, whatever you say. Can’t be worse than Omori” Jr replied, getting an odd look from the princess that he ignored in favor of pointing a finger at Wonder Red as he took the stage and saying loudly ”Wait is that an actual for real superhero?!” which it turned out that yes, yes he basically was, complete with a mask hiding his sacred identity and everything, which Jr thought was ”So cool”
None of the others had any idea about what either Jr or Red were on about.
Now the next guy, well, he also said a lot of confusing things but among his introduction there was one point of interest, the Organization XIII
”Has, has no one told him that those hooded fellows are helping us?” Kamek asked quietly
”Oh. Uh. I guess not? Wait so that lady from the desert is part of a whole group of people helping us out?” Minda said, just now realizing that she maybe should have been more inquisitive about the mysterious and somewhat helpful stranger.
”Urgh,’helping’? One picked a fight, another kidnapped Linkle, and the third pointed us to the Maw of all places” Bowser said, all four of the Troop members shuddering at the memory of the place.
After that it was the two rogues, Primrose and Theon. The dancers' dance had no effect on the Koopas, being either too old, too young, or too singularly infatuated with Peach to be swayed by any kind of feminine charms, so it was all down to Rika to feel kinda funny and for Midna to simply admire it's form. The princess also unexpectedly learned something from her short introduction, which was about the magic spreading skill she had.
”Wait, she can do that? That never came up… goddesses, that plus dragon dance would be so strong” she thought, while Kamek had a similar thought about her size increases, if those could synergies that was. Magic could be a fickle thing indeed, so they’d only know if they got a chance to try.
As for Theon, well, a thief was a thief even if you wrapped a ribbon around it and Kamek got everyone to check their pockets just in case anything had gone missing, which fortunately for Theon it had not.
Finally Ace stepped up to the plate and talked some big game, and he certainly had the physics to back it up in Midna’s opinion. The other interesting thing, other than his odd pronunciations at some parts, was something Minda felt she should ask about: ”Bad with magic? How’s he mean?” she asked, correctly singling out Kamek as the one who might know based on her looks
”Let us just say that he did not, ah, appreciate my using helpful magics on him. Very, ah, hmmm, skittish about it due to some personal experiences I think” the mage replied, not going into more detail on her assumption that the Maw was to blame ”Just avoid using any on him and you’ll be fine”
”Huh. Noted,” she replied, not that it would be much of an issue for her unless she needed to warp him around.
At any rate, it was at this point Midna decided she’d had enough waiting around, and so when asked who was next she called out ”Me, I’ll go!” and then took to the skies, floating over the heads of the crowd and then staying airborne above the introductory spot so people outside the front row could actually see her
”I am Midna, princess of the twilight realm. No relation to this twilight town by the way,” much to her twin relief/disappointment ”but if you ever come across a mirror of twilight, or my home itself, please, let me know. It would be nice to know that my people were alright” she requested before adding ”But also you should probably avoid going there, unless you want to turn into a beast. My home’s atmosphere is not friendly to light worlders” as something of an afterthought
”Now as for what I can do, well, I can store stuff in a pocket realm, so if you need anything big hauled around I can do that” she said, while pulling out the sun on a stick out of it and briefly charging it a bit of electrical power ”and otherwise? Well, I can do all of this!”
The princess thrust the sun of a stick up at a 45 degree angle to shoot lighting into the sky, while her other hand raised and sent singing black sand blasting in the opposite direction. Behind her two colossal wolves appeared from portals and howled, while the toothily grinning princess raised her shadow hand high, making a peace sign tipped by glowing purple claws while her vibrava also appeared, which few loops around the glowing orange lib rapidly and then once at the top shot a blast of dragon fire into the sky.
Then it was over in a flash, beasts and weapons returned to her realm and the light show was over.
”So, if you need something utterly destroyed, I’m your princess. I’ve crushed my usurper and his false god, and even saved time itself, so trust me, you’ll be in good hands if you happen to be working with me. Or, hand,” the hypocritical princess joked alongside a last showing of her shadow hand before concluding ”and that’s a short run down of me. I know my show wasn’t as lovely as Prim’s but I hope it still left an impression” she shrugged while grinning a tad cheekily and then moved on.
”now then… how about one of you lot come up next?” she pointed at the troop with whom she had been on and off talking before she had presented herself.
While the majority of the troop where varying levels of impressed by the princess’ ‘show’: Kamek by the level of magic on display, the two youngsters just by the flashiness of the whole affair. Bowser was having none of that however, commenting ”Bah, too many special effects, not enough style. Let me show you how it's done!”
With that he grabbed the other three, and leapt up and over the crowd, forcing Midna to hasten her return to it before she got squashed by Bowser’s heavy landing.
”Alright listen up,” the king declared after setting his people down on their feet ”I am the baron of brilliance, the tyrant of terribleness, the lord of loudness: Bowser, the Koopa king! Leader of the Koopa troop. We’ve conquered time, we’ve conquered galaxies and I’ve been through this whole world colliding and collapsing thing like, at least twice already, and I’ve also stomped my way through a whole host of one shot chump villains who can't even step to the OG big bad boss. So what you're looking at here is experience, ya see, and that is why you should all listen to me and do as I say” the king declared, posing and flexing while he hyped himself up, before moving on to introducing his crew.
”This here is my darling boy Bowser Junior, and despite his age, he can already go toe to toe with the baddest of the bad and goodest of the good” the king picked up his clown car riding son and balanced his vehicle on a flexed bicep. The boy was, interestingly enough, one of the few people who had zero spirit modifications, despite also being one of the longest term members at this point. Not out of a lack of trying, his piloting based fighting style just benefited more from equipment than powers.
”Oh, uh, hey! Yeah I’m Bowser Junior. Or you can just call me Jr, most people do its simpler” the boy introduced himself, beginning a trend of the rest of not nearly living up to Bowser’s scenery chewing levels of self introduction.
”I’m also a mechanic like Tora: I built this thing, uh, mostly by myself. Upgraded it a ton too” jr smacked the side of his clown car before adding ”I’m also tough. And smart. And I… like video games?” floundering for a bit and then recovering and explaining ”oh and I can paint these magic portals that you can use to go to places I’ve been. Gonna make one back to the base so if you need stuff from there, we can go get it, plus it means we don’t have to go through all that water to get to and from there and these trains”
Finally, he did some sub introductions of his own by popping two pokeballs of a bandoleer crossing his chest and tossing them up to summon his two pokemon ”and these are Mimi and Dazzle, say hi” he told em, which got a ‘kyu kyu’ from the metal jawed Mimikyu and a ‘Pop pop’ from his penguin hybrid Popplio as they both gave the crowd a wave while balancing on either side of Jr’s clown car.
Bowser then took back over to point out Kamek ”Next up we got Kamek, my royal advisor, who’s old. And wise. And really magical”
”Did you have to start with ‘old’ sire?” the mage complained. In contrast to Jr, she’d gone through the most changes, first of which was that, well, she was a she now. She’d taken to it as smoothly as Dante had, which showed just how far the complete lack of dysphoria the fusion system caused could go.
As did the fact that she was mostly fine with the results of fusing with two humanoids, and one fish thing, which had left her as a short lizard girl with green amphibian flesh, white hair, cat ears and a tail that was across between a cat’s and a fish’s. This meant that she had quite the busy and eclectic appearance, but the mage felt that being younger as a result of this more than made up for any questionable fashion sense.
”Well anyway, yes hello, I am Kamek. I have an assortment of supportive magics at my disposal, from healing to empowering, and quite a host of magical minions too. I also consider myself quite knowledgeable, related to which, you,” she pointed her broom handle at Roxas ”and I should have a discussion about this Organization XIII so I can corroborate what the Master of Master told me about them and what we’ve experienced regarding their questionable assistance so far”
”Now then, what else? Well if we are doing interests as well I quite like puzzles and minigames, they used to call me the Game Master back in the day you know, as well as a good book from time to time, and a bit of tidying up too… hmm” she said, before trailing off while palming her chin and then snapping her fingers
”Ah, I almost forgot” she said, before pulling an odd device out of her pocket and showing it off ”This is the Snaktivator. It is a device that lets you localize the changes a fusion makes to specific body parts. His majesty is a good example of this” she gestured to the king, or more specifically, his back ”as you can see, all of Lord Bowser’s transformations have been, mostly, restricted to his shell, leaving the rest of his body more or less as it was. Combined this with Peach’s ability to remove spirits, and we’ll be able to give anyone who wants one a makeover before we spit up again”
”You done?” Bowser asked after that, to which the mage replied ”Ah, sorry sire, was I boring you?”
”Eh” he shrugged in response to the boring part, before explaining ”More that you were holding up the introduction of our news member: Rika, the one woman cannon barrage!” with the energy of an announcer chewing on the microphone.
”Hi, that’s me. Um, I’ve only been a person for about… three days? So I don't have any interesting back story or anything. I mean I was part of the abyssal fleet before Kamek freed me from Galeem and the fleet itself at the same time, and since then I’ve just kinda been learning the ropes. Seeing new things. Meeting new people. It’s been a bit scary at times, but also fun other times” Rika said about herself ”and so I’m looking forwards to getting to know more new people, and see more new things, oh and eat more new food too. Definitely looking forwards to this picnic thing”
”Oh and fighting wise, I’ve got these two big guns” she raised her gauntlets, ”and some smaller ones down there, and some choppy hull blades” she vaguely gestured down to those as well ”so I guess the thing about being a cannon barrage is right, especially after I warm up a bit and engage in in an all out assault, then the shells really get flying. Oh, but, don’t worry. I’ve never hit anyone friendly, not even once.”
”I’ve also got torpedoes and stuff, but I’m kinda running low on those… hey, Blazermate, could you have that hardhat guy build a dispenser at some point? I need to restock on, well, everything” she called over to the bot, before finishing up ”and so yeah, um, nice to meet you all!”
”and that’s a wrap. Koopa troop, let’s roll out and make way for whoever's next” the king commanded once Rika had said her part, and with that, the king stomped back into the crowd, followed by his loyal friends and/or family.
Midna didn’t really know what to think about that if she was being fair. Bowser’s well, everything, had been a bit much, and he sure had an ego, but how he acted as a hype man for his crew was actually kinda endearing in a corny way. His kid was kinda cute, and that teleportation paint sounded useful, ment she didn’t have to worry so much about setting up her own network.
Rika being only 3 days old, in a way, certainly explained a lot about the little she had observed about the girl, and it also had all sorts of interesting implications. The friend hearts could, it seemed, do more than just bring people to their senses and could, in some capacity, also grant people senses they hadn’t had in the first place.
Kamek was somewhat interesting. Healing was certainly something they had lacked that could have been useful in the desert, and overall she seemed like a decent woman and, maybe, the only sane head in the self-titled Troop. What really interested her however was that Snaktivator.
”Hey, nice intro” she said, brushing past Bowser in-order to talk to his advisor, the princess pulling out the fiery Harbinger Spirit of the twilight realm and holding it up while asking ”Do you think i could use that fusion controlling device with this? Guy was, let’s say, pretty unstable, so I was hoping maybe by keeping the changes away from my head I could avoid any mental impacts?”
”Ah, well, I can't quite guarantee that there won't be... Consequences,” she said ominously, before lightening up ”but, it could be worth a shot. Where are you thinking?”
”Oh. Hmm. Well he was really tough so maybe just the chest to protect all the organs? And the arms. For strength?”
”Skipping leg day huh?” Bowser joked
”Legs too would be too much, I think”
”Suit yourself” the king replied with a shrug
”Well then, let's see about this shall we. If you're ready?” Kamek prompted, not wanting to be at this for so long that they interrupted the next introduction ”Incidentally, you might, ironically, want to absorb it into your head, as that seems to give more passive enhancements rather than abilities, so if you want just toughness, that might be the way to go. We can always have peach remove it if it doesn’t work out”
”Sounds good, and yeah, now that you mentioned it, I think I've found the same. Alright let’s try it!” Midna said, before foreheading the spirit, and then Kamek got to work restricting its area of effect to just her torso and arms.
The Shadow Bazaar! A wonder of divine power, a realm accessible to any mortal in any palace at any time. An afterlife for the goddess’s most mercantile. Someday it would be a marvel, a place overflowing with rare goods from all across the world.
At the moment however, it was pretty empty. A mere handful of Umbra had met their fate while holding the required goods to buy their way into an afterlife of eternal service, and so the staff of the bazard could only really manage a couple of (admittedly pretty fancy looking) buildings and stalls sitting in the middle of a vast empty plain of potential. Add to this the fact that the primitive societies didn’t exactly produce large surpluses of goods, and business was fairly slow, at least compared to what the realm would one day handle.
That didn't mean there weren't things of interest on offer however. The goddess had spread her shadowy children far and wide, and so while there might not be magic swords and genie lamps on sale there were still a healthy plethora of novelties to be found.
There were stalls with holding coin stored tamed Redwood Deer, the monstrous yet loyal Tarsks, and also a nice pasture holding the goddes’s newly acquired Sanguis Equis and their foals (these winged metal armoured horses were getting a lot of attention, and where the source of one of the world’s first bidding wars even in their juvenile state as everyone from two bit bandits to high level [adventurers] and tribal leaders wanted a piece of that action).
Tools and weapons of stone were also on sale, and the usal wood and stone items had had added to them Fern’s new invitation: Tools and items that had been grown rather than built. A dedicated stand in one of the stalls held thorn tipped spears, claw knives, vine ropes, leaf garments, big heft mallets and so on, all of which proved to be much more resilient than crafted items due to the lack of any joining points, each time being instead a single continuous assembly of plant matter.
Finally, there was food, and, honestly, for a lot of people, this was a big draw. So much so in fact that one of the busiest places in the Bazaar was a restaurant. People would come to the Bazaar, bring an excess of food, and add it to a collective pile which would then be cooked and prepared into a buffet by a high level Umbra [cook] who had sold their culinary talents to the goddess, which you could then take from an amount of dishes based on your initial contribution.
This place would see people come and go or varios evenings, but the biggest event was a party that occurred every 25 days. The peoples of the dark wood had haphazardly organised it as a get together where representatives from the tribes would pop into the Bazaar to share gossip and news between each other, and then other people had realised that the menu got pretty stacked during that time and joined in.
Thus Sanctuary’s current representative, Minowbloom, found herself sat at a table surrounded by the chattering forms of half the world’s peoples chattered in various levels of proficiency of blackspeech augmented with the odd added word to fill in the gaps (like, for example, the wood elvish for friend), a dialect that was colociouly referred to as trader talk.
The restaurant itself was a fantastical affair. It had started out as just an empty square that the elves had hung out in near an exotic food shop. Then the [cook] had set up a little stall in the square to sell cooked food. Then that stall had turned out to be so successful that they’d been able to requisition help, and a bigger space.
This space’s main room was a room featuring a number of finely carved round tables that seemed to perfectly fit however many guests were available from being a cosy little affair when it was quiet to a bustling banquet hall during party time. Lights danced above the dark space, while in the centre of the room a raised stage allowed musicians and singers to perform (be they the employed dead, or guests who wanted to show off). Umbra floated to and fro in the room, carrying trays of food and drink down from the busy kitchen that lay somewhere up above the hall.
It was the perfect cover for what might be described as the Bazaar's first black market, where under the table deals went on to avoid having to go through the middle men of the Umbra.
Minowbloom was there as part of the whole unofficial operation, though she and her patron’s didn't really see it that way. They went breaking the rules that banned anyone but the dead from selling after all, just, narrowly skirting around the edges of them in a way where keeping their activities on the down low just felt right.
She wasn't there to sell or buy, she was just sitting at a table, sipping a funny cactus juice drink, and if someone happened to notice the logo on her cloak that showed a tree with a tower on top with 3 figures standing triumphantly atop said tower, recognised it from the gossip mill, and had a certain type of trouble, why they might ask if they could take a seat and tell her about their problems.
The red haired wood elf girl, who had been born rather than made, glanced up as a little bell went off in her head, her [business call sense] skill giving her a warning of an incoming client. That gave her enough time that she could adjust her tiara (which sported a flower made of minnow scales on the forehead) smooth down her leafy one piece suit, check that the knife at her side was set just so that she gave off a competently dangerous look, and also dap her lips clear of cactus juice before they arrived.
It was a silly skill when compared to the [danger sense] her patrons often had, but the [message taker] found that it helped her never get caught slacking on the job. It wouldn't do for her to make the [adventurous] of Sanctuary look bad after all.
The person who took the empty seat across from her was a rather haggard looking elf man who looked just a touch malnourished. It was his hastily applied paints and simple crown of woven branches that gave away everything to the wood elf however. This was someone from a tribe who were down on their luck, and also had never had much luck to begin with.
“Hey are you with the guild? I’m here about-” the elf began, but Minowbloom cut him off kindly
“Hey now, no need to rush into things. You look famished, so let me get you something”
“No no, I could hardly-” the elf protested, but the [message taker] insisted, calling on one of the serving shadows who was hovering nearby due to the elf being a new guest: “A merchant stew please, some Sanctuary Cider too! Put it on my tab”
The Umbra nodded, floated up into the ceiling, and a few moments later returned, placing a bowl before the elf that held the hearty stew filled with mixed meats from all over the world delightfully cut into the shape of coins, and also set down a wooden cup containing some frothing apple cider.
Minnowbloom thanked the waiter, and then leaned back and relaxed for a bit as the hungry elf first eyed his food and then dug into it with relish, the rich meal quite literally the best he had had in his life despite it being somewhat common fare down in shadowton.
She took another sip of her juice, and then, once the initial rush had died down and her guest was eating at a steadier pace, asked “so what’s troubling you?”
Her guest swallowed and then replied “oh it's horrible miss-” before looking awfully embarrassed about the fact that they haven't exchanged names
“Minnowbloom,” she informed him, and then asked “and you?”
“Crab” the elf repliend, before continuing with his tale after some non verbal prompting “It’s a root viper, nastiest and biggest one you’ve ever seen. We used to just avoid it you know, and it’d leave us be, but it started going after our herds of Redwood Deer and anyone who tries to stop it, well…” It didn’t need to be said that the rarely seen terrors of the woods could do to some poorly armed [herders]
The elf drew in a breath through her teeth at the news. Of all the troubles a wood elf could have in the dark woods, that was pretty high up there. “How big exactly” she asked for clarity.
“I well” Crab had to think for a moment “if it could balance on its tail I swear it could reach the treetops”
That was bad. Not the worst, tree-kin could just keep growing and growing it seemed. But still very bad. “Sounds like you are in dire straits. Alright you know how this works, yeah?”
“Mmm. Well. My tribe’s not exactly the most well off, but we have some things we can offer. Hide and meat from our herd mostly. Tools perhaps. We aren't the most well off tribe I’m afraid, but that’s never much mattered till now.”
“Might be a hard sell then, but there might be a group who wants to prove themselves against a serpent if you’re lucky. Plus, it's a mission of mercy and some [adventurers] are all heart” Minnowbloom replied, before taking out a tiny pot of pain, a brush, and a large square dry leaf that Sanctuary had started growing (so like paper, but not nearly as good).
“So lets see… root sprent… big as a tree… your tribe is…?” she paused and got Crab’s people’s location and then went on “reward… hide, meat, tools… aaaand done” she concluded finishing her work before showing it to Crab “Hows that look?”
“Like a crime” came a third voice, and then a knife which was driven down into the leaf and the middle of the paper.
“Wha-” Minnowbloom started, and looked to her left to find an Umbra who had phased out of the floor right next to their table, and demanded to know “what’s the meaning of this!”
“That you’re in big trouble missy, you and all the other law breaking scum in this hive of law breakers!” the umbra announced, as more shadowy figures rose up from the ground while saytars stormed into the venue from the sidelines, all armed to the teeth. A few black-marketeers and their clients tried to make a run for it, and it did not go well for them, while Minnowbloom just raised her hands in the air as her arrester pointed a second knife at her and insisted “But I’ve done nothing wrong!”
Yet another day in the Shadow Bazaar. The acquisition of the Rose sword, Sanguis Equis, mosquitos and Mireborn things started to look better but it was not enough. Not by far. More had to be brought in. The Mireborn were placed in coin form until Ashevelen would find a use for them, if there was any and if not, certainly someone would find them a use.
Making some mental calculations and the sorts, an Umbra spirit appeared before her informing her of law-breakers within the realm. Of course, she knew what they were doing for some time already but decided to let it pass, for a tiny bit of time. Just in case they would eventually understand what would happen to them if they’d be discovered…and they didn’t.
Ashevelen sent a few Satyrs and Umbras over to shut down their operation. All while watching them through the walls, which were made out of shadows that simply looked different. The mortals were, of course, denying that they ever did anything illegal. With a clap of her hands, all the elves that were seen going inside the restaurant and that were still inside the Shadow Bazaar were pulled into the ground and appeared in shadow-cages in front of Ashevelen.
The room where they were seemed smaller if one would look from the outside than how big it actually was. It was a simple room, unadorned with anything but cages upon cages. All filled now by the elves.
“ You have about 5 seconds to answer my questions before you’re all dead. Who’s the leader? Why did you break the rules? Do I have to remove body parts now or after you’re going to lie to me? ” asked the Goddess in the most threatening voice she could manage. The very walls of the room trembled at the sound and power of her voice.
“I’m innocent I swear, I didn’t know, they said that it wasn’t breaking the rules because there wasn’t any payment involved” Crab called out, one among a number of protesters, but unlike them, he was the only one who gave a name of an organisation: “It was those damn greedy [adventurers] from Sanctuary, they tricked me! I didn’t know I swear!”
“Hey! Nobody tricked no one, and I didn’t sell anything either!” Miinowbloom yelled back at him
“Oh yeah, well then what do you call this?” The Umbra who had arrested her said, waving the knife pierced leaf she had bad on her upon her arrest. “Looks like a deal to me” he accused, and indeed with the ‘price tag’ of various animal parts it certainly looked like some kind of receipt or contract.
“It’s a poster,” she retorted, before explaining “which I make for troubled strangers, and then take, and then pin up on a message board in Sanctuary for people to see. No deal here, just helpful relaying information” to the Umbra in question, the elf finding that much easier than speaking directly to the very very intimidating Goddess.
Ashevelen took a deep breath and the Umbras left the room. This interrogatory was hers to handle, she let it go for far too long.
“ Now, now. What did I say about lying mortal? What you’re doing is called trade of information. I know you know that because my mortals and you have been doing it for a while now. ” replied Ashe and with a flick of her finger, all fingers on both hands of all the elves in the room broke. All at once and then they got healed, but not before they felt the pain in full.
“ More or will you stop acting dumb and talk? As for Sanctuary, don’t worry. They’re next. ”
“Ow ow ow ow ow I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry” the sufficiently cowed elf replied as she was heckled by her peers who had been punished along side her, Minnowflower clutching her fingers close to her chest as she explained “they said it was ok, that it was just a more organised way of sharing gossip and news like we already where, but they… but I was wrong! Please don’t hurt me!”
“ You’re saying “they” but haven’t provided me with names or descriptions. Should I just take the information from Sanctuary or just go through the Dark Woods, gather all the elves and destroy them…leaving you the last one of your species. I could bless you with immortality and you will see how your people will slowly be forgotten. ” continued Ashe. The elves didn’t know this but Ashevelen had no plans in doing so, merely a way to scare them for good.
“You… you wouldn’t…” Minnowflower began, but had enough senses in her to not test the goddess’s patience any further and explained: “I’m with the guild. The [adventurers] guild. Pieapple thought up this idea, or, well, I mean she wanted to do more but some of the others talked her down because they thought this would toe the line better…” and well now it wasn't that ironic.
“ Oh’. Yes. I would. There are not that many things in this existence that I dislike more than lying or cheating. So…yes. I would. ” added Ashe, the shadows on the room flaring brightly before continuing “ So, let me see if I got this right. A different mortal talked you and your peers into breaking the ONE rule of my bazaar? No side-deals. You want a place to do it, all you have to do is ask and if I see the profit out of it…then it’ll be created but you mortals instead of doing that, preferred to go behind me back. ”
Ashevelen took a deep breath before releasing the one called “Crab” from their cage.
“ You. Bring me this Pieapple elf. If you don’t come back fast enough, all your people here will die…horribly. ”
“Bubububut that’ll take days” Crab replied, having more than enough empathy to not take this opportunity to just bail on everyone else.
“ That won’t do. Back to your cage. Who’s the closest to the Sanctuary? ”
Minowberry raised her hand, as did a random elf blackmarketer as Crab tried to take it back.
“ You’re staying here. Elf, you go. Come back here. If you don’t…let’s say that you won’t like what will happen afterwards. ” said Ashe as the elf was “spit” out of her realm.
That left an awkward amount of time during which said elf sprinted through the forest to get to Sanctuary, got up into said city, got an audience with the bakerqueen and, finally, after a brief delay, returned to shadow world and was picked up by the goddess’s servants and politely escorted back to the prison.
The door to the room opened and Pieapple entered, the picture of nobility. Or at least she had a nice crown and a calm composed look on her face, one that didn’t quite reach her nervously agitated hands that really wanted a throwing weapon in them despite how useless this would be.
She bowed before Ashevelen and greeted her as “Your divine majesty of shadows and trade” before saying “I understand you have taken one of my subjects captive over a breach of the law? I beseech you to free her, and take issue with me instead, such that we might come to terms and put an end to this unpleasantness as soon as possible” the low level [monarch] milking her the skill she had gotten from the class, [regal presence], for all it was worth in this moment.
Ashevelen looked at Pieapple, inspected her crown with a merchant’s eye and then simply ignored her for a few moments. Letting her sweat. She looked at the elves, at the walls and then…she snapped her fingers. Pieapple and herself were teleported outside of the room and in a square room, which shouldn’t be possible due to the circular shape of the tower but yet it was there.
The room was bare with no windows, nor doors and only one chair on which Ashevelen sat.
“ Drop the bullshit. Your people broke the only law in this place…willingly and at your command. Yet now, you’re asking to come to terms? Maybe my terms is the extinction of your whole species in the hopes that no other mortals would be so dumb.
“Person. Miss Minnowbloom is my only associate you have taken captive” Pieapple carefully corrected, before catching on “unless you mean… all of elf kind?”
“ I do indeed. If one of you breaks the rules, all of you will eventually. No elf that knew about your arrangement, and I know there are more that knew about it, came forward to report it. In my view, you’re all guilty. Now, how should I punish you? Do you have a preferred method of death or just a normal erase works for your kind? ”
“You say this as if there were only elves at this gathering, yet it has not been like that for many moons now. Do you truly think none of the other people have been taking part in this illegal market?” the [monarch] pointed out “or that guild hasn’t done jobs for umbra or satyrs?”
“As for my death, well, you will have to eat me I suppose, or else your consequences doesn’t stand up to Lektoria’s” Pieapple said calm,y as if she had not been utterly terrified by the prospect when first threatened with it, before swiftly adding “that said, I don’t suppose I can offer you… what is the word… reparations instead? And a suggestion to help mitigate the impulses causing this lawbreaking in a way that would be profitable to you?”
Ashevelen grabbed Pieapple with two fingers and lifted her in the air. The room started to become bigger as Ashe’s form grew in size. She raised Pieapple up and Ashe opened her mouth wide as if you eat her…then dropped her in her mouth. Only for Pieapple to be transported into a different room which looked similar but this time, there were two chairs and one table.
“ You should’ve seen your face. ” said Ashe as she laughed out loud at the terror Pieapple most certaily went through.
The elf most certainly had not appreciated reliving her nightmares. The only thing stopping her from collapsing to the floor in a foetal position was the pool of poison and the shattered remains of the seapods that had held it resulting from her futile attempt to fight her fate via throwing skills. So instead she stood, shaking in place, trying to get a hold of herself.
“ Calm down, will you? I asked how you want to die and did what you requested. ” replied Ashe with a wink.
“That was not... Funny. At all. Not the first time, not the second time” she shuddered, before simply summing up it all up by cursing her life with “fuck, why me?”
" Not for you maybe. As to "why you". You know the answer to that and now…my patience is growing thin, mortal. You mentioned a deal, go on. Just don't forget one thing. The rule has been broken and if you don't negotiate properly, I'll eliminate your whole species as a warning for others. " answered Ashe calmly before a miniature Sanctuary appeared on the table and got crushed by a divine hand. The image then restarted itself, this time showing Sanctuary being devoured by monsters and then again and again, each time a different method of destruction would appear, getting more and more wild and inventive. " You've got until I run out of ideas…"
I just wanted to explore a cave with my friends, the monarch thought to herself, and then fate had decided to make her a plaything of the gods. Then she took a deep breath, reactivated her skill, and got back to business. She decided to not waste time pointing out that Jeon had a house there and probably would not take well to it or his people being attacked. This was her problem, she would solve it herself and not lean on his help.
She stepped out of the poison pool, pulled leafy sheath out of a pouch, sat at the other side of the table, and pushed the diagram she’d drawn over.
“Let the guild operate officially. People come, they make requests, they deposit or contractually promised rewards and then the guild handles all the business of proving a task is done and distributing these rewards. You, naturally, get a cut as standard practice, plus the guild takes on the debt of all your… lost profits“
The diagram itself depicted an organically grown structure sat in the Bazaar, and a detailed diagram of its interior hosting space for guild staff to take, store, and distribute rewards. Record rooms and bounty boards. Training halls, and a tavern for the [adventurers], and dedicated space for the Bazaar staff to sell directly to them. It also had perfect measurements of materials, dimensions and capacity jotted down, that made it clear that this hadn’t been made in a hurry.
“Both Sanctuary, and my future kingdom will also take on this debt of course… also if I might make a suggestion?” she asked, this bit more tepidly “You introduced people to the wonder of trade, of barter, of selling, made a relf for it, and then locked it down so only your people could truly trade in it. This is… frustrating, to some. You are in your right to do things this way, of course, but if you want to stop stomping out blackmarkets, then, maybe, just set up a way that outsiders can buy and sell, just in a way that proffits you. Take a cut, charge a fee, anything. Just let the market be free”
The Lady of the Trade listened to Pieapple’s proposal silently, nodding at times and shaking her head when a point made was not fitting her imagination…especially the bit about dimensions and materials to which she outright said “No” before allowing Pieapple to continue.
“ I am not concerned about lost profits. Like all mortals you’re understanding the nature of the trade in a wrong way but that’s not for me to teach you. What I care about is that my rules have been broken. If any of you would’ve come forward to ask permission about it, I would’ve said yes in a mortal heartbeat and yet, you decided to go behind my back. But–” replied Ashevelen in a friendly manner before standing up and touching one of the walls. Immediately, a wall opened up and the bazaar came into view.
“ Follow me. ” she said without looking back and walked until an empty area, devoid of stalls, stood before them.
“ You’re saying a lot of things about debt, mortal but do you understand the debt you’re facing? You understand as well that I could stop all blackmarkets that pop up almost immediately while in my realm and…Do you understand that I can’t let you get out of this without some form of punishment ‘lest others see it as weakness and profit based on it? ”
“If you can shut them down then who would…” Pieapple began to ask, only to realise the answer “ah. Other gods”
“ And not only. ” said Ashe, turning her head towards Pieapple and winked.
Tapping her foot on the ground, the building Pieapple showed Ashe earlier on slowly started to rise from the ground. Initially the building would follow the exact dimensions of what was showcased on Pieapple’s plan but then it grew in size, whole rooms added to support members living there, a training yard with different environments to help training for different quests and more. Right on top of the building, there would be three different statues. The biggest was of Ashevelen, the patron of the realm and then on each side a statue of the Kathetikon and one of Jeon. The building stood 6 floors up and 6 down with different hidden rooms to where only those that would speak a password would be allowed to pass.
“ Go inside, have a look. Check the new additions. I’ll wait. ”
The confused [monarch] did so, and for a while the fear and trepidation was washed away as she marvelled at the vision her crown had allowed her to plan come to life in a fashion far grander than even she could have imagined. After having spent so much time planning and experimenting, it was a delight to explore somewhere new again, to go on a little adventure. But eventually it ended, the elf releasing that even if the goddess had said she would wait it was best to not make her do so for so long.
So, with a great deal of trepidation, she stepped out of the door and said to Ashe “It’s amazing… but there’s another part to this isn’t there? This is repayment, yet still, there’s also punishment. So what is it?”
“ The punishment is very simple and it comes in stages. First, you’re going to have an overseer. One of my own Umbra, just to make sure no backroom deals are made. They will be informed about everything your guild does or plans to do. They’ll not intervene in the decisions unless they somehow affect my business, say, your people choose to get involved into a war between other mortals which would harm the Umbra or their deals. Second, I’ll receive a cut from all the quest rewards which will be sent to the bazaar to be further sold. Third, all the [adventurers], will be tasked with bringing something they haven’t seen before back from their trip. An animal, a plant or maybe a new song. Fourth, your kingdom will enter into a formal alliance with Shadowton and set a trading route between them two and the last thing…you’ll allow the admission of my Umbra/Satyrs into the [adventurers] guild. ” said Ashe, raising a finger each time she made a point.
“That trade route will be… some undertaking it has to be said” The elf replied, mentaly double checking the map and looking haggard by that burden already, but then swiftly added “b-but give me time and it can be done”
She then went on, pulling out a blank sheet and noting down things while she ran down the points in her head. “Manager. Fine. Still don’t know what a war is. The cut makes sense, no problem. Might need to, uh, find a way to encourage people to hand in new stuff because that is nearly impossible to enforce I think. Hmm”
Then she got to the last point and looked a bit confused and replied “oh, um, there wasn’t any kind of rule barring them? Did… oh. Huh. Maybe that wasn’t obvious. We can put extra effort into inducting them, if that works? Well, them and people from all over.”
She finished the last strokes on her document and then presented the impromptuly drawn up contract/IOU to the goddess.
“A merciful deal, your divinity” she said, before adding “I was worried it would cost me an arm and a leg” jokily in an attempt to dissipate the tension.
“ War. When two mortal kingdoms start fighting for whatever reason…as for the incentive. Got an idea. Tell them they’ll get special offers for whatever is sold in the bazaar that’s not alive based on how many new things they bring. Say…1% reduction of prices for 5 things, 10% reduction for 50 things, 25% reduction for 150 and finally a 50% reduction for 500 new things but for each one thing they bring that was already discovered, they lose one “point”. ” replied Ashe as the new HQ of the adventurers guild would continue improving as they talked. Beds, lights etc would appear, all made out of solid shadows.
“ I am aware that there wasn’t a rule but my Umbra aren’t interested in fighting and the Satyrs are meant to protect the forest. They won’t bulge on their own, so..give them a nudge. As for the “people from all over”, I’ve got plans for that but they’re not meant for…mortal ears yet. ” continued Ashe.
With a wink, Ashevelen materialised two swords in front of her and they flew towards Pieapple at a very fast speed. One for the arm, one for the leg. When they reached her, the swords passed through her, leaving only a tiny dark line where they hit. The line would remain with Pieapple all her life, a mark from the Goddess.
“ There, now you’ve got a good story to tell. Tell them you’ve lost your arm and leg in a deal but then managed to get them back. ”
“Gahhh ah not again” the elf cursed and then felt at her scarred limbs with a mix of amazement and flabbergasting, before groaning “Urrrgh, you know you and Lektoria would get on great I just know it”
“ I’ll plan on finding that out later on and also, you’re the one who asked for it. ” said Ashe with a smile.
“ Now, I’ve got more important things to handle. Keep the end of your bargain and you’ll prosper. Don’t…and you won’t need to worry about eating anymore. See ya’, mortal.” winked Ashe before disappearing.
Pieapple let out a deep sigh of relief that it was over, glanced back at her new, empty, guild hall, took another breath and then set to work getting it staffed, starting with bailing poor Minowbloom out of jail.
At least she had level up notifications pinging in her head to keep her company for the start of her trip over there.
Darkwood adventure guild: 16
-3 ap: unlocked tech: writing -3 ap: unlocked tech: plant shaping: allows [druids] and the like to encourage plants to grow into the shapes of tools, houses, etc. These are generally more resilient than constructed equivalents, though they are of course limited to plant matter based materials. This can also apply to Forest-Kin, which opens up an interesting realm of possibilities that mere selective breeding cannot reach.
5 ap to rebrand to simply the Adventurer’s Guild and go global. [Adventurers] in the guild can also now gain bonus trade and shadow related skills.
1 ap to recruit new members to fill up the guild hall’s staff, and induct new members from across the globe into its ranks
+1 for significant role +1 for colab +1 for 10,000+ chars
Adventurer’s guild: 8
A bunch of elves have been doing a blackmarket in the Bazzar’s first, and currently only, restaurant. The Darkwood adventurer's guild has been taking part, an elf called Minnowbloom getting quest requests from worried elves. While getting one from an elf called crab, the Bazzar staff raid the restaurant and arrest everyone who has anything to do with the blackmarket.
After some threats, the trade goddess Ashevelen gets Pieapple’s name out of Minnowbloom, and summons the [monarch] to account for her and her people’s crimes.
After a bit of back and forth, Pieapple convinced Ashevelen to let her set up an official adventuring guildhall inside the Bazaar, one which will pay tax to the goddess (something an official supervisor will make sure of)
She also has to (actively) recruit umbra and saytar members, not get involved in business that will upset the Bazaar (such as joining wars), get adventurers to bring anything new they find to the guild (said get special offers in return) and finally once she sets up the kingdom gifted to her by Lektoria she has to set up a trade route between it and Shadowton (as well as from an alliance with the town)
She agrees and, after getting a set of phantom scars on an arm and a leg thanks to a joke, is left with an empty guild hall she needs to fill.
Level 7: 05/70 Word Count: 3,370~ Location: Twilight Town Points Gained: 4 NEW EXP balance--- Level 7: 10/70 (pending)
“Hey, Princess Midna.” She said, pulling up alongside her and matching her pace. Balloons trailed from the top of Jesse’s car. Balloon-Car is born!
“I’d ask why they gave you a license this fast but then I remembered they sanction street racing using scrap vehicles. Kind of answers itself. Must be a tourism thing, huh? You need any pointers? I got a B+ in my driver’s ed class so, I’m pretty much an expert.” She said, raising an eyebrow and glancing at Midna over the top of non-existent sunglasses.
The psycho masked princess (the windshield of her squat technical was the most nonfunctional thing about the fat vehicle that looked like it had been built by someone who normally only made boats) responded by tittering and responding “Well I got a P for perfect” she replied, misinterpreting the P for pass on her test card.
“It’s just like riding a beast, except you have complete control!” she insisted, before swerving uncontrollably to the right, grazing against Jesse’s vehicle just in time for someone in a leather robe that Midna had missed the introduction to go blazing past with a shout of
“How about you eat mine!”
“Ah, drat dang it heck” Midna cursed as she got control of her vehicle, the piratial manikin manned turret on the back spinning wildly as she herself sun the wheel. Then once she had stopped her untended bumper cars moment she asking out loud “eat his what”, not having put two and two together regarding that comment and Jesse’s initial taunt.
Jesse gripped the wheel as her balloon car was briefly sandwiched between two others with seemingly less control than hers. “Dust, Midna.” She said.
“Like the dust getting kicked up from the wheels. For example:” She stepped on the gas, sped up, and overtook Midna, keeping her car in front of her but not speeding away. “Now I’m winning. Behold the power of balloon car. Now keep up, I’m gonna go catch up to that other guy.” She said, accelerating forward around the corner to get to Roxas.
“Hey!” She called out to him. “Is there a finish line in this race, or what?” She asked, assuming he was a local.
“Think so!” Roxas called back as an answer, “We’ve entered one of the race track circuits so if we just follow it we’ll find it sooner or later!” he decided to match her pace for a moment in order to communicate to her more clearly, “How about… 3 laps?” from what he had seen of the races, three laps was their usual number so it made sense to stick with that standard.
And besides, he wanted to test his car’s ability to run a full length race. Up to now he had just done short test laps around the shop. So a full 3 laps around one of the circuits was the ideal performance test for his Twilight Blaze.
Think so? Jesse thought. Okay, not a local. It almost makes me think its a tourist trap, but, again, it’s free, so…
“All right, you’re on. Balloon car, away!” She said with faux-earnesty. Grabbing her car with Launch, she flung herself into the air. Immediately things went very out of control, but she managed to keep herself literally on track by adjusting herself with a few telekinetic shunts. “Holy shit.” She landed with a crash next to Roxas, barely making any ground on him.
Casting a look over at him, she shrugged, before flooring it. Jesse was a decently experienced driver, but this was by the far the fastest she had ever done it. Only a few trips to go-kart places had given her similar experiences. Still, she did have a driver’s license before coming to the World of Light.
Midna in contrast, did not. Nor had she ever controlled, say, a cart, or chariot. No, all she had to work with was riding experience... Oh and magic to cheat with.
“There’s no way you're leaving me behind that easily!” came a voice from behind the pair, along with the buzzing of wings as Midna used a massive Vibrava clinging to the body of her car as an auxiliary engine for a temporary speed boost that allowed her to catch up with the pair before it had to head on back home through another portal.
“Yes, Midna! Use giant bug powers!” Jesse called out.
As much as Roxas wanted to give himself another rocket boost, even he could tell that would be a bad idea. They were coming up on a series of sharp corners, three in total. If he tried to use his thrusters here he’d just end up ramming a wall or barrier. That simply meant he would have to wait a bit for his next big speed boost and try to get creative in the meantime.
He observed the telekinetic shunting and summoning techniques his two opponents used respectively. Even to someone unfamiliar with the vehicles, it was still pretty obvious they were implementing their own individual abilities into their driving. Well… guess I’d better do the same.
Roxas steered into the oncoming corner and slid his car around it. In this moment he could get a strained view of his rear and took that opportunity. He removed one hand from the steering wheel and summoned Oblivion into it. He aimed the Keyblade back behind him and then chanted, “Blizzaga!” and shot back an icy blast that hit the track behind him. Upon impact it created a big icy puddle that could serve as a slippery hazard for whichever driver was coming in behind him.
As clever as he felt, Roxas had no real time to do much else. The next two corners followed immediately after the first and so he would need his full concentration to get through them without losing control.
“Balloon car!” Jesse said again, like it was a special move, or the name of a spell like Roxas. Having fun with it, she picked the car up with Launch but didn’t toss it, choosing to float over it. It cost her some speed and control but when she landed back on the track she was able to make the two corners.
Jesse ran through a list of options in her head. All of my abilities aren’t very sportsmanlike… She mused. Reaching into her pocket, she produced her Toolgun, still on balloon mode.
“I’m shootin’ at ya.” She called out to Roxas as a heads up, and then leveled the Tool Gun at his back tire. Her first few shots missed, causing balloons to attach to the road, but eventually she started getting a bead on him. His tire began to slow down and float as she attached balloons to his tire.
Behind her there was a crashing sound that sounded like it was the result of Midna crashing as a result of her run in with the ice, but was actually her slamming her shadow hand into the ground to correct her slide. The princess practically lived her every moment in a world of ice thanks to the maglev power stuck in her paldron, so she knew a thing or two about correcting her slides. She was, however, still firmly in last place after that.
Roxas noticed his car slowing a bit as he turned into the third corner. On the bright side the slowdown helped him control the turn safely. But of course it also meant he slowed down and he watched Jesse slip past him into the lead. And if he didn’t do something right now, Midna would also pass him up and leave him in last place.
With a flick of his wrist, Roxas summoned Oblivion once more. But instead of shooting a spell, he instead flung the weapon back behind him in the direction the car was being elevated. The weapon effortlessly flew through the balloons and destroyed them all, allowing the tire to drop back and for Roxas to regain his full speed again.
As for the Keyblade, Midna might be surprised to see it just vanish in a small flash of light mere moments later. It was one of the best advantages of possessing such a weapon. It could be thrown and - no matter where it ended afterwards - it would just vanish and go back to waiting to be summoned again.
After a short straight there was one more corner that led into a long straight away. It also happened to be where the finish line was located. And it would serve as a perfect spot for him to use his rocket thrusters again. All he had to do was make the corner. He could slip back into the lead once he hit the upcoming straightaway. Roxas steered into the inside corner as much as he could get away with, and then hit the thrusters at the earliest moment he was able to. Time to see if he could shoot past Jesse again like he had at the start.
It was a perfect place for Minda to use her Vibrava boost again as well, the thruming of wings joining the fiery blasts of Roxas’ rocket engines.
Jesse would just have to make up for lost time on the curves, since besides flooring it, she hadn’t any way to exponentially increase speed. Still, she put the pedal to the metal. Roxas would overtake her and Midna would once again close the gap. Jesse would try to slow down early and take the turns carefully, hoping being slow and steady would indeed win her the race. Maybe these big boosters would scrape against the wall and slow down enough that Jesse could win it.
He was back in the lead for now but Roxas couldn’t get complicit. After the upcoming turn he’d be coming back onto the 3 sharp corners from before. Based on what happened last time, Roxas slowly realized that his car wasn’t built for reliable cornering. If he wanted to get through without hitting or scraping a barrier he’d have to slow himself down. That of course gave the ladies a chance to catch up and even overtake him if luck was on their side.
But there was nothing for it. Roxas would just have to do his best slides and hope Lady Luck was kind. He steered into the first corner and slid around it successfully. Then did the same for the second corner. But that third corner was practically a sharp u-turn. Twilight Blaze was just too fast to get around without momentarily bumping its passenger side into the track barrier. That of course slowed him down a bit and he watched what looked like Jesse’s car manage to slip into the lead.
Roxas slammed back down on the gas, determined not to let himself fall into last place. After the next turn he once again hit the rocket engines and shot forwards just like the first lap. Perhaps if he repeated this for the third lap he could lock himself in for the win. But only time would tell and a lot could happen during the course of a lap, especially in the more tense final lap when everyone would be more determined than ever to secure their victory.
Midna, the worst driver, made up for her lack of training with inordinate amounts of magical shenanigans. On top of her Vibrava boosts she also started using her shadow hand to either slap herself towards with a rowing motion of right slap left slap right slap, or to take corners harder by grabbing the ground with dragon claws and pulling herself around them. Still, all this, other than getting her the ire of the city’s road maintenance division, was only enough to keep her in the race. If she wanted to win, she had to consider dirtier tricks.
Over the roar of the engines and the rushing wind, no one could hear Jesse beatboxing the soundtrack to the race under her breath. Never before had she been in a street race with two wizards, and most likely she never would again. She enjoyed jockeying for the lead with Roxas, and at the end of the second lap he once again took advantage of the straight away with his rocket boosters after she beat him on the corners. Then she remembered that, like Midna, she wasn’t racing alone. Uncle Sven might be able to help. The track, of course, was a circle, and she’d been around it twice. If she timed a jump just right, she might able to leap over buildings and soar to victory by taking a huge shortcut. It was worth a shot, and she’d rather fail spectacularly than do decently well in a boring way. Jesse Faden didn’t do ‘fear’ anymore! Continuing to race, she bid her time until the right moment as she began to go into the third lap, driving defensively until she found the right spot for her Ooze Balloon Gambit.
“Sven, Elastic Ooze!” She shouted. The mad alchemist appeared, grabbing onto the side of the car.
“Let’s see what happens if-” He cut himself off with a toss of a potion. It shattered and the ooze spread. She hit it with her car and launched herself upward at the same time.
“Woah fuck-” She swore as the air she got was alarming. Well above the neighborhood she cut across houses and streets.
The third and final lap was going normally at first. But Roxas’ jaw nearly dropped when he saw Jesse attempt her crazy jump. Not good! There was no way he could catch up without trying something equally crazy. And as he saw the three sharp corners approaching, an absolutely insane idea formed in his head. He altered his angle of approach that made it look like he was going straight for the barricade instead of the inside corner like one would expect. And then he summoned Oblivion.
“Blizzaga!” He shot the spell straight ahead and watched it glide across the ground until eventually hitting the barricade. When it did, a roughly ramp-shaped structure was almost instantly formed. Then Roxas did the unthinkable and used his rocket boosters just as he hit it. His car went flying forward clear over the first two corners and straight at the inside of the third. But there was more to his plan. He let go of Oblivion in order to grab the wheel and free up his left hand. Afterwards he summoned Oathkeeper - a white Keyblade. He stuck his arm straight out to his left. On the tip of the barricade was a tall street lamp that Roxas managed to hook Oathkeeper onto.
With any other types of vehicles, this plan would never work. But these vehicles were proven to be rather light overall and highly resistant to damage from crashes. That allowed Roxas to use his momentum to circle around and slingshot himself - car and all - around the third and final corner. All that was left was the straightaway. His rockets would get him about half-way to the finish line, but after that? It would all come down to who was luckier.
Minda was still bringing up the rear, and she didn’t do something crazy of her own, she was going to be left out of the final sprint finish. Her solution to this shortcut situation? Leaping out of her veil, grabbing it in an oversized shadow hand, and then hurling the vehicle alone over the same jump, before diving into a shadow, appearing out of another just in time to reach up and catch her vehicle.
“Push car go!” she shouted as she shoved her machine forwards to get up speed again, then using the physics bending nature of her shadowhand to, once it was fully outstretched in the push motion, lift herself up behind her vehicle while still holding the back of the car, swinging her own body around and popping down in the driver's seat of the free rolling machine once more.
“Step on the gas” she echoed her teacher to herself as she did just that and went racing after the two human racers
Jesse’s car had begun floating down, but she realized if she wanted to beat the boosted Roxas she’d have to hit the ground faster. Turning over her shoulder, she produced the Service Weapon- Is this a misuse of my powers? It might be.- switched it to Spin, and shredded all of the balloons keeping the Balloon Car aloft. Now just Car, it dropped onto the track and directly in the way of Roxas’s vehicle. “Ah, fuck.” Jesse said unrepentantly.
“Yes!” Roxas shouted as the finish line got ever closer. He was almost certain he had this, “Wait wait NO-” he cried out in panic when Jesse’s car hit the ground mere meters in front of him. His rockets hadn’t quite stopped firing yet so he wound up slamming into her car full stop. And despite the toughness of these vehicles, the two cars managed to break into large chunks which of course sent both Roxas and Jesse sprawling on the track. Even these cars had their limits, and the crazy stunts they pulled were probably just too much for the machines to handle.
“Ugh…” Roxas groaned, pushing himself to his feet, “...what a mess.” he glanced around at the scattered components. He also wondered if anyone would be upset that they made this mess. But he ignored the components when he spotted Jesse and moved over in her direction, “Hey…” he said, “...you okay? Looks like we overdid it, huh?”
Jesse had landed gently on her feet, a couple of pieces clattering to the ground next to her. The Director was in high spirits. Sure, she had a competitive side, but any disappointment about losing was trounced by how much fun she just had.
Just then there came manic laughter approaching from behind, speed doppler affecting it till it zoomed on by, and Midna crossed the finish line ahead of the two feckless humans. It might be a victory born not from her successes but instead from the failures of others, but it was a victory nonetheless! The princess took a few moments to revel in it, before she performed a 7 point turn and rolled on back to check on the crash victims
“You two alright?”
Jesse rose a hand to greeting to the Princess. “We’re just fine. Hey, that was good racing, Midna. I say you earned that win.” She turned to Roxas. “That was somethin’ else, huh?” Jesse said, smiling. She looked at the scattered components. “Maybe we overdid it a little. But, I intend to build Balloon Car Mark 2 and succeed where its predecessor failed. I need rocket boosters on all six sides of the car!”
She used Shield to gather all of the loose parts into a wall in front of her and then walked to the sidewalk, where they were all deposited in a pile. Then she approached Roxas and extended out her hand. “I’m Jesse Faden. There’s two types of people in this world: those that slow down at yellow lights, and those that floor it. I’m guessing we’re both the latter?”
“I’m Roxas.” he replied while shaking her hand, “And I’d say you’re probably right. Both the latter.” but he wasn’t about to be a poor sport. He flashed a smile and thumbs up in the direction of the princess, “Looks like you have us beat. Enjoy the win… uh…” he hesitated, realizing he didn’t even name. Then he cast a slightly sad look at the pile of parts.
“Shame about the cars. I thought I’d get to leave Twilight Blaze here intact when I left town, but… I guess not.” he gave a small sigh and then shrugged his shoulders, “It’s not like I could take it with me, too big and bulky. Anyway,” he turned back to face the two ladies, “Great race you two. I had a ton of fun. You both are new around here, right? Pretty sure I saw you coming out of the station with a few others. You wouldn’t happen to be the people Sectonia was waiting for, are you?”
“That’s us. I’m Midna by the way, princess of twilight and best racer in town. Nice to meet you” the imp informed him, offering a hand to shake.
“Pleasure’s all mine, Your Highness.” Roxas replied, knowing from experience how to act around royals.
“If you’re already familiar with Sectonia, then I guess we’ll see you when we meet up again, right? Did she tell you about the Seekers? We’re looking for capable people with their heads on straight.” Jesse said.
“Seekers, huh?” Roxas closed his eyes in thought. Was that their group’s name? Certainly an interesting choice, and definitely one that brought back a memory or two of Roxas’ previous battles, “Yeah she and I spoke a bit about it. The short version is that I have a bone to pick with Organization XIII - those guys you’ve all seen that dress like me. They’re old enemies of mine and so I asked if I could join you guys and check them out for myself.”
Jesse raised her eyebrow, interest piqued. “Oh, yeah?”
Ramlethal was helpful for sure, but I can’t deny I’d like to know more about them. There’s so many unanswered questions about them. Among them; why wasn’t I invited? Maybe this Roxas guy could shed some like on things about that as a bonus. “Maybe we could share notes once the big meetup goes down.” Jesse said.
“Well, we’re still waiting for them to ship into town. So in the meantime, guess how about we clean up this mess, and maybe I can learn a thing or two about fixing one of these machines afterwards while we wait? If you’ll show me the ropes” Midna suggested/asked. It would, after all, be a touch rude to leave the pair’s junked vehicles on the road
“Sure, sounds good to me.” he thought back to what Ellie had told him, “The parts stick together real easily, and…” he did his best to repeat Ellie’s explanation. He probably didn’t explain quite as well but Midna would still get the basic gist. After some time spent clearing the junked vehicles, they’d eventually be ready to go to the big meetup.
Drifting Pollen
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