Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
Midna’s shadowhand struck true for the dozenth time, sending a pair of Session Pounds sailing to the side, where their battered forms crashed into the wall of the endless tunnel. One detonated on impact, and then set off the other in a chain reaction while Midna held up one of arms to block the blinding flash of the detonation, while the other clung tight to her wolfos’s coat.
A good thing she did so too, for just as soon as the floating bombs were dead her steed lunged to the side in a daring leap, chasing the camera’s path to avoid some incoming signage, an action that would have caused her to fall off had she not been holding onto it for dear life.
”I really need to invest in stirrups” Midna muttered to herself as the leap came to an end, before squinting forwards through the lens of her mask and asking ”Alright who’s talking to the hand next huh?” only for her question to be answered with no more flashing lights, as the constant drip feed of floating bombs came to an unexpected end.
”That’s what I thought” she declared haughty to the dead, before addressing the camera: ”Out of disposable minions are you? Well to bad, because now I can give you my full attention”
Her method of doing so was to raise up a hand, opening a portal out of which singing sand started to pour. It fell behind them at first, only to take flight as per her will, and go streaming forwards, the sound of it rushing through the air adding wordless singing to the pulsing beats of the music being played.
The stream of sand rushed forwards, and then wrapped around the camera, coarse grains starting to slowly but surely weather away at it. ”Get sand tomb-ed! Your days are numbered now machines, because there’s no escaping this” the princess declared as the swirling sand started to bog the machine’s flight down and scratched its lens and paintwork. Or that is what it would have done, had something not burst out of one of the voids behind her platform.
”Huh?” the princess went as she glanced back at the noise, only to get a face full of high beam headlights from the utter monstrosity that had risen from the depths.
”Gah! Why why why why all this light!?” the glare blinded princess demanded to know as she turned away again, hand covering her face, only to have her own sand to blast past her as the glare robbed her of the ability to control it, which resulted in more cursing and questioning ”Son of a moblin, what in the goddess’s name is happening?!”
It took her a few moments to recover, and when she had her first act was to yell ”Alright that’s it you are going down, and I’m coming to do it myself!” at the camera. To do this she swapped out her wolfos for her vibrava, which she had grip her back so they could combine their flight. Yet when she pushed off the ground and activated her levitation the expected thrum of insectile wings did not meet her ears.
No, instead she began to fall rapidly behind, and towards the lumbering light blasting monstrosity pursuing them.
”What are you doing?! Fly you fool!” Midna demanded, as she reached out and grabbed the platform she had just been on with her shadow hand, halting her own ‘fall’ jarringly enough that her spirit transformed beast lost grip of her back and fell back from her as well.
She glanced after it, squinting through the light, and saw the vague shape of the virava skill-lessly flapping wings that would not lift it as it tumbled haplessly through the air. Then it fell past the highbeams cone of light, and suddenly caught itself as the power of flight returned without warning. Wings beat, letting it narrowly dodge a punch swung by the car monster, only for it to re-enter the yellow glare and its flight to falter once again, sending it crashing down onto the hood of the vehicle.
Before a hand could grab and crush it, a twilight portal opened up under it, and it was sent home by the princess, who then reeled herself back to the platform. Feet struck the solid(ish) ground once again, only to slip due to her maglev mod reducing the friction her feet had with the surface. Normally she would have popped dragon claws on her toes to stop this, but bathed in the yellow glow these failed to materialize, and the princess had to be saved from slipping back off the platform via a re-summoning of her wolfos.
The beast caught her by her jacket, then tossed her onto its back, and then swiftly moved to leap out of the way of an incoming sign. As it did, the princess focused on her non pelt grabbing hand, trying to form dragon claws on it as well, a thing she managed only when that leap took her out of the range of the bayful glow of the half man half machine.
”But I can still use my magic so what is it? Can it be…?” she asked herself, and then had to come to a conclusion she really did not like, which was ”Watch out, the thing behind us’s light suppresses spirit powers!”
That left her with a fair few less options she realized, especially because the safety from the light she had landed in was temporary, as signs coming from in front and additional pursuing monstrosities would inevitably force her back into the glare.
Still unable to strike forwards without her attacks being disrupted, the princess instead tried to deal with their pursuers and to at least slow down their pursuers if she could not take them down. While her wolfos focused on what was coming from the front, the princess kept half lidded eyes focused back, while her shadow hand was raised above her, gathering power.
”Here, catch this you rejected chariot!” she called out as she finished charging her attack, before yelling ”Twilight volley bomb!” as she hurled a massive turquoise runic covered magic orb at the proverbial feet of their pursuer.
Had she tried to throw these forwards, odds were very high she would miss the floating camera, as her projectile was slow and had to hit the ground to detonate, with a not insurmountable risk that a poor judgment of her toss would see it clip a platform instead, which would have been disastrous. Backwards however, even into the blinding light, was easy. Momentum was with her and the crawling cars were too massive to miss, letting her nail them with the huge explosions with relative ease.
Whether that would actually do anything was by no means guaranteed, and if it did not she’d instead try the sand tomb trick again whenever she could get herself out of the light, but if she could, hurt them, break the lamps or even just force the monsters back with the blasts, that was what she’d focus on.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
Midna’s standoffishness vs the other, worked like a charm, the princess putting out fires with relative ease, and even when the flames did come close the fragment of a golden mask on her rosary glowed and quelled the heat to a degree. Add that to Benedict’s buff and their task really was just putting down the rabid Other rather than really fighting it, with the princess chipping away at range till Karin and Geralt both got in some heavy hits to put it down for good.
”Nice work people” Midna congratulated them, before growing briefly concerned when some mental math counted basically all of their team as being among the number taking down the Slippery Other (even Blazermate zipped in to deliver some kind of parting chomp) which left the number of heroes facing the other Other at a very concerning one.
The concern she had for how well Goldlewis could handle that situation spiked into fear upon hearing a resounding mighty crash coming from behind, and then promptly died back down when she saw that the source of that noise was the other Other being plowed into by an entire train.
”Oh, well, glad you’ve got that handled” she commented as she floated over, very glad that he was ok, and also relieved that she wasn’t going to have to face her illogical fear of lightning this time.
Impressively, not only had he taken down the other Other solo (for the last little bit of the battle anyway) but he’d also found them a way forwards. He directed them towards it, but rather than head right there, Midna did her now usual post battle thing of securing the loot.
”Sure let me just go collect on the spirits” she said, before thinking about that for a heartbeat and then, upon remembering the ash that the two Others had been found in, glancing at said piles and seeing there where more than just the glowing remains of their foes left here.
”Oh goddesses, I nearly forgot about whoever they got” she cursed as she rode over to inspect the fallen. Eyes darted between them for a few moments before she announced ”Good news, not any of ours, bad news, they were PSYC-OFF” which she found concerning.
”Can’t say if this is indicative of how the operation is going, or if they just got unlucky, but it's still not a good sign” she assessed as she flicked a hand to collect the dead, no point in letting them go to waste in her mind, and then used a burst of sand to scatter the ashes and a quiet prayer in the closest thing she could give their remains a funeral. Then she moved on, collecting the fallen Other if they were not claimed, and then pushed forwards with the team.
The princess was hardened enough to not let the deaths of soldiers in war get to her, even as a voice in the back of her mind niggled that maybe if they had been better, been faster, these people would still be alive. Instead she looked at the tiny silver lining of this, which was to grimly note that ”I suppose if we want more psychics to get into PSYC-OFF, that’s fusion sources for that plan secured”
The next stage of their journey was a maze, one that Midna assisted in getting them through via her ability to better see in the dark and plenty of shadow hopping to scout out a route to avoid the foot sloggers having to match in and out of the many dead ends.
While the maze proved to be clear of Other, it was not clear of dangers, as the investigation of a red glow saw them confronted by a device Midna did not recognize, but most certainly did not think it was meant to float up into the air and warp reality around them as it did.
Nonetheless, it did exactly that, and started playing music to boot.
”What in the goddess’s name is this nonsense … and why does it sound so good!?” she complained as the platform they had climbed up on launched forwards into a seemingly infinite tunnel, one in which additional platforms, obstructing overhanging signs, and more floating Other bombs started materializing.
”Oh it's just getting better and better I see! Get back here you ridiculous machine, I just want to compliment you on your music taste” Midna yelled after the camera, as she pulled a revolver out of the twilight realm and tried to nail the flying contraption.
That way of attempting to deal with things came to a swift end however, as her wolfos steed started having to leap from platform to platform to avoid them getting knocked off or dropped into the void, which made aiming extra tricky. To add insult to injury to that, the blinking Other bombs were back, and almost as much a nightmare for her light vulnerable eyes as they had been before.
At least there wasn’t a massive pile of smoke to add to the mess this time, so Midna could still somewhat see where things were. Just not anywhere near well enough to fire a precision weapon at a small, floating, far off target like the camera causing this whole mess.
”Alright, that’s it. I’m on fly swatting duty, so stay out of my way, and get rid of that floating menace for me!” the princess called out, before gripping her steed’s pelt with both hands for support, and then pulling out a large shadow hand, with which she delivered sweeping slaps to clear the air of bombs that managed to get close, using as wide an attack as possible.
”And if you need a gun to nail that thing, I can lend you one of two!” also called out (referring to her musket and revolver), which if someone took her up on it was going to be her only real contribution to solving the problem, as her usual summoning methods were not going to cut it here. Spear chucking strikers would most assuredly fall casually to signage (or just mess up other people's jumps via overcrowding) while her oversized Vibrava simply could not fit its increased wingspan into the tunnel.
After the meeting was over, Kamek had taken the advice of not trying to fly in the rain, and had thus retracted his drake offer. Instead he himself had simply teleported back down to the base of the tower in a puff of smoke and met back up with Jr and Rika. After having a lovely break and a snack of brie, Bowser caught up with them.
After taking a little time to plan and crush some spirits, the troop split up again, but in different groups from the ones they had been in before.
As such, while Bowser and Rika headed off to bring their noise to lay siege to Shambhala, he was going to take Jr for the school for the first time in the boy’s life.
“Mind if I tag along?” Jesse asked, one hand in her pocket.
”Huh? Oh. Sure thing” Jr replied for the pair of them, before saying ”Jesse, right?”
“Yes.” She said with a nod.
”Cool, welcome aboard” he replied, and that was that sorted.
The school they headed to was a two story affair, surrounded in autumnal trees, well maintained lawns, white picket fences and plentiful planters for growing flowers. With the almost comically enormous umbrella stretched out over the whole schoolyard like a big top tent to keep the rain off, the whole thing looked remarkably picturesque.
Prince and (grounded) cave drake riding mage pulled up under a tree in an ultimately fruitless attempt to avoid getting even more wet while they took stock of the situation. Or rather, Kamek sat under the tree, while Jr rolled his clown kart under an outstretched wing of the drake which acted as excellent cover for him, and made him a bit trickier to spot thanks to its cave camouflage.
“So…do we just walk in?” Jesse asked.
”We could try, but I’m not sure if it is even open. There don’t seem to be any classes in attendance as far as I can see” Kamek hypothesized while peering through the rain, before realizing that ”Which is probably a good thing now that I consider it”
”Guess I won’t have to pretend to go to school then I guess?” before wondering out loud ”But if there’s no other kids, then will the teacher’s be there?”
”Ah, well, that might be a problem. I suppose there’s only one way to find out?” he resolved, before spurring his paradoxically sneaky steed forwards to go try and try the door.
Before he got out of earshot however, he glanced back and suggested ”Oh, and, if anyone asks, we are simply seeking to take a look at the school with a mind to have Junior enroll? It might by us a few moments at the very least”
Jesse nodded. What would that make me? The baby sitter? The mother? Not sure I buy the family resemblance. Family friend, then?
They found the front door unlocked, and there were lights on inside. Though the school looked empty from a cursory look at the exterior and by all accounts there should be no students here with it being the weekend and all, a few voices could be heard from down the hallway inside. A sudden feeling of intrusion gnawed at the Seekers as they stepped inside. There could be no doubt about it; at least one class was in session. A bulletin board near the entrance explained why: a hand-drawn poster that depicted a ray of light shining down on the facility read Welcome to Sunday School! At the very least they wouldn’t have to worry about their target’s absence, but in exchange the interference of innocent schoolchildren in the heroes’ murderous scheme suddenly seemed less like an outside chance and more like a problematic guarantee.
“All right, well.” Jesse began with a grim laugh. “Obviously we’re not gonna seal the deal in here. Let’s see if we can find him and then follow him to wherever he does his ‘Dark Bishop’ stuff.” She whispered that last part. “Or maybe try to draw him out of his disguise. We have to be sure we’ve got this figured out before we make any moves.” She said.
With a plan in mind for what excuse to offer if they bumped into someone, the Seekers proceeded through the school hallways. Every other wall seemed to feature the kids’ latest art projects, from hand turkeys to dream catchers to papercraft to crayon self-portraits, made all the more vivid and varied by the different kinds of monsters that constituted the student body here. More advanced classes sported tri-fold presentations and experiments like the classic baking soda volcano. The voices spurred them onward to their less-than-kid-friendly task, however, and eventually the team found the classroom they’d been looking for.
Inside, a gathering of nine students were receiving instruction in the magical arts from a kindly-looking old cleric. He stood at about 5’9” with a slight stoop, a wrinkled face, and off-white robes. A few potted sunflowers stood by the windows for spell practice, and the kids’ current assignment seemed to be taking turns roughing the flowers up -either with offensive magic or, in the case of the purple dinosaur, punching them in the face- so that the clerics-in-training could heal them. In the course of overseeing this task, the instructor continuously took one student or another aside to provide constructive criticism on their restoration magic, or chide them for overzealousness when it came to beating up the flowers.
His creased face broke out into a smile as the reindeer girl managed to use her staff to recover one sunflower to full health from death’s door. “Incredible, Noelle!” he praised her. “It may not be exciting, but White Magic is a noble calling. Learn from her example, everyone!”
”Oh dear” Kamek muttered as their fears were confirmed, before beckoning them to move into another class room to avoid being in earshot.
”Well then, looks like we’ll need to think about those plans of yours,” the mage said to the director, with which Jr agreed, ”Yeaaaaah, I’d rather not be able to be called a hippo-rat by Omari” mispronouncing hypocrite in the process.
The boy did not want to murder some other kid’s beloved teacher in-front of them, that was for sure. ”Though I guess maybe we could kidnap him instead? Or teacher-nap him? That’d be fine” he then suggested, apparently still drawing a fairly high line for what was acceptable for him when it came to the level of trauma he was ok to inflict. Then again that kind of thing was entirely on brand for the Troop.
“We can’t risk starting a fight here, period.” Jesse said. “Too many civilians. We should also want to make sure this guy is actually working for the Consuls, on the off-chance IGV is somehow deceiving us.” Jesse said. “His real name is Solon, right? The Dark Bishop.”
She nodded her head into the classroom. “You two can still go in there and talk to him. He shouldn’t see me so he doesn’t recognize me when we’re following him.” She says.
”I suppose we could, hmmm” Kamek tapped his beak thinking it over, until jr declared ”I have an idea”
A few moments after that, the prince poked his head through the door, got an actual look at what the sunday school entailed, and with genuine enthusiasm said ”Wait, they teach you to beat stuff up at schools? I thought it was math and stuff” before confidently strolling in on foot (having just brought his paintbrush and left everything else shrunk down in Kamek’s pockets for a small attempt at subtly and blending in) and declaring ”I wanna try”
A moment after that Kamek hurried in after him, calling out ”Young master wait!” with actual genuine alarm because the prince had barely explained the plan before he set it in motion, and then, improvising, gave a little head bob to the teacher and tried to explain ”My most profuse apologies for the intrusion and interruption, we were simply looking around, and well the door was open and, ah, well,” before coughing into his fist to buy his brain a little time before explaining that ”We were thinking of enrolling, you see. Enrolling Junior that is, and simply wanted to see if the place was suitable. Again, my apologies for intruding”
Junior’s sudden entrance quickly got the attention of both students and teacher, the latter of whom seemed especially taken by surprise, although the mention of a desire to join in piqued his interest. “Oh? And who might you…”
At that point Kamek arrived to try and smooth the situation over. Although the Koopas’ appearance did disturb the class a little, Tomas did not look unduly upset. “Ah, a new student. What a rare treat,” he replied. Looking over at the other children, he gave a nod of his head. “Please, continue. Won’t be but a moment.” The cleric approached the duo of Koopas, leaning on his cane as he walked. “During the school week we do teach conventional subjects, but on the weekend I do offer an extracurricular magic course. For those gifted, and…” His gaze briefly flitted toward Susie. “Those who could benefit from some structure.” After a second his attention returned to Junior. “Now, I’m not in charge of enrollment here, but I see you already have a catalyst, young one. It would be a shame to send you away empty-handed. Would you like to demonstrate a few spells for the class?”
”Oh, would I ever” the prince replied, not one to miss an opportunity to show off. He approached the sunflowers, twirling his paintbrush above his head skillfully, before bringing the but down to the ground and declaring ”watch and learn a master caster” despite the fact that he had been a white mage for all of a day at most.
As the prince started out with ”Presence of mind!” to boost his casting speed, before he opened up with a circular aoe of restoring ”Medica!” on all the plants, and then undid all the healing he had just done with a similarly aoe ”Holy!” blast, Kamek decided to see if he could get a useful detail or two from the man.
”You must be very passionate, putting in sundays as well as your regular work week” he noted, though he also noted mentally that teaching kids skills useful combat was maybe not the most goody two shoes of activities (and he would know), before asking about how long the lessons where in a slightly round about way ”how much more of your time do you take out of your weekend to do these?”
With his eyes on Junior’s magic lightshow, Tomas took his time to respond. “Oh, it varies. Depends on who comes, who needs help, and how badly. I like to keep myself busy. I tried retirement not so long ago, but I just didn’t know what to do with myself.”
The mage found himself a little annoyed at how he’d failed to get the info he wanted, although honestly he thought, he should maybe just have asked. Despite this, he found himself talking casually with the man he was ostensibly here to kill.
”Oh, I know what you mean, somewhat. Sometimes I think i should take a step back from it all, but, well, when people need you …” he didn’t finish the sentence, and instead leaned against a desk as he watched the prince run through the rest of his mana pool casting ”Repose” to put an unfortunate flower to sleep, then ignited it with a fireball, only to put the fire out with ”Esuna” and finish with a ”Cure” to put it back up to full health again.
He wisely decided against damaging the school with stone, or burning the long cool down Benediction for the demonstration, and instead simply declared himself ”Done!” before turning away and asking ”Now how do you like that, huh?”
Tomas narrowed his eyes just a touch as the young prince finished his spellcasting. While Junior probably expected applause from one and all for his demonstration, the other students mostly regarded him with a mixture of annoyance, resignation, or jealousy. To them, Junior’s vast and varied array of spells -not to mention the showmanship with which he exhibited them- seemed like showboating. After a moment, Tomas put his hands together in a soft gold clap. “Impressive, young man. But…well, this is something of an introductory course. If you’re already well-acquainted with the basics, you’d be better off looking elsewhere.”
”Yeah, I am pretty good” the 100% showboating boy agreed with a flex, while Kamek looked a little sad on his behalf. Perhaps however, the mage thought, in this instance the boy’s poor friend making skills was a boon, considering what they needed to do to the other children’s teacher.
That said, so far this had not given them much of an angle on how to do that, and so he tried a more simple and direct approach, by asking ”Might I ask when you will finish teaching for today? I’d like to take the opportunity to talk to you a bit to learn more about the school, but obviously don’t want to intrude any more on your time with your students than we already have. If you would be free after, that is”
“Hmm…” Tomas frowned. “I cannot say for certain. You should speak to Principal Pulsating Mass. On a school day, when it’s here. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” With the Seekers’ efforts still exactly where they started at outset, the cleric went to return to his students.
”Unfortunate”
Jesse had been listening in, trying not to grimace too hard from where she was concealing herself outside the classroom.
Things are not going well. What the hell does he mean, ‘cannot say for certain’? Does he not know the schedule? That doesn’t make any sense. She said, and the pattern with her mind shimmered.
Regardless, Junior and Kamek were still in there. She wasn’t going to barge in unless she needed too.
She would not need to regardless, as the pair of them exited the room a few moments later, having gotten themselves into a situation where it would be rather awkward, not to mention increasingly suspicious to remain.
”Well, that did not work out particularly well” the mage admitted once they regrouped out of sight and earshot
”Hey, I did my part distracting the other kids, you just couldn't pull your weight” jr insisted, as if he had not been mostly focused on showing off in the heat of the moment.
”In my defense, he was rather evasive, though perhaps I pressed him poorly. I’ll admit, subterfuge is not one of my areas of expertise” the mage had to confess as he began to resize Jr’s gear, as, one way or the other, the moment for espionage was most likely over.
“It’s fine.” Jesse said, nodding over to a schedule on a poster board on the school wall. It indicated Sunday School wouldn’t end until after the raid. “We have to find a way to get him out of there anyway.”
“If he really is some Dark Bishop working for Galeem, he probably doesn’t actually care about those kids anyway. Maybe we can use that. There’s gotta be a way to isolate him.” Jesse said.
”Yes, it would be best to not worry about him using them as hostages or something of the sort, that is for sure” Kamek agreed, before he sat down and they began to think it over.
”Maybe if we … no”
”How about .. nah”
”But we could … no not that either”
”Or … hmmmm … nope”
”Perhaps we could … or perhaps not”
Jesse sat there, looking between the both of them start and stop their sentences before saying anything. She started playing along. “But what if we…no…”
“We could consider doing…nevermind.” She said.
The three of them went back and forth for a bit, before Jr looked up, and then pointed to a speaker sitting in the corner of the room they were in and asked ”Hey wait, is that some kind of speaker system? Why do they have those? Do they play music over classes or something like it’s a restaurant?”
”I think it’s some kind of … intercom system?” Kamek suggested, but it was something of a guess
”Ohhhh” Jr replied as he got it, before he went ”Ohhhh” again, as he had an idea.
A couple of minutes later, and after a bit of prep work laying the battlefield, the intercom system suddenly blared to life and the sound of a clearing throat could be heard before Jr, at max volume, said ”I’ve come to make an announcement” via every speaker in the school. THen he took taking one he’d ripped off the walls and pressed it up against the microphone in the principal's office, starting an audio feedback loop that he mucked around with the system’s setting specifically to make as terrible as possible, flooding the school with a high pitched screech backed by riotous evil laughter.
Though Junior’s announcement initially met with confusion from the school’s few occupants, the God-awful cacophony quickly drove the entire student body right out of the nearest windows, their hands clamped down over their ears in a desperate effort to block out the ear-splitting agony. Meanwhile, Tomas moved about as fast as an old man in robes possibly could toward the principle’s office, the veins on his forehead bulging in anger. Upon reaching his destination he spotted Junior just as expected, and with his face a mask of rage shouted, “What is the meaning of this!” only to be completely drowned out by the din. He clenched his cane in a white-knuckle grip, raising it above his head as if to throw it, but managed to control himself and thrust it back down against the ground. Fit to be tied, he hobbled toward the Koopa Prince to bodily remove him from the intercom system.
The prince himself was seemingly lounging in the principal's chair grinning through its open door at the old man as he approached, holding the microphone in one hand and the speaker in the other. Just as he got to the open door, however, the boy suddenly tossed the two parts of his audio assault aside, and the world was filled with a deafening silence, one more loud than any signal could ever be.
In response to that signal, plans went into action. From the nearby classroom burst a flurry of dry bones and toadies hauling furniture from within with which they moved to form barricades to block any way back. Along with them were wisps, who half phased into the defenses, ready to leap out and shockingly stun any who approached.
If it proved necessary anyway, because the prince started out by snatching up his staff off of the desk and calling out ”Repose” to try and give the old man some rest after all the strain he’d put him through. At the same time, Kamek, riding atop a (shrunken down a bit) dread spider which lunged towards the old man to try and encase him in webbing.
The flurry of activity took Tomas completely by surprise, shocking him through the sheer volume of critters that swarmed out from hiding to assail him. “W-what the!?” Caught off-guard, he did not resist the sleep spell, and his muscles went slack as he sagged down to his knees. Kamek's dread spider took great care not to awaken him as it quickly enveloped the priest in a thick coating of spider silk. In a matter of moments Tomas lay snoozing inside a cocoon the size of a bodybag, though oxygen deprivation would not permit him a gentle rest for long.
Jesse emerged from her hiding spot outside the principal’s office and waited outside the door for a fight to start.
”Wait, that worked?” Kamek asked as he looked down at the web wrapped bundle
“Did it work?” Jesse asked, peeking in.
”Of course it worked!” Jr inisisted
”I suppose the first step generally does” Kamek agreed, before saying ”Now for part 2.” Before requesting ”if you would assist me in shrinking down our problem Jesse?” as he leveled his wand at the tied up sleeper to give him a double dose of tecno and magical size reduction.
Jesse walked into the room. “Well. Let’s hope we got our man.” She produced the Tool Gun and it’s light pings struck Tomas. Combined with magic, and with no energy barrier of any kind, it was only a matter of moments until he was the size of an action figure.
The coil of webbing fell away, leaving behind the tiny man, who jr stepped in, picked up, and attempted to re-secure with some stollen rubber bands from a stationary drawer, mainly by binding his arms behind his back.
Jesse grabbed an enlarged glass salt shaker from behind the desk they had stolen from the teacher’s lounge and thunked it down on top of the baddie like he was a spider in the house. Then she scooped Tomas up and screwed the lid on. Then she switched it to Weld and connected the lid and the shaker together. She worked as fast as she could, because to be honest, she still wasn’t sure about the limits of the Tool Gun’s power. If he was strong enough to somehow break free of it’s deflating influence, they’d be in a fight after all.
When the teacher awoke, he was baffled to find himself shrunken, bound, and imprisoned through arcane means, left basically helpless in what might very well be the worst circumstances imaginable. His shock quickly gave way to anger and indignation though, and without a word he clammed up, clenching his jaw and tightening his wrinkly face into a resolute scowl.
Jr leaned in to get a closer look at the grumpy little man, and to have a laugh at his expense ”Ah, look at you, so tiny! Like a super ugly action figure”
”Well, this has worked spectacularly I must say, not that there was any doubt” Kamek said, happy enough with the outcome to gloat a bit as well, before getting back to business ”Now then, we should quickly decide who holds onto our little captive, and then be off before any of the children can raise the alarm about all this”
As he made that suggestion he began to rapidly cut the mana supplies to his minions that had been intended to prevent an escape, and instead switched to creating additional cave drake mounts to help their egress be as sneaky as possible.
Jesse regarded their opponent in the jar she held in her hands. He wasn’t panicking, so, he wasn’t much of an actor. “You’re our prisoner now, Solon.” She explained, in case it wasn’t obvious. He adamantly refused to humor his captors.
“Maybe we could take him to you-know-who?” She said, referring to their source of intel, IGV. “As for an exit. We can just find a window and get out with No Collide.” She said, doing a quick scan of the room and the hallway outside it for any exterior windows, a suggestion that got two nods of agreement from the Koopas.
A few moments later and they were off, vanishing through a wall, out from under the tarp and then riding through the rain soaked streets and leaving the school behind with only a single glowing mote watching over it remaining occupants.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
”That’s it, burn! Burn! Can't hide now, can you candlestick!” the princess laughed as she left the combusting monstrosity in her wake and she rode towards Blazermate, only for the laughter to break into coughing as it did a number of her horse punched chest.
That, she thought, was not a good sign.
Fortunately for her, about halfway through that flight she got intercepted by one of the bot’s little drones which hovered over to give her aid in its master’s sted. Not that she knew what a drone was mind you, so she just thought of it as a small robot assistant. A flying nurse robot maybe, she considered.
”Oh well, that works too I suppose” Midna said, as she gave a little sigh of relief as she felt her pained chest start to be soothed over by the drone’s medical assistance.
The tiny feeling of being snubbed by having this lackey come help her was quickly quashed as she took in the situation the medabot was in, namely facing down the non sneaky Other alongside just Goldlewis.
That said, part of that was that Karin had just swapped places to go and attack her burn victim, which presumably meant this fight was in a better stead than hers. It would have been only fair for her to do the same and go help them, particularly because she suspected her wounded state had been what had caused the street fighter to rush from one fray to the other.
However
”Hmmm nope nope nope, not dealing with that shocking thing just no” she said perhaps too loudly as her inherited hand trauma flared up an. So instead of rushing to their side, she wheeled around and rode her way back towards the dancing flames, calling back ”good luck” with more intentional volume.
If there was one boon to this however, it was that she brought the healing drone, by virtue of it following along to finish doing its job, which left it primed to help out the other two after it was done with her
”Thanks for the assists back there you two” she called forwards to the witcher and streetfighter as she rejoined this battle. The pair were presently faced with the consequences of the princess’s actions, namely a giant flaming horse shaking oil all over the place, for which she jokingly apologized ”and sorry about the mess”
Now she just had to figure out how she was going to clean up that mess. Odds were time would solve the problem on its own, yes, given how it didn’t look like the living oil lamp was showing any signs of going out any time soon. Unfortunately, while it was on its way to the grave it was not going quietly, and was instead thrashing and charging around wildly while dumping that burning oil everywhere, which meant it was still a big threat, as it would only take one rough tackle of something that size to do some serious damage .
Having re-arrived to the fight however, the princess had some space to work with as it was unlikely the other would switch off whichever target it was after when she arrived. As much as she wanted to just start volley bombing it and lightning striking it, the massive aoe of all of her ranged attacks all ran the risk of clipping whoever it was currently after.
So after a moment of thought she decided to run support for the melee fighters. First thing she started doing was summoning more sand, but rather than striking the Slippy Other with it again, she instead telekinetically launched the sand in arches so that it splashed down on top of the burning patches, smothering them and giving them all more ground to work with.
Interspersed with this fire fighting she attempted to ranged attacked in a way that was not at risk of splash damaging anyone nearby, doing this by grabbing up bits of the environment such as benches, signs, and vending machines, and hurling them as blunt object projectiles at the Slippy other. She tried to chose the most inopportune and disruptive moments to do her tosses, so as to try and knock it off whatever attacks it was trying to make, while also making sure to yell out warnings when she was doing her tosses along the lines of: ”Throwing chairs!” and ”Making it eat metal snack box thing”
Finally, on top of that, she summoned her enlarged Vibrava whenever she could, and had it blast the other with tight streams of dragon breath, the princes crossing her fingers and hoping for the paralysis effect it sometimes had to take effect.
And if while she was at this it came after her? Well the princess was more than happy to have her wolfos lead the beast on a merry chase while she clung to its back and they let the Other burn to death.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
Midna’s ploy worked like a charm, the little-er princess and her dragonfly wing-pack slipping through the pipes, while the flashing explosive first bumped into them, and then had to navigate around. That gave her the breathing room to take in the fact that the smoke was clearing.
Not that that helped much with the blinking light rapidly trying to get back in her face
”Hmmm, Hmmm, ah ha, got it!” she snapped her fingers, having an idea, and then commanded her Vibrava to ”Dragon breath it!”
The mon obeyed, detaching from her back and firing off a tight beam of distinctive purple dragon energy. The close range light wasn’t fun for the princess, but the unmistakable flesh of color shooting off in a specific direction was just barely enough for her to follow its path towards the source of the blinding flashes.
”Gotcha, you blinking nuisance!” she declared, as she unleashed a torrent of electricity from her long sword, joining in with her mon’s blasting, the pair slowing the living bomb, and then halting it as current and breath combined to paralyze it completely, halting it entirely for a few moments before death claimed it.
”Serves you right for being so obnoxious she told the disintegrating Other as she rested her sword over her shoulder, before she glanced down at the fight below. As her vision returned she got her first and last look at the leggy bombs as the last of them splashed against Goldlewls’ staunch bulwark.
”You good down there?” she checked, and then once that was confirmed she drifted down to rejoin them on terra firma. There she rode around a little bit on her wolfos’ back, flicking open twilight portals to stash away any unclaimed spirits for later, and finally after that left the pipe room and hurried to catch up with the foot sloggers.
She found them embattled with some nasty water spraying creatures, ones that Minda arrived just in time to be forced to witness their bizarre reloading method, one that took the Other’s twisted mockery of humanity’s form and concepts an extra uncomfortable step further.
”Well that’s disgusting,” she commented, before finding herself yelling get a room!” at them which got her water blasted at her in retaliation forcing her to steed to leap to the side and back into the cover of the entrance tunnel.
There, she had a think, and then prepped some tactics based on what she had observed so far. Namely that they couldn’t move, and, as she saw when she glanced around the corner again, that they didn’t like people getting close.
”Well, how about we ruined your personal space then” she schemed. Step one was to duck out from cover, and pump 3 revolver shots into the ceiling light above the solo Santa (or well, one into it + two into the ceiling around it). The second was to shadow hop to that now darkened patch of ceiling and perform her shadowy drop maneuver on this other.
She was getting a fair bit of mileage out of that one
”Heartbreaker, coming in!” she yelled, as she snatched out her shadow hand and grabbed the water shooter by the head tentacles to prevent it and its conjoined lover from ducking into the box. As it struggled she raised both hands, summoning forth a sized up wolfos and mecha bear combo on either side of the other. Both beasts lunged in with mighty bites, teeth sinking into the two halves of the Other, which they then proceeded to try and pull them apart.
Aiding in this was her third summon, the princess utilizing the regular sized but still towering undead Darknut for the first time, and having it drive its mighty broadsword in an overhead chop right between the other’s two bodies.
The monster writhed in pain as it was ripped at the seams, but its otherworldly vitality meant that even this mighty combo was not the single life serving stroke Midna had hoped it would be. Instead it ripped itself out of her grip as her two maxed out summons timed out, and then ducked down into its box.
”Cowards” she belittled her foe, even as she dropped down to take cover behind her undead knight, already knowing what would come next thanks to Goldlewis’ inevitable experience with them. The undead warrior raised a guard against the incoming defensive attack, but even with this it was still blasted back by the same watery explosion that had knocked Goldlewis away from it a little bit earlier.
”Back up more” she commanded her knight redundantly as she willed it to move away, putting itself between her and all of the sniping Other’s, its armor and shield bearing the brunt of their assault. That assault only abated because Midna used portal magic to dump some cargo crates in between them and the Others, though not for long, as wood began to splinter under the water blasting.
It was long enough however.
”I got you right where I want you, eat explosions sucker” the princess taunted the octopus tentacled creature that had popped back out to start shooting at her as she tossed a twilight volleybomb blindly over her wooden defense, and at the same time swapped out her darknut for her Vibrava to have it deliver an eruption of earth power from directly below the Other.
The explosions met in perfect unison, the giant runic ball of teal magic touching down just as the fissures forming below the Other erupted, the power of earth and twilight creating the mother of all detonations that scoured the other from this plane.
”And the curtains fall on that tragedy” the princess declared, before being reminded that there was still at least one more act on stage when an explosive blast of water vaporizes the remains of her box wall. She cried out in alarm, shielding herself from the wash of wet splinters and being thankful for her mask keeping them out of her eyes.
”Wait your turn!” she demanded of them as she dived for the cover of one of the left side pillars, which, thanks to her clearing that side’s Other, could now actually be used as mostly reliable protection from the right side’s water blasters.
From there, she was able to shadow hop between pillars and harass the Others using volley bombs, musket fire, and Vibrava moves, but she didn’t manage to pull off her drop trick again, the other Others having learned it from the death of their fellow.
She could try and grind down the other Others like that, especially if she got the aid of Blazermate’s healing aid which would guarantee that she’d win when it came to any damage trading, but she hoped the other’s would be able to figure out a trick or two of their own to deal with the puzzle box foes.
Whatever way the rest of the battle went down, she would claim her kills at the end, and then join up with the others for the next leg of their cleaning run.
”They really weren't kidding, this place is infested” Midna commented as they came across a pair of weird horse tree things ”I mean what in the world are they even eat ing down here” she went on, only to pause her commentary as she saw the ash piles ”oh”
That was not a good sign.
Nor was the moment where one of them turned invisible.
”Goddesses save me from these hiding cowards” she cursed as her wolfos steed leapt to the side to avoid being washed away by a torrent of water.
”Where is it, where is it? Come out wherever you are!” she asked/demanded, trying to spot it as she dashed away from the water sprayer and leapt up onto one of the rusted trains, only for a growling to draw her attention. She glanced in the opposite direction she had been looking, following her steed’s snout and ears and, while she did not see anything in that direction, she had to assume that it was picking up their stealthy foe with its superior senses of smell and hearing.
”Third time’s the charm!” she declared as she vented sand out of twilight portals around her, and sent a thin cloud of it singing ahead of her steed till it bounced off of the invisible foe.
”There you are” she declared, sweeping the sand back around to try and re-tag the foe, only for it to not be there. ”Huh?” she said, confused, only to feel her steed tense and realize that ”It’s on to me!”
The invisible something slammed into the train car, crushing its front as the princess backed up. She blasted it with sand again, but the flash of vague clarity wasn’t enough for her to clearly make out the fist swinging at her till it punched her right off of her mount, sending the princess tumbling across the roof of the train.
She coughed blood up against the filter of her mask as she pulled herself up onto her hands and knees. She didn’t need the sand to know that the slippery foe was approaching, the train groaning under its weight as it pulled itself up onto it and started to trot towards her.
Her wolfos fled before it, running up to her and crouching down, grabbing her by her clothes and trying to help drag her back onto its back. They weren't going to be fast enough to escape, this she knew, and so instead she acted.
Sand swirled forth, outlining the Slippery as it lunged for them in a full body slam, only for it to meet metal instead of splattering soft flesh. In a split decision the princess had summoned a towering darknut on the ground to the side of the train and then in one swift motion the giant whose head scraped the roof had moved its shield in the rampaging other’s path.
There was an almighty clang as Other smashed into the bulwark, but said bulwark only lasted a few heartbeats more before it returned to her realm. Enough time both for Midna to be clinging to wolfos back once more, and for the other to recover from its concussion and be ready to come after them.
As she started to move, sand dashed across the area behind her, once again giving a glimpse of the other approaching.
”Vines” she commanded, summoning up her amazonian initiates, the hooded sisters of oblivion appearing on the platform beside the train as if they had been waiting to board it. As she commanded, they bent a knee to place their hands to the ground and unleashed their psionic powers, causing dark purple roots of psychic power to erupt across the train’s top, and for them to blindly grope for their foe. Some found their mark and snapped a few moments later under its pulling force, but their discovery let more and more vines reach up, lashing around the tree headed monster, restricting it, and sapping some of its like like poison ivy around an actual tree.
They would not hold it forever.
They didn’t need to hold it forever.
”How-” the princess coughed in the middle of her taunt, and then finished it ”how about a new coat of paint” as her mecha bear was summoned on the other side of the train from the strikers. It rose to the same height as the train, and its mighty cannon even higher.
Energy thrummed as the electrical powered launcher sucked up power from the bear’s systems, and then with a mighty wumf it fired its preloaded payload: an also enlarged swoopin stu, an ammunition type provided courtesy of Bowser Junior.
The oversized dumbo octopus looking slime soared forth, and then slapped into the front of the Slipper Other, bursting on contact and splattering the entire front with burning goop, outlining it in red and orange for all to see.
”DOn;t be sad, you look good in red- huh?” the princess’s elated taunting was interrupted when the mecha bear beside her seemed to sag under its own weight all of a sudden, or rather under the weight of its metal parts, and an electric hum sounded and then swiftly died, signaling that the cyborg had used up the last of its energy stores with that supersized attack.
”Goddesses cures it what’s the matter with you” the technologically inept princess swore, and then cursed again as the goop covered Other broke free from its vine-y bindings and came after her once more. Rather than stand and fight, raced back towards the others, or rather specifically towards Blazermate to get aid, and to bring the now semi detectable foe into the other’s range so they could take advantage before it figured out some way to clean itself.
wordcount: 754/3447 (+2/+5) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (149/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (51/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (34/120) Rika: Level 7 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (34/70) Location: The Under - Home of Tears
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
Eventually, after a draining slog the slowly advancing wall of doom that was Bowser arrived at the waiting room right before the top of the tower. He’d punched his way through a fair share more patients, endless amounts of mistakes and given up on punching amalgamates to the extent that he had at one point simply exited the tower via window and climbed up to the next floor on the outside via Meowser form rather than try and deal with another one. Kamek, naturally, had followed his king’s lead when it came to this navigation, and had also amassed quite the collection of spirits thanks to a toady of his being dedicated to the task.
Specifically, the koopas arrive via window, with Kamek shrinking the pane of glass down to a size to be removed, letting himself and the king in, and then resizing it back up to full size.
”In hindsight, I’m not sure why we didn’t come up via the outside for the entire climb” Kamek mused, before moving clear of Bowser before he shook his cat fur dryer
Once at the waiting room, they took the time to recuperate from their climb, with Bowser sitting his butt down on the big chair, while the broom riding mage took a moment to stretch his legs. Neither of them were inclined to tamper with the flashing light door (for the moment) and instead they climbed up the last flight without incident, and up there met IGV, or rather Iguana Gallo Valletto.
Turned out the man was a minion of council P, but not at all a happy one, considering he supplied them with detailed plans with how to take down his supposed master. Kamek did have to wonder if this was all some elaborate trap. The plan did, after all, involve assassinating several (probably) notable members of the city's population after all, which was likely to not go down well with the locals.
”If we are going to do this, it would be best to be discreet about taking down these ‘cronies’ correct? It would not do to have news of their fate at our hands spread after all, lest that news obstruct the second part of the operation” he suggested, putting the issue he had identified out there in non-accusatory words.
His king was not at all as prone to caution or subterfuge, so when the king began to object to the proposed child murder with ”Hey, so, uh, I can’t believe its coming down to me to say this-'' the mage quickly stepped in to head it off till later with ”Oh your right sire, it is ever so rude of us to have not graciously thanked you for your wisdom and foresight, Iguana Gallo Valletto. Truly it is a boon to us all that you have sought us out to take part in this fantastic plan”
After that flattery, he quickly pivoted to keep the Kings mind off the issue, for the moment, by saying ”Come now, we can’t let time go to waste. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that one of these ‘Agarthans’ catches wind of us! We seekers do have a rather notable feature after all” he tapped the side of his spectacles before pointing out that ”and with some of our number still out and about in the city streets, its only a matter of time till one gets spotted”
”The kids'' the king caught on, instantly a little worried about the various children they had wandering around down there, having up until this moment assumed the city would be safe as houses.
”Indeed, so we best get on their case before they get on ours. Discussions on how to ‘deal with’ the child can wait for once they are dealt with I’m sure'' he added, though the insinuation went over the kings head, before asking their host ”Speaking of haste, is there a quicker way down that going past all those indestructible melted things? If not, I could whip up a few cave drakes steeds that could sneak most of us down from the tower without being spotted''
He would have flown them up, but he was unaware of any clandestine take off points in the city, while landing unstealthy would not be much of an issue as no one would know where they had come from. Plus, he assumed Iguana would be abandoning this abode soon enough, so giving it away to any observers was no longer much of an issue.
At the same time as their elders were discussing political assassinations, the youngsters had decided to go on a little murderous adventure of their own. They had, after all, just acquired Rika a new weapon, an even more modified than it had already been grizzco blaster, and both of them had agreed they should test it out. Unaware of both the arena, and the waterways beneath the city were options for this, they were instead heading for a little trip outside the city to see if there was anything to shoot.
The closest gate to the outside world was signposted as leading to the ‘crumbling caverns’ which the pair assumed was some kind of dangerous unstable cave system likely crawling with nasty things.
They were only partially right. It was indeed a cave system, and it was also unstable to a degree, but what they had not expected, was for said system to be made almost entirely of cheese
”I. What. That can be a thing? Places can just be made of food?!” Was Rika’s reaction to this as she leaned out of Jr’s clown car to take it all in. The giant fruits they had discovered in the Luma Pools notwithstanding this was the first time she had seen something like this.
”I mean yeah. Duh. It’s basically the same as cheese land back home” Jr replied, entirely nonplussed by this. He was slightly more plussed by having to rapidly correct his hovering height when Rika dropped down out of the car onto the cheesy ground, and then shuddered when the ship girl crouched down and gave the floor a lick.
”Ew, hey, Kamek says not to eat stuff that’s been on the floor, and that, well I mean that is the floor!” He called down to her.
“Yeah, people come back and forth through here all the time, miss!” came a call from one of the gate guards, who had seen no issue in letting a kid and a teen through other than warning them to watch their step.
”Yeah, see, you definitely shouldn't be licking that” Jr reiterated
”It’s good cheese though? Maybe if I chop some of it up?” she started suggesting, only to be interrupted by the guard: “No making pot holes either! That’s a road after all”
Rika visibly deflated at this news, and so the guard did offer her an alternative or two “If you want cheese so bad, they sell that in the market. Or you can get it fresh from the miners for cheaper, if you can get out there”
”Ooo, ooo, let’s go do that!” Rika insisted, very interested in this now, thoughts of weapon testing now long forgotten and replaced with a need to sample new tastes. Then, before Jr could offer an opinion on this (he had, incidentally, been inclined to agree) the ship girl was off, leaving him to cry out ”Hey wait up!” as he flew after her.
In the time it took for him to catch up, the ship girl had swung from a vine across a pit of spikes, wobbled her way over a teetering platform, had to use her grapple hook to get unstuck from a quicksand-esque pool of cream cheese, and held her nose to get by the fumes caused by where runoff water form the city of tears wound its way through the cheese, rotting it as it went.
”You could just have gotten another ride you know” Jr pointed out, and then refused to let her take one now due to her boots being covered in cream cheese.
Thus the ship girl ended up doing a bit more platforming till she came to a little overlook, and, looking down from it, she could see that she had reached her destination Below them a number of rat people (known as Skritt) all busying away in a quarry of sorts, hacking away at the cheese and piling it into carts. Every now and then one would make an excited squeak as they made a discovery of a more gourmet cheese among the masses of common fare, from distinctive blue cheeses to ones that could only be distinguished by their sensitive noses.
The spoils of their labor were then shipped off to a metal structure (possibly a warehouse) adorned with a sign reading “Chadder Co.” that was, presumably, their base of operations. Dug into the cheese walls around said structure were a large number of doors which, given the mail slots on them, were probably the miner’s housing.
”There it is, come on” Rika called back to Jr, before she hopped off the precipice and started skidding down the slope leading to the facility. As she slid down she passed a few miners and gave them a ”Hi! Hello! Bye!” along with a wave.
She got a few waves in return … and also the very unnerving experience of practically every one of the rat miners, no matter how far away they were, turning their galeeming eyes to look at her. But only for a moment. After that moment passed most shrugged and got back to work, while a few gave her a long distance wave.
”Freaky” Jr muttered as he watched this happen, before swooping down and getting much the same treatment, though his clown themed flying machine got a fair few gawks and guffaws.
Still, neither mass noticing event had any immediate consequence, other than some amusement from the hypersonically communicating Skritt miners, and so soon enough the pair had rolled on into town and were having a look around. Then the consequences showed up in the form of a yellow mouse wearing a suit and bowtie combo.
“Hey there you two, are you here about the delivery job?” He called over as he approached, before chiding them with “because if so, your late”
”Huh? Oh, no, no, no, we’re just here because one of the guard ladies said we could buy cheese off of the miners for cheap” Rika informed him, before asking ”So are you selling any cheese?”
“Only in bulk. We’ve got quite the lucrative little deal with some of the merchants in town that rakes in the big bucks” the mouse informed her smugly, before furrowing his brow and then turning to one of the Skritt miners nearby demanding to know “Hey, have you lot been selling the product behind my back!” which got some immediate and unified head shakes of denial
”Must have been some other miner she was talking about” Jr quickly interceded to suggest, instinctive covering for whatever mischief the rat folk were in. Their mousy boss looked a tad unconvinced, but accepted the explanation for the moment. Given the few tips of a hardhat the prince got from the miners when their boss wasn’t looking, there probably was something like that going on.
Not that Rika picked up on it, mind.
”So no cheese then? Aw, I was looking forwards to trying a bunch out” the upset ship girl said, scuffing the metal deck of the warehouse with a foot, before snapping her hand and asking ”Oh, oh, but wait, how about if we do that delivery job you were talking about! Would you give us cheese then?”
“I. Well. I’d pay you. And then you could use it to buy some of the cheese you’re delivering” the mouse, who was presumably the Chadder who’s name emblazoned the warehouse, or so Jr guessed, explained slowly.
”Oh so like one of those job things? Neat.” the ship girl realized, having only ever killed things for money at this point, before deciding ”I wanna try it!”
”I mean, we gotta get back to the city before Kamek and Papa finish up in the tower, so sure, we could bring some cheese back with us” Jr agreed. It wasn’t like he’d be doing manual labor to do it.
“Excellent, right this way, and you can meet your fellow employees” Chadder told them, before leading the way inside the warehouse, casually commenting “they’ll be ever so happy to have help, it was going to be quite a tough run, what with them being down a rodent. Poor guy fell down a spike pit”
The pair traded a glance at that news, it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you wanted to hear on your first day on the job, but, given the precariousness of the route they’d had to take there, it wasn’t entirely surprising.
A moment after that bit of news, they were introduced to the leader of the remaining cheese transporters: who turned out to be a Mouse lady with an incredibly large backpack, big as she was if not larger, strapped to her back.
“Oh, are you the newbies the Skritt were squeaking about? Name’s Purse. Nice to have you onboard” the mouse lady introduced herself, rising from the back of the pack she was sitting on and offering a hand to shake
”Hi, nice to meet you too! Only gonna be a one off though, so I dunno if calling us newbies works?” Rika replied, before taking a few moments to free a hand from a gauntlet and shake the offered hand. Or was it paw, she wondered.
“Temp hires then” Chadder suggested, before directing the pair of them to two more sacks of cheese that a pair of Skritt where filling up with neatly wrapped bundles of dairy gold. Jr simply lowered his sentient meathook from his car and used that to hoist his load up into the air, while Rika took a lead out of Purse’s book and strapped a big ol sack of cheese to her back. In doing so she joined the ranks of a trio of Skritt who made up the majority of the pre-existing party, along with a shock roach toting feild mouse who wasn’t carrying much else but his weapon.
Once they were all set up and packed up with cheese, the others mounted up on large rats which they tempted to ride forth via little cheese on sticks.
Then they set off, rodents and koopa riding out, and Rika running, grappling hooking and maneuvering jetting after them.
”Urgh, I really wish I’d asked Kamek to leave me one of those mounts now” Rika commented to herself as she set foot back on the overlook she’d first spotted the facility from, giving her brow a wipe with the back of her arm, which was a bit tricky what with the massive gauntlet strapped to it.
Then she moved to catch up with the mounted people, giving them an apology of: ”Sorry for keeping you waiting. But I’ll be quicker on the jumpy bits I promise”
“Oh don’t worry about it, we can take it slower. Safer for us to stick with you anyway for the rest of it, especially with all that the gear you are carrying there” Purse replied, vaguely gesturing to all the shipgirl’s hardware.
”Definitely feeling it now that I’m all stocked up on ammo again, that is for sure” Rika replied, to which the shock roach totting mouse replied that it was “good to have, but hopefully we won’t need it”
As fate would have it, he was dead wrong about that, to a tragically literal degree as, about half way back to the city, he met his end in the opening volley of a two pronged ambush.
They were passing through a canyon, hopping across ridges hanging over deeper drops, when both ridges suddenly produced hostiles. On one, piratical ratlings let out squeaky war cries as several smaller swashbucklers swinging down on vines to attack the convoy, while one hulking ratling cannon blasted out a teetering platform, cutting off their rout forwards.
From the other appeared strange creatures made from living cheeses who hurled axes down from on high at the cheese curious. One of these was the end of the poor field mouse, who took an axe to the brain, and went tumbling down into a spike pit.
Also on their side where cheese slime knights armed with massive forks who came jetboosting down to join the fray.
Overlapping cries of “take the cheese!” and “free the cheese!” from each group gave something of an indication that these were in fact two entirely separate groups of ambushers, which got confirmed when the first ratling got impaled on the fork of a cheese knight.
“Around! Turn around, back the way we came!” Purse commanded, as she pulled out a large shield to two handily block the strike of a rattling from her pack, before in a flash switching it out for a two handed sword which she used to drive him back. In a third flash the sword was stored, and she was blasting her attacker with a dark wand with one hand as she was urging her steed to turn and retreat with the other.
Then, a screech of alarm caused her to look back, spotting one of the Skritt, who’s pack had been grabbed by a rattling and a knight, both of whom were trying to pull it back and stab the other, while the helpless cheese courier desperately tried to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.
”Get your own cheese, the pace is straight up made of the stuff!” Jr shouted at the cheese bandits/liberators, before he gave the command: ”Mimi! Help that guy out would you” to his electric mouse imitating pokemon. She obliged, curling an arm up and then hurling an electro ball at one of the cheese knights, the electrical atack arching though its armor and cooking it alive inside of it.
Jr followed this up by waving his paintbrush and casting ”Stone!” which caused a bunch of chunks of cheese to be ripped out of the canyon wall, which then smacked into rattling in ironic comeuppance, sending it tumbling down into the canyon below.
As the prince switched to healing the wounded Skritt so he could get moving and escape, Purse called out a warning of “The big guy, he’s going to cut us off!”
Indeed, the large cannon toting rat was right in the middle of shoving another load of rocks into his mighty weapon to act as cheap grapeshot.
”On it!” Rika called out, before she whipped her grappling hook up and out, latching on to the edge of the canyon and then rapidly pulling herself up top, leaving the others, (and her cloyster striker which she had summoned to help) behind to keep up the fighting retreat.
The ship girl stuck a boot on the edge of the canyon and pulled herself all the way up top. Just as soon as she got there, she had to immediately ducked to the side, catching a throwing ax to the cheese sack. Then a heart beat later she dodged to the other, the crucible absorbed power of her sunglasses slowing the hail of stone shrapnel enough for her to avoid most of it, while her energy shield and gauntlets blocked the rest.
Projectiles mostly evaded; she moved to face the rattling cannoneer in melee combat. She dodged to the side to avoid a smashing attack it tried to perform with its heavy metal ranged weapon, then delivered a close range blaster shot with her new goopy gun, the explosion knocking the rattling back and smearing it with burning ink.
She ducked under another flying axe coming from the other side of the canyon, delivered another blast to the rattling, and then fired her grappling hook at it. The claw grabbed its shoulder, and then pulled her close, the ship girl blocking a hasty canon bludgeon with her other gauntlet, and then driving the one with the hook attached home. Stabbing the tip of the whirring chainsaw bayonet into its neck.
On the other side of the canyon the cheese slimes where left in shock at the sight of gratuitous blood spraying from one of their foes as Rika sawed it’s head off.
Then they screamed in terror as she turned towards them, and unloaded her full firepower against them while she yelled ”Run while you still can” over the roar of gun and cannon fire.
That was the last straw for both parties as, be it out of either cowardice or pragmatism, neither seemed willing to fight to the death. It was a battle for cheese after all. Rattlings scurried away with roguish speed and stealth, while cheese slimes simply melted away into the landscape made of the same material as them.
Rika gave them a few parting shots, but quickly decided to stop wasting ammo on the retreating foes. That stuff was expensive after all.
After the battle was won, they took stock of their losses. One death (of someone none of them had known very well it had to be admitted) and a few handfuls of cheese either pilfered or fallen out of holes punctured in their sacks. In terms of gains, Purse acquired a new shock roach, and the two troop members 4 tribal cheese slimes, 3 forknight cheese slimes, 2 rattling swashbucklers and 1 cannon rattling. There had been a few more, but the canyon had devoured the rest.
After a quick collection of the loot, repairs to bag holes, and a short eulogy for the dead, they continued on their journey.
The rest of the journey was uneventful enough, the group platforming across the crumbling caverns without future amish or harassment, and then riding back in through the gate and heading for the market.
There, they found out what their pay was for the whole ordeal: ”50 gold per bag! That’s it?”
“You should be grateful I’m paying you at all, what with the state these sacks are in. Who knows how much cheese you lost!” the merchant retorted, and that was the end of that. Or rather it was after the merchant none too subtly threatened to call the guards if Jr kept arguing.
Rika meanwhile, after examining the (comparatively) meager pile of coin she had been given and then looking at the prices of some of the cheeses she had helped deliver, some of which were going for many times that, came to the conclusion that ”Wow. These job things are really bad huh?”
”Yup. Dunno why people do em” the spoiled prince replied in a huff as he turned to move away from the stand
“We can get a bunch of runs done in a day so it adds up” Purse pointed out lightly, before conceding “But I can’t blame you for thinking that after that experience right there though”
”Oh. Well. Um. Hmmm” Rika hummed and ha’ed at that, rather unsure now. What she was sure about was that she had rather lost her appetite for buying any cheese after Jr’s extended argument with the person they’d be buying it from. Going back would likely be very embarrassing to say the least.
”We haven't got time for that either way anyway. Papa’s got to be almost done with that tower by now, right?” Jr noted, looking up to see if he could spot his dad, yet being unable to do so due to the rain, even though the king was at that very moment climbing up the outside of the tower to avoid an amalgamate.
”I guess so yeah” Rika agreed
“Guess this is where we part ways then” Purse said, and then as they moved out of sight of the grumbling merchant, the mouse pulled off her little instant item retrieval trick one more time to retrieve a small parcel from her pack “here, we owe you one for getting us out of that jam. I’m sure those jerks are going to be licking their wounds for a long while after it too, so that's a second boon you’ve given us to us to boot”
The ship girl accepted the parcel and found within it a lovely little wheel of brie some miner had pulled out of the dairy based earth back around Chadder Co
”Huh, I didn’t see you buying this?” Rika asked, to which Purse just winked and reapplied “just think of it as hazard pay” before moving away and bidding them a final “Farwell. And good luck to you with whatever’s up with that tower!” before she and the three Skritt rode off back towards the gate they’d come through.
”Well that was nice of her” Rika said, while Jr briefly wondered just how much of the missing cheese had vanished at the hands of the couriers instead of the bandits. Then he decided he didn’t care and suggested ”How about we find somewhere to wait and give this a try?” to which Rika readily agreed.
Virgin Victory teleport room Top of the Split mountain Outside the Convent of Our Lady of the Charred Visage Tostarena Town S.O.U. Building Seiran Clinic
Midna was in not the best of moods as they set out on their mission.
She was angry about being yelled at by Goldlewis. She was frustrated at having been forced to go against her promise to Taro who was now bound to get into all kinds of trouble when sent to a hospital, if not now then some time down the line. She was offended by his insinuation that she hadn’t known what she was doing going down into the reservoir.
But most of all, she was mad that he was at least half right about everything. Taro did need treatment, and she had 100% not been in control of the situation down there. She could have argued that the mind manipulating psychic abilities were not something she would have expected … if she hadn't had an equally embarrassing run in with them the prior day with the psychic pokemon.
They had at least learned a few things. Someone in the regime had gotten up to shady stuff involving the psi-fish, and not thought/cared about the consequences of flushing them. Said psi-fish where a kidnapped people that might be open to a dialog of some kind, even if they were weird and destructive and definitely a threat to the city. Also: guns were loud and things noticed when you used them.
Still, that hardly made up for the very close call, general grossness of the encounter, and the not immediately useful haul it had produced. Or at least it didn’t feel like it at the moment to the princess.
Suffice to say then that Midna did not make for the best traveling companion, as the princess spent most of the time brooding in one person’s shadow or another’s, at least until after they rode the cable car down into the stilt village.
There, the presence of danger forced her to engage with the party again. Now well forewarned to not take any of the monsters or people down here lightly, she helped out with the sneaking, shadow hopping here and there to chart out a route for them to follow that would take them around any dead ends, and away from any threats Blazermate detected. Once or twice she even adapted the reservoir’s lesson, and caused a disturbance somewhere away from the group to draw particularly large shoals or packs out of their path.
All this helped clear her mind a bit, and so she was only moderately grouchy when she slipped out of the shadows upon reaching the rally point. There she mounted up on the back of her wolfos, one hand gripping the scruff of its neck, the other holding her (very beat up at this point) interdimensional ax, the little hatchet probably on its last legs as best she could judge it. That was unfortunate, because she did not have any other one handed melee weapons on hand.
”It’ll have to do” she told herself as she held it against her chest and filled the blunted blade with lightning.
It took a little while for her to need to use it. First they ran into the aftermath of a psych-OFF squad’s battle, one that she falsely assumed had been some time ago due to the lack of spirits littering the ground. That there was still an Other pinned to the wall however, either contradicted that assumption or simply being a testament to the monster’s durability.
”What is this supposed to be, an example to the rest of them? I don’t know if that’s stupid or mindlessly sadistic” Midna complained through her mask, which was filtering out the small amount of smoke the Other was able to produce, finding the scene entirely distasteful. Enough so that she saw to the finishing off of the Other, though her method the pumping of however many volts of electricity into it via the rod implant it wasn’t particularly tasteful either, and she regretted the method even if it worked out.
Then she crushed its spirit and got a bag of black powder for her efforts.
”Ooooook. Well I have no idea what this is for” she admitted after peering into the little sack. Then she stashed it anyway like the loot gremlin she apparently was.
The Other turned out to have been much more useful in life than it was in death as, after taking a right to avoid the psych-OFF squad, they ran into more of its kind, now forewarned about their smoke spewing trick.
”Seen it already!” Midna taunted them, having already come up with a plan. Having already dismissed her wolfos, and swapped out one handed ax for two handed Longsword in preparation, she slipped into the shadows that now covered the entire room thanks to the smoke, while informing/warning the others that: ”I’ll be on the left one in a flash, stay clear of it!” With this complete freedom of movement she shifted to about till she was right ontop of one of Missin Pound.
Literally, as she moved to the ceiling, and then dropped out of the shadows, turning the smoke cloud into a storm cloud as she swept her sword down to deliver a lighting bolt directly atop of it. The flash of light clarified some of the silhouette in the smoke, though the princess, having had to blink to avoid blinding herself, did not benefit from this.
Instead she went for a wide attack, spreading out her shadow hand into an all mighty downwards slap. Finally, using that blow to feel where the Other was rather than see it, she emptied the remaining electrical charge in her sword to form three rotating pillars of lightning that spun around it, zapping it from all sides and keeping it contained in one spot.
Floating up in the air as she was, she was safe from the wart rots. Not so from the flying session pounds. Particularly problematic was the flashing they were doing, the blinking light that gave them away playing hell on Midna’s dark attuned eyesight such that she could barely take advantage of it.
As soon as one started strobe lighting her, the princess was forced to fall back, summoning her Vibrava, and having it grab and pull her away from the light, relying on its eyes and speed to complement her own. While she took that moment to recharge her blade, the princess dared not try and strike her pursuer with thunder or fist, unable as she was to see where her allies were and so unable to guarantee she would not hit them with her already pretty indiscriminate AOE attacks. The last thing she wanted to do was accidentally clip the also aerial Blazermate with lighting or a shadow hand slap.
”Get lost, you blinking thing!” she demanded, before thinking fast, and trying to find and then use the pipes to block its chase, having her and her vibrava’s smaller forms slip through the obstruction, while the flashing thing would get stuck, leaving her the space to breathe and come up with a new plan.
”So I feel like I should apologize for bringing you all here, but I really did not think it would be this bad,” Midna felt compelled to say, as they got closer and closer to the reservoir at the very bottom of the Sector 05 undercity.
She had thought she understood corruption and decay, but apparently the waste products of industrial civilisation produced blight far more foul than she could have possibly imagined. As a result she was very thankful that the mask she was wearing was doing something to filter out the smell, and could only empathize and feel bad for/about how much the others must be suffering.
At least she was able to be helpful, offering a (giant) hand to those not blessed with flight/levitation and using it to create footholds and platforms where none were available, while also having her VIbrava buzz around and pick off parasites before they could get a drop on any of the climbers.
Geralt grunted, nose twitching at the frankly sickening stink of the reservoir. He’d nearly vomited once from the sheer stench, but a few moments of quiet meditation had recentered him for a while.
”Oh I’m good.” Blazermate nonchalantly said, being immune to the rank smell of the brackish water, due to not being able to smell at all. She was a bit concerned Midna had never seen industrial sludge though, did she just want to come here to see what this was? ”So, what are we doing down here again?”
"If I remember correctly," the old tactician answered while he looked upon his surroundings with a frown, he pinched his nose slightly though futile as it was to keep the stench of the reservoir from entering his nostrils "I believe it had something to do with these rather odd glowing apparitions." Benedict motioned towards one of the supposed psyfish as it floated by "Is that correct, Miss Midna?"
”That was the plan, yes” Minda agreed as she around the corner of the building they’d been more or less weaving their way down as part of their descent. The structure itself had gotten more and more rotten and dilapidated as they went down, which was probably not good for the entire thing’s structural integrity, but it was still solid enough to be used as cover to spy on the psyfish.
”So are we going to kill them, talk to them… like what?” Blazermate asked, still a bit confused. Either way, as she did mention something about battling, she began to make sure Benedict, Geralt and Midna were overhealed as it also got her healing resources. She couldn’t do anything about the smell though, only making them feel slightly better when her healing beam was on them.
”They’re menaces to the city, especially those ones that can fly” she pointed out the largest and most purposefully moving of the bunch ”I had a bit of a talk with people while getting a proper breakfast. Turns out this place used to not be, well, this. Those things showed up one day and started terrorizing the population to the point they had to abandon the place”
”So, we’re here to kill them, and the idea was we could use them for psychic fusions, which could get more of us into psy-off if we want to go that way” Midna suggested, though she did not sound the most confident about that now, given the utterly alien appearance of the creatures.
Benedict tugged at his chin, staring down towards the ghastly looking creatures "Hm," they moved about with some purpose though for what he did not know, to his eyes they were unlike anything he had ever seen "I gather that these..things aren't as non-threatening as they look, if your information is correct. Were you able to learn what these creatures are capable of?"
”Oh, well, if they are just sitting there, I could charge up some uber and we just unload with a kritz charge then. Although I don’t think I can get any psychic powers, being a medabot and all.” Blazermate said, shrugging and offering a kritz to anyone who waited for about 30 more seconds.
“Not to mention the Breaching Bastion. It’s slow to turn, but the smaller guns should be more than enough to shoot them down. Not sure I’m willing to risk using the larger shot in this city, though.” Geralt added, a not-so-small part of him somewhat eager to use the Harbor Water Demon’s weapons platform again.
”Sounds like a plan. Expect ranged psychic magic attacks, from what I heard, plus some kind of distracting spells” she explained vaguely, while doing little rotations in the air, purple power flashing as she charged herself up using dragon dances.
Then in the midst of her third rotation she nearly twirled into a wall due the surprise of a gruff voice quietly informing them “Can’t say I’d recommend anything you're planning to do” from inside the building they were using as cover.
“Or the amount of noise you’re making either. Trust me, I’ve got experience in these things” the voice then added.
"Quite strange to offer advice to people you do not know." Benedict replied in a similar tone, skeptical of the strangers advice "Trust is a fickle thing, how can we trust you?" years of service as a royal advisor had trained him to always take words with a grain of salt, this was no different.
“I do when they’re making noise that’s attracting attention to where I was trying to sleep” the voice replied “now if you don’t want advice from someone who knows how to survive down here, I suggest you get lost before the crabs come for you. Odds are there’s some creeping up on you as we speak.”
”What crabs? You mean those ones?.” Blazermate said, her scan ability letting her spot things very easily and marking the approaching crabs with spots of light signifying their weak points. She had been spending her time healing, so everyone was at least overhealed as well, and much tankier.
“Hmmm? Ah, yes those ones” the voice said, apparently IDing them through both the rotten water and the wall he was speaking to them through after only a few moments of searching.
”What ones?” Midna, who could not see through the scum water, asked, as she moved to the edge to the edge of the water to try and work out what in the world they were talking about, an act that caused an inconspicuous bit of floating debris to realize it had been rumbled, and to suddenly surge forwards. The princess shrieked in surprise as the two meter tall Mirlurk burst from the water claws snapping as it went for the short sorceress, and giving her a lesson in the benefits overhealing worked as its razor sharp claws snipped it all away.
The first crab wasn’t alone either, as three other similar crabs clambered up onto the gangways and floating mats of scum surrounding the base of the pillar to assail the heroes in quick succession after the first. Joining them where two less grotesque but no less hulking Ucaclaws, which initiated combat by firing off high speed bursts of fetid water, one from each claw and a third from their mouths, before moving in to use claw attacks of their own.
Veteran or not, his reflexes were not what they used to be. Benedict had only a moment to stumble out of the path the oncoming spray "Asparas!" he called through gritted teeth, teetering as he kept his footing by leaning on the cane in his grasp "Freeze the enemy!" the tactician gave the order, pointing to the larger of the crabs. As mediocre as Bufu was it could possibly freeze the creature in the dirty water it rose from, meanwhile he pulled out the sword hidden in his cane and flourished it, boosting his defense for the moment with a use of Bulwark.
Though the mirelurk cared little for the cold damage itself, the ice and frost which flash froze on its body stiffened its joints, and gave Midna the time and space she needed to fight back. Specifically by adding to the chilly theme.
”Hold it back!” she commanded, summoning her own strikers: A pair of towering frozen undead materialized on either side of her like royal bodyguards, before they drove their icy spears forwards. Frozen tips met chitin and though they bit into it, they did not dig deep enough into the thick armor to find flesh beneath.
As they held back the mirelurk assailing Minda, Benedict’s good deed brought him attention of another, which clattered towards him across the catwalk, claws open wide and ready to snap.
Steel sung as Geralt’s blade found purchase in the crab’s claw, halting less than an inch into the chitinous armor, but directing the creature’s attention away from Benedict. Geralt quickly made the Sign of Quen with his free hand, dancing out of the way of a snip of the mirelurk’s claw and swinging his sword up and along its arm, gouging a line into the chitin. “Things’re tough. Hard to hit the weak spot, too, they’ve got some reach to ‘em.” Geralt mused.
”Well, I’ll just keep healing you guys and we can roast ‘em with the shield.” Blazermate said. The crabs were not smart enough to target her, letting her just heal her teammates who were doing a great job of distracting them. Although unknown to Blazermate she wasn’t as noticeable to the crabs thanks to one of the items she had picked up a while ago.
While healing everyone, Blazermate mused a bit upon seeing Midna make her own undead. ”It's a shame they have such hard shells. They could make for some cool zombies.” It was then she was reminded of something and zoomed over behind Midna’s undead minions and bit them with her shield arm, giving them a mutation and making them stronger. Going back to her healing, she was getting ready to deploy a projectile shield when those things expired.
Oddly enough, the bite did not transform the strikers. Instead it caused Midna start in pain as the effect was transferred to her, mutation boon not taking hold (fortunately) and instead all she got was a fraction of the light nips of teeth on icy armor. Mostly a surprise rather than actual harm.
”Ow, what was that for!” the princess complained, only to curse more when the mirelurk used its claws to slice through the shafts of the icey javelins, freeing itself. Then it charged to two undead, smashing aside the two spear skeletons, cracking icy armor and, sympathetically, Midna’s skin, before both were shoved off the catwalk and plunged into the water where they proceeded to float rather uselessly till they timed out.
Yet despite this undignified final act of their performance, they had left marks behind: two tight puncture holes in the crustation’s armor, ready to be exploited. And with their time up, Blazermate had charged up her shield and zoomed in, deploying her projectile shield and giving a robotic cackle as the electric shield started to fry whatever crab was caught inside it, bypassing their armor thanks to it just being a giant wall of energy and slowing them down as the crabs twitched while being zapped. And with her shield blocking the projectiles from the crabs in the back, the rest of her party were free to advance and crush the crabs she was frying, the crabs trying to slash at the medabot, but her maneuverability making it so their claws just smacked against her energy shield. Although this shield didn’t last long, only 12 seconds, so time was limited.
Geralt stepped in, slashing along the Mirelurk’s exposed belly, drawing the mutated creature’s blood as his steel found purchase against its softer, fleshier bits now that he had more freedom thanks to Blazermate’s shield attack. He stabbed his sword directly into the crab, drawing even more blood and severely wounding it before the thing ineffectually slapped its claw against him, trying to clamp on his armor, but not managing to even compress the steel through the shield Quen provided and the damage it was taking.
Thankful for the Witcher's prior intervention, the old tactician joined the other white haired man using Roaring Beast on him to bolster Geralt's strength. Hopefully it would expedite the killing of the foul crustacean "Bufu!" Asparas appeared once more, her cooldown having ended to once again freeze the remaining Mirelurk's claw to prevent the creature from assaulting Geralt any further.
Midna too joined the fray, a beaten up ax in one hand and an oversized revolver in the other. Gunshots echoed across the waters as bullets punched through, but their thunderclaps were nothing compared to that of the bursts of lightning the princess unleashed from her blunt instrument.
The ladies’ lightshows softened up the crabs considerably, while together the gents scored the first blood of what Midna thought would surely be a clean mop up operation- right up until the man behind the wall reminded them he was there by shouting “Now you’ve gone and done it. The entire reservoir will know we’re here thanks to that performance!”
A heartbeat later a next to invisible hatch on the side of the building and out of it slung a man with a lion’s mane worth of hair on his head. He had once had the body of a soldier, but time living around the reservoir and malnutrition had visibly atrophied his muscles. Literally visibly, because his skin rather than the tawny hue the sun had once given it, his flesh was a translucent blue, leaving his muscles and organs on display.
Some might have tried to hide this otherworldly complexion beneath hoods and baggy clothing, but the man was wearing nothing but ripped shorts as his bare feet landed just above rather than on the surface of a catwalk.
He moved with worn down grace, his body not able to keep up with his training, and his training not suited to his new style of fighting anyway. Hands moved to his waist, taking up a pose that was familiar to some of the, before fightersenergy pooled between them and he then thrust them forwards, completing the echo of a certain street fighting school girl. The motion was where the similarities ended however, as instead of a fireball, the vagabond launched a grenade of psychic power that splashed down among the remaining crustaceans, the mental power piercing their armored shells with ease, staggering and wounding them in equal measure, and reducing one heavily thunderstruck one to ash
“We need to finish this and move before-” he began to say, but it was too late, and they had already kicked the hornet’s nest long before he tried to intervene.
From behind them came a rotten gasp of a roar from desiccated lungs, announcing the arrival of a half dozen ghouls who, by the shapes moving in the dark above and behold, were only the front runners of a mutant horde attracted by the sounds of combat (and one royal shriek that started it all).
With their clawed hands outstretched they came at the heroes from behind, a hammer pinning them against the (admittedly very shoddy at this point) anvil of the 2 remaining mirelurks and Ucaclaws.
“Damn it, damn it” the ethereal skinned man cursed as he pivoted, stumbled, and then thrust out his palms again, launching a mind striking blast that caused one of the ghouls to crumple and fall beneath the feet of the others. Then another was struck in the shoulder by a bullet, and went tumbling off a gangway into the waters below.
“What did I just say! Stop that” the man demanded, swatting at Midna’s revolver. The princes barked back with ”It’s already too late isn’t it” only for the brewing argument to be interrupted as 3 ghouls dropped down from somewhere above, landing right among the heroes’ ranks
"If you are done your arguing," the tactician spoke through gritted teeth, raising his police riot shield to block a slash from one of the ghouls while also causing an electric shock to stun it "You should be considering a swift retreat." reeling from shock the ghoul found itself get ran through by the old man's sword before he quickly stepped back by the emaciated man and the princess "You," Benedict's steely gaze briefly gave the grotesque man a once over "Lead the way." if the man knew what was good for him he'd see sense in finding a quick exit.
”Huh, guys, I’ve got an idea, I’ll be right back!” Blazermate said, having her drones do a bit of healing as the group dealt with the ghouls for a moment as she flew up to a higher perch that was large enough for the engineer to start building his sentry gun. When she summoned her striker, it did just that, and with that done she flew back down to heal whoever needed healing from the ghoul attacks. From what she could tell with her suffering shield not affecting them, they were some kind of mutant, not undead.
Still, with all the healing she was doing and the pre-healing she did before, she had a use of Kritz up, and asked. ”Which one of you has the most AoE attacks so we can cause some serious deviation?”, Blazermate not having fought with many of her group for a while. At least the Engineer, being out of reach of all the enemies below him, could freely upgrade and build his sentry gun, which began to shoot at the stuff below.
And to the sides.
And above.
After Midna finished ripping a dragon clawed hand through a ghoul’s throat (having chucked her spent gun into a portal to free it up for hand to hand combat) she glanced up and her dark attuned eyes could see shapes moving all across the entire superstructure around them. Then she raised a hand, a massive shadow hand, and said ”I can hit them all, just make sure I have the space so that I don’t hit you too!”
“Then use that to punch through them!” their begrudging guide commanded, pointing though the ghouls and towards the next nearest tower “we can use that one to hide from sight and leave the monsters to fight over this one”
Right on cue for that comment, the waters shifted as more Mirlurk’s approached, and,at the same time, ghouls dropped down among the wounded ones, the mutant humans full body tackling the mutant crustaceans.
“Hurry now, we’re running out of time!” the vagrant urged them, before popping off another mind strike into a ghoul.
”Ok. Go get ‘em then!” Blazermate said as she krtiz charged Midna, whatever she was using to attack crackling with a blue electrical glow.
”Oh. My. Goddesses” Minda breathed, flexing her hands as the power mixed with that from her dragon dances to make some truly ludicrous power. Then, after wasting about two seconds just reveling in it, the princess burst into action.
Crackling blue claws on both her hands swiped, shredding two ghouls as she pushed forwards away from the group but that was only the beginning. What came next was the breakthrough they needed, the imp raising up a massive shadow hand above her head, the bright orange limb engulfed in torrents of blue lightning, and tipped with razor sharp blazing purple points.
Then she started swinging, demanding all before her ”Die! Die! Die!” as she drifted through the air, smiting ghouls with her godly glowing hand and tearing through scum, scaffolding and scrap with little regard for the collateral *damage she was inflicting, at least when it came to physical objects.
Geralt’s eyebrows raised in an impressed stare as he watched the carnage Midna wreaked on the ghouls between them and their goal, the Witcher sheathing his blade and refreshing the shield from Quen, just in case.
In stark contrast, Benedict was less than impressed by the destructive power their ally wrought upon both the enemy and the reservoir itself. Though it did neutralize the current threat, it no doubt had gained them more attention than he would have liked. But all the aged veteran could do was hang onto the wall, summoning the persona that was spirit bound and erect a crackling bubble of electricity around himself and his immediate allies, shoring up their defense against the princesses onslaught of electrical devastation.
Blazermate was a little concerned with how giddy Midna had gotten with a simple krtiz. Yeah, she was devastating everything in front of her, but you would think a princess would have more class or something? She was like what a medafighter would be if they were a medabot! Which was nostalgic in a way…
Six seconds later, and all around her was dust and ash. Including, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff they had intended to use to reach the far building. Despite this, their guide did not complain, wisly deciding not to argue with the super powered lunatic, and instead pointed and directed them to go “round there, we can skim around the destruction, get to the tower, and then you lot can use the mostly intact stairs to get the fuck out of my reservoir!” indicating to a few gangways and skum platforms that would let them still reach their destination..
It was slower than going straight would have, but with the main pack of ghouls absolutely annihilated, they’d have it much easier going, with only the stray survivor or later arrival to deal with.
Benedict kept pace as much as he could, blade now sheathed as he did his best to jump across a gangway, silently thankful of the Medabot's help as Blazermate flew with the vet in her hands. As they made their swift retreat he had scooped up the spirit of the ghoul he had felled, quickly crushing it in his hands without a second thought.
It would better serve him as an item than anything else, he was already hesitant to take the strength of the creatures they had originally came to cull so in the moment he preferred to take what he could get without taking more than one could gamble for.
Blazermate had picked up what spirits she could scoop up as she healed, not really interested in fusing with any of them and probably cushing them later. The engineer’s sentry gun was now level 3 and being a lookout in a limited area with the striker himself having disappeared. If that would come back or not was unknown, but at least that area had some kind of guardian.
A not so subtle frown creased the sides of his mouth, what he held in his hands made the old man shake his head, he knew not what 'Mac and Cheese' was and he didn't particularly care to find out. Tossing the carton aside while being carried. Honestly, if it were a box of tea leaves he might have kept it but that's neither here nor there. Seeing what loot he got Blazermate could only giggle, knowing full well what that was. ”Why did that ghoul turn into mac and cheese? I figured they’d turn into something gross, not a prime American food.” Blazermate commented between fits of laughter.
”Maybe it was their favorite food when they were alive” Midna added with grim humor as she floated through the air, using a blunderbuss to try (emphasis on try, her hit rate was still poor) and pick off stray ghouls before they could reach the heroes. Then she paused to slam a giant orange fist into the water repeatedly to hammer a mirelurk while declaring ”I won’t fall for that again fish food!” until it was dust, and she sent its spirit to the twilight realm with the flick of a wrist, where it joined a few ghouls and the odd parasite she had picked up on the way down.
With their guide being rather bad at his job due to him being able to take routes the ground sloggers could not by walking on the water’s surface, that left Geralt bringing up the rear, with the 2 of the remaining crabs (one of each kind) nipping at his heels.
Quickly turning with a sigh, Geralt held one arm up to guard himself while the other quickly composed the Sign of Aard, blasting the two crab creatures with telekinetic force, sending them stumbling and reeling while he turned tail and sprinted away.
The other two crabs had already perished, one to the sentry gun, the other under the weight of a pile of ghouls. Said ghouls were also in the process being picked off one by one by the auto gun, including a few that tried to drop down onto it, only for them to be comically launched through the air by the turret’s massive knockback.
Its rampage came to an end, however, when three ethereal tendrils reached out through the wall of the skyscraper it had been built next too, and wrapped around it, constricting its movement to prevent it from shooting its attacker effectively, and those shots that did land seemed to be mostly harmless. Said attacker slammed it into the wall to further disable it, before emerging entirely, revealing itself to be one of the hunters they had seen before.
It was a herald of a shoal of psi-fish, which swept in all at once in stark contrast to the beasts that had been assailing them so far. Most of them where the vaguely humanoid crysalids who drifted across the water, targeting down the range capable Ucaclaws first with focused mental firepower, before blasting the hordes of ghouls with shorter ranged psychic explosions.
Among them were a few jellyfish like spawn who fired off shots of their own for the most part, but they also used some strange power to fascinate the Mirelurks attempting to sneak up on the shoal, preventing them from being able to focus enough to attack.
Along with them came a wash of low level psychic power that even the mentally inept could pick up on. It felt like a slight pressure, one that pushed feelings of hunger, anger, curiosity and sadness into the heroes, but most of all it pushed in a gnawing sickness. It was as if the ethereal creature’s feelings were bleeding out of them, and into everything around them.
Even Blazermate was affected (for though she was a machine, she was not mindless) exposing the bot to the fact she could be affected by psionic attacks.
Despite the ferocity of their assault however, their guide had been one step ahead, and his plan to abandon the tower left the hapless monsters in the crossfire, and them almost home free.
Or that was how it seemed, until another 2 hunters phased through that very tower, four meter long bodies looming over the heroes, a pair of lifelight filled orbs gazing down at them. Yet they did not strike at once. Instead the feeling of sorrow and regret intensified to a peak, before starting to gradually die down, as if it was being willfully suppressed
“No no no no. Go eat monsters or something” the vagrant yelled at them, only for them to surprise both him and them by responding.
<Sorrow, to snuff out such unique patterns… But... necessary. Need to spawn. Need to transform. Need to ascend. Escape this campground. Escape this sickness. Escape these rules. Return to nothing. To everything. You took us> the fish thought at them, and that last made the vagrant flinch back, and what followed only made his eyes widen more <Spawned us. Raised us. Killed us. Then released us, yet killed us still. Now you trapped us. Kill us slowly. That makes this… fair. Makes this… retribution.>
Determination surged, sorrow flickered, being smothered, about to be snuffed out in the name of what needed to be done. Do more. A glance to the side would show the others how they had locked down Midna upon their arrival, having prevented her from shooting by captivating her mind with their flickering lights, and doing the same to her Vibrava. Both were unable to move or act till freed, willingly or unwillingly.
Having used a lot of her stuff and needing to charge them again (Although her projectile shield charged fairly quickly.) and yet there was still more to fight, things that really, really annoyed Blazermate by making her feel bad. But having been into a new area, Blazermate remembered something she had gathered, noticing the red cracks in the area. ”Hey, are any of you guys really fast and can see those red cracks? If I touch them, they can really help.” But besides that, Blazermate was on support duty as the others attacked as usual.
Geralt, slowly growing more agitated by the psychic assault, turned on their guide, cold anger in his voice. “So you did this? Dammit, it’s always something like this! Taking something, bringing it somewhere it doesn’t belong, and being surprised when it goes wrong? When it fights back?! Imbeciles…” He turned away from the haggard guide, the wrongness inside him growing, drawing his steel sword and cursing as the monsters moved in.
In all his life, through the fires of war and the burns it left behind. Benedict had experienced true horror, loss and sorrow that came with his service. He already carried a heavy burden on his heart, a secret he had kept a long time from both lord and house.
A twinge in his heart was all he felt, when an invisible wave washed over him "Lower your weapon now Geralt," though he too felt the agitation of being manipulated, Benedict's mind was practiced and trained at keeping a cool head though it often made him out to seem apathetic "That sword is no use against these things. Stand down, now."
No good would come of sitting there in the open, they needed to put distance between themselves and the psyfish. If these were psyfish, they looked different from the others.
The deserter retorted to the accusation with that age-old non-defense: “They ordered us to capture them, but I don’t know what they wanted them for!”
<You did this. You killed us. Generations. Over and over and over. You are guilty. You are to blame. Causer of death and death and death and death> the minds of the hunters resounded as they drew closer until the hermit screamed back at them “You think I don’t know that!? Why do you think I’m down here and not in the army any more? If I’d been a smarter man back then, not just followed orders, so many people would still be alive! My comrades. People here. Even you. I just didn't know!” before he saged, and held his face while reiterating “I didn’t know” miserably.
<You understand the agony of your actions caused us> the minds thought, seeming surprised, before they continued <For them you must be punished/forgiven> only for the two wills that had been in unison of purpose suddenly fracturing apart. The two paused their descent and instead of attacking started blinking flashes of light at each other in what could only be an argument.
Behind the heroes, the rest of the psi-fish shoal was in the midst of mopping up the last of the monsters, while beside them Midna and her beast still stood together, minds captivated by the Hunter’s forms, although little micro movements of both indicated that said effect would not last forever.
Geralt only managed to overcome whatever rage was consuming him when the two fish began arguing, shaking his head with a frustrated sigh and sheathing his sword, while backing away from the other psi-fish. “I…dammit…” One hand came up to rub his forehead, eyes scrunched up in pain. “Let them…let them have this place. We’re not quite as bright as we think we are, it seems.” Too little too late, but the point had been made. This place wasn’t abandoned for lack of care, it was abandoned for lack of feasibility in reclaiming it.
Blazermate wasn’t as psionically affected as everyone else, but she got the jist of the message. They were being psionically told to go away and that's all she got, with the emotions they were emitting being what you basically felt during a robattle with parts on the line. Although she did guess that it might be worse on these guys being psionically attacked.
Rubbing the side of his forehead, Benedict was silently gritting his teeth under the weight of the voices in his head shaking it off as the two entities seemed to turn on each other.
"Geralt is right," the tactician turned to their healer, seemingly unaffected by the psychic attack "We need to retreat." they were simply not equipped for this manner of situation, the psi-fish were more than they had anticipated.
"Fetch the princess, we must leave at once." the seriousness in his tone hinted with a slight urgency, but his face didn't betray worry though he very much was.
”Right right…” Blazermate said, topping off everyone before flying over to the building Midna had found herself in as the two psychics argued with each other. Getting close to them was super, super annoying but all Blazermate had to do was keep her focus on the task at hand and get it over with. It took a little bit for Blazermate to find Midna who had gotten herself way out of position, something she’d have to yell at the princess later for, and picked her up and her little minion thing. Neither particularly reacted to the bot’s grabbing of them, but the fact that both were still hovering in their listless state meant she could drag them along through the air like a tugboat.
With everyone together, the vagrant subtly gestured to point out their escape route: an unlocked door in the side of the skyscraper that sat just off to the side of where the two hunters were debating, one that, as their guide had said, would lead to an intact stairway that would lead them back up towards the service..
All that was left was for them to pick their moment, because odds were the two fish bickering over the heroes’ fate would not entirely approve of the seekers bailing on them before they reached a decision. All while Blazermate regained her resources as they argued by healing her team.
After a few fugitive glances, someone made the first move, and they were off. The heroes darted under the arguing hunters, the front runner booted open the door to the sky scraper and, sure enough, within was a tight spiral staircase leading up and up and up, one that was miraculously intact for the state of decay the reservoir was in. Then there was nothing to do but climb, boots pounding step after step after step.
It would be a relentless climb, but the heroes would not be without motivation, as the pair of hunters, noticing that they had run off after a few moments, phased through the walls at the bottom and gave chase. Or, rather, one did, its mind chanting for <death> while the other attempted to slow it down without harming its kindred.
Benedict, being the slowest member of the group, was the last to ascend the stairs. Blazermate, needing to taxi Midna and her pet, wasn’t much faster but still faster than Benedict who thanks to their relative speeds. Seeing this and the approaching death hunter, Blazermate gave the veteran an Ubercharge, which removed any psionic effects from herself and him, and made him immune to the hunter trying to smack him with its tentacles. This gave the hunter’s compatriot enough time to firmly grab and slow down the death hunter enough for Benedict to get going.
Other than that hindrance, the heroes got another boon when they got far enough away from the fish as Blazermate could cleanse Midna, who stirred awake after a few moments into the climb. She shook herself free and though she seemed to have no idea what was going on, she caught up to the fact that they were running. She sent her still stunned Vibrava home and then slipped into one of the runner’s shadows to prevent herself from being a burden.
The climb lasted for what felt both like days and the blink of an eye, but after several minutes of exertion, the hunters had fallen behind, and as they approached the surface, they one who wished for their end gave up, listing to one side and falling out through the wall, its stick body spent.
<victory> the one which had aided their flight declared, before addressing them directly <Go. Live. Remember what was done to us. Suffer above as we do below.>
After just a few slower, breathless, laps of the staircase later and they reached the end, emerging out into a maintenance room of some kind, one looking out on the reservoir below. Out the window, they could ever so vaguely see the site of their battle with the monsters, and the glowing forms of the psy-fish finishing up their mop up operation. Should any of their gazes linger, they might see the last of the ghouls fall, and then, after the battle was won, see flashes of light, as a number of chrysalids transformed into spawn, and a few spawn ascend to the air as a new hunter, and a single hunter also transform into an as of yet unseen form.
This form moved over to a ghoul that seemed to have been intentionally kept locked down by the fish. A tendril extended, touching it, after which it was released to run around in a panic, until it exploded into ash .. and a newly born chrysalis was left in its place.
Spawn. Transform. Ascend.
Midgar’s plan was a race of poison vs the fish’s cycle of transformation and spawning free from active culling of their most dangerous forms, and only time would tell who would win.
That was a problem for the future, however. The heroes had their own small one, namely getting out. The not winded from running Midna was working on that one, the princess slowly using dragon claw tipped to cut open a maintenance hatch in the roof that seemed to have been sealed from the other side, working it loose so they could return to the civilized world above.
As she did that, the others had a moment to rest and reflect. Their still nameless guide took the moment to slump into a corner, looking like death, his heart, visible through his translucent flesh, still hammering in his chest from the exertion. Despite this he still managed to mutter and curse to himself about what he had learned, and what he had done.
The princess glanced at him a few times, not able to really pick up or understand what he was going on about, before asking the others ”So … what in the goddess’ name did I miss?”
Blazermate shrugged. ”I don’t really know either, it was just some weird psychic jellyfish thing that we’ll have to take out from range. Probably with a nuke.” she said, not really sure of the whole context of what was going on there.
Leaning against the nearest wall, glasses removed and rubbing the bridge of his nose "I fear it is rather far more complicated than we think." the vets head ached from being mentally assaulted, yes he was quite hard to crack but he was still mortal and this entire mess had worn him out "I know not what they were trying to say."
“Midgar is run by fucking morons, is what we learned.” Geralt dismissed the dilemma. “I’m content to let them suffer their idiocy.” Unless he was paid a hefty fee to care, he couldn’t quite find it in himself to do so.
“Well, I got these spirits. I don’t feel like fusing with any of them since they aren’t that cool. So let me just crush them instead.” Blazermate said, looking at the 3 ghoul, 1 mirelurk, and 1 Ucaclaw she had grabbed.
Mirelurk Cake When eaten, grants water breathing for 30 minutes Gulper Slurry When eaten, grants invisibility for 10 seconds TM83 - Razor Shell An instructional disc that allows an eligible pokemon to learn the move Razor Shell, a water-type physical carapace slash that has a 50% chance to lower defense by one stage. If the pokemon has more than 3 moves, Razor Shell will replace one it already has Kins x 750 A virtual currency usable in all Psynet transactions
Looking at these items, besides the currency, the others were unusable to her. Seeing a chance for a prank though, she pulled out the Gulper Slurry and floated next to Benedict, holding the can of gulper guts in front of him so he could smell it. ”So… you hated the mac and cheese… Is this more your style? Hm? HM?” Blazermate said before giggling.
Nostrils flared at the horrid stench that invaded his senses "I..Respectfully decline." pushing the can away slightly, Benedict fought the urge to gag at the contents of the can whatever they were. Blazermate let out another giggle before pulling the items away and asking Midna to store the food and disc she got, which the princess paused her cutting for a moment to do
“Huh, so there’s more than one thing you can do with those spirits” their guide, who was fused with at least one psi-fish, noted, eyeing the Kins more than any of the other things that had been created by the process. Then he grunted and slumped back when he realized he wasn’t able to make use of even that any more.
”So uh, I didn’t miss much then I guess?” the princess asked, having no idea how to match that up with the fish who had protected them’s parting words.
“Ha, if that’s all you got out of it … well you got the right conclusion, Midge is run by idiots. But what you are missing is that we brought those things here. Captured ‘em from … somewhere, and then used them for something. Whatever it was, seems like it killed a bunch of them in the process. Then whatever whackjob thought that was a good idea musta got bored of the whole fish murder circus and then thought it was also a good idea to flush the fish down the toilet into the reservoir. When people were still living there. Well, no one could live there after the fish, so they sealed it off and started dumping waste down there to poison them”
“Fucking morons. And bastards too. I never knew they could talk. I mean not well. But still. Can’t blame ‘em for being mad after being enslaved and then chucked out like trash” he sighed and slumped back after giving his interpretation, clearly depressed by the entire mess.
"Hm, so they are failed experiments of a sort?" Benedict mused to himself, a pensive expression washed over the vets face as he rested against the wall.
"This could be useful information in the right hands, or have rather interesting ramifications if passed to certain parties." whoever had left these creatures here had either seen that it would have consequences for the locale or were too careless to consider the ramifications, the who was likely someone in the government, no civilian would just up and make whatever manner of thing the psi-fish were.
"Let us not linger much longer," there was time to mull over the details later, now they needed to be elsewhere "I do not relish the idea of being ambushed again." if there were no objections Benedict was more than willing to leave if there was nothing else to be done.
”Add it to the list of things wrong with the establishment, because that is messed up” Midna agreed ”... it was probably Psych-OSF, right? Seeing as they do psychic stuff? We could have our infiltrators look into it?”
“Maybe. Maybe some other department. There’s a million of them in Shinra, probably all doing messed up stuff” the man replied.
“Apparently Public Security is letting a machine attack happen to blame DesporHado for it. So there’s that, too.” Geralt added, entirely unhelpfully. To say he was over this excursion would be an understatement.
”Mmmm” Midna agreed, before going ”Ah, got it!” and pulling down the maintenance hatch she’d cut up. A breath of only slightly fresher air from the undercity washed on in, and after the princess poked her head up she could confirm that ”Yeah that’s it, we’re home free”
“Well good luck to you with whatever your doing, but I can’t say I’ll miss you, seeing as you probably massively compromised one of my hideouts, and who knows what you’ve done to the fish” the homeless veteran complained
”Wait, you're really just going to go back down there?” Midna asked, somewhat appalled
“What, you think I can go up there? Looking like this? Fusions illegal for civvies and deserters missy, incase you didn’t realize that”
”And. So? What do you think I always looked like?” the princess asked, before pulling off her helmet to expose her bright red glowing eye, and then turning to flick her tail in his direction.
“I dunno, maybe you were born a freak? I sure don't recognise what you’ve got in you. Where as me? Well? What else am I but part fish?” he replied with a dejected shrug
”Fair. But we can also fix that. Peach can pull spirits out of you, though, uh, she is one of our Psych-Off infiltrators so getting a meet up with her might be tricky” Midna said, as she poked her head out to check if the coast was clear.
“Ok that’s the second time you’ve mentioned infiltrating psych-off. And you can do what? Pull them out of people. And you made them into money and food and stuff as well?” the man began to ask, to which Midna added ”Those ice monsters we summoned here also a spirit thing” which caused him to throw up his hand and demand to know “who the hell are you people?”
To that, Midna replied ”Oh us? We’re the seekers of light, and we’re going to save the world” before drifting closer, reaching out a hand and asking ”want in?”
The man sat there for a few moments, and then shrugged “fuck it, why not?”and clasped her hand and let himself be pulled up by the princess.
”Good. Now there’s just one liiiiiiiitle bit of initiation before we make you a full member” she added, which got her the question “huh, what’s that?”
Then there was a splash of blood, a flash of pink, and a moment of memory, before Taro, undistinguished veteran of the Regular Army, and 3 times POW, joined their ranks for real.
wordcount: 3233(+5) (+2 from teemo colab) (-9 from freeing Teemo) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (147/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (46/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (32/120) Rika: Level 7 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (29/70) Location: The Under - Home of Tears
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
After making their sales, a few minor purchases, and having a proper breakfast, the troop were all out of time and so headed back to the hotel with their pockets bulging with cash. That was probably for the best, given that the last time the troop had gone out shopping, Jr and Bowser had both ended up flat broke.
Within the hotel they got to confirm that everyone looked to have made it down to the city in one piece, and they’d both apparently picked up some newbies while they were at it.
”Welcome to the winning team, human guy and weird ghost thing. I’m Bowser, the koopa king, your new boss! And these are Kamek, Bowser Junior, and Rika” The king announced, still on the whole being in charge-thing, despite that not really being the case at all.
Arguably, at the moment, it would be Nadia, as far as someone who unleashed groan-inducing barrages of puns could be considered capable of being in charge of anything. At least Rika got a laugh out of it. As for why the argument could be made, well it was because she had the details for them to make their next plan, which was to see someone called IGV.
”Weird name” the king commented, to which his boy replied that it was ”Not quite as weird as the consuls’ one letter deal they got going on”
”At least we know its not one of them, because that would be a strange pseudonym for one of them to use, for sure” Kamek asserted, only for Rika to suggest that ”Maybe its three of them?”
”I. Hmmm. Surely not? I mean they would have put commas in between them if that was so, or at least I should certainly hope so” was Kamek’s retort to that theory, to which he then added ”and if it is, well, I can hardly feel worried about a group who would make such a grammatical error” smugly, not even considering that it might be done intentionally as a joke.
Either way, they talked a bit more, traded some data and a mask fragment count, and then decided on a plan of action, which was to send a small crew to this soul sanctum, while the rest were free to make use of the city for self improvement purposes.
As part of this, the troop split in two halves. Kamek and Bowser had made the wise parental decision to keep the youngsters out of danger, and the incredibly unwise decision of leaving them in a market district with a whole bunch of their spending money.
Well, only partially unwise. The kids had been left with a specific mission, and that was to find Rika some ammo. Said task proved easier said than done, for though there were merchant’s a plenty throughout the book based port, most of them stocked gear and equipment of a pre-industrial or magical bent. Any hope the two had had of maybe picking up some robot parts or other high tech equipment to let Jr tinker with Rika’s weapons, or his own clown car, were right out.
They were about to give up when they ran across across a curious floating fellow who owned a stand that hosted an assortment of strange living projectile weaponry, from a scornful two part gun, to an alien toad held in a robot claw, a roach like blaster and a little bubble blowing buddy. There were also a variety of fluid themed weapons, from a fire extinguisher water gun mix to an, acid slosher, a rifle that fired living slime and finally a striped down looking ink blaster.
What really got their attention however, was not any of those strange weapons, but instead a small stack of inconspicuous looking green boxes stacked up near the back of the shop, which were sitting among a few rolls of duct tape and jars of unidentified liquid.
”oh oh look at those, those are definitely ammo for sure” Rika insisted, hurrying on over to the stall, with a bored jr trailing in her wake while complaining ”You sure? We’ve been looking for aaaages”
”For sure for sure!” she insisted, before waving an un-gauntleted hand at the floating cube person and then saying ”Hi Hi. I’m Rika. Those are ammo crates right? What calibers you got, and how much for them?”
The response was, to her, an incomprehensible alien tongue which threw her for a loop, the ship girl having never encountered such a thing outside of Sakura’s occasional dipping into her native tongue.
”I'm sorry, what?” she asked, only to have her attention directed to a simple sponge sitting on the center of the creature’s stand. ”Oh, um, what about it? You want me to pick it up? Ok then” she said after some more insistent pointing, plucking the cleaning implement from the table and asking ”Now what?” before being surprised as the floating shopkeep was suddenly comprehensible to her.
“Hellooooooo, I’m Professor Goopton, goop scientist and seller of the finest squishy wares in the city!” the excitable creature introduced itself, before giving its sales pitch “Can I interest you in one of my cutting edge weapons? Some make lovely companions as well, while others wield the supreme power of goop!”
”Ah, no sorry, I’ve already got plenty of guns” she said, turning to the side to show off her gauntlets, which were presently strapped to her back, and then pointing down to her two ship turrets attached to her rigging.
“Hmm, so I see, so I see, but. Tell me. Do they shoot goops?” the professor asked, already of course knowing the answer was ”Well, no” but being quite taken by surprise when she informed him that ”But my horns do”, before she demonstrated by dabbing a ginger against the tip of the thicker of her two horns and coming away from it with a glob of green goo.
“Oooo, fascinating. And what does that do?” the professor asked, to which she replied ”It explodes when I spit on it and then ended up demonstrating for him via dabbing it on his counter top, and then spitooned a glob of saliva at it, causing the goo to shift from green to red in hue over a few seconds before it exploded.
”Kind of impossible to pull off with a helmet on, though, so I ain’t been using it much” she explained at the end, referencing the spartan helm hanging from her hip, which the professor thought was a real shame.
Jr then butted in to know what in the world they were saying, and proceeded to get a quick rundown. After that the two youngsters had to both awkwardly hold the translation sponge together in-order to understand the professor at the same time.
The first thing Jr did once he knew the score and could communicate was show off his own goop, namely that produced by his magic paintbrush, which also wowed the professor of all things gooey, and disappointed him when the boy refused to sell the marvelous creation.
”Didn’t you give that short floaty lady like a jar which made those bloopy guys, which could make more though?” Rika reminded him, which prompted a great deal of back and forth haggling over the price of that.
“I’ll make you a deal” the professor offered “Give me one of each of your slime creators, and I’ll help your friend there realize the true potential of her goop. Given what you’ve said, it’s not like it will cost you anything, and you’ll be making a brilliant contribution to science twice over!“
”That does sound cool” Rika began to agree, but jr insisted they get something more out of it ”Give us one of your guns at least! I mean your only really offering to help because you want to anyway, you goop obsessed guy you”
“Ah but you see, in-order to free Rika’s goo, we are going to need one of my weapons anyway” he retorted, before picking up and putting the grizzco blaster in-front of them “and you’ll need a master goo crafter to make it happen”
”You think you're the only one who can work with goo? I made a bear mounted cannon fire flaming goo just the other day” Jr retorted challengingly, only for the prof to show enthusiasm at the prospect rather than intimidated
“Ooooh? A fellow student of the goo are you, not just a wielder? Well why didn’t you say so! We’ll have to make it a collaborative research project then. Together, I’m sure we can make something stupendous! A marvel for all the world to see”
”Ha, you think you can keep up with me! I’d like to see you try” Jr boasted, but was now basically onboard.
With only a bit more back and forth they were in agreement, and the pair set to work.
Jr took Rika’s canon gauntlet off and plopping it on the table, before pulling out his tool box and starting to dismantle it, while the professor began to do the same with the grizzco blaster. Rika still attached to her gauntlet via cable and so unable to really go anywhere while they were at this asked ”So, uh, what can I do to help?” To which the professor responded by pulling off one of the 4 canisters attached to the blaster, tentacling it to her, and then instructing her to “fill it with your mouth goo!”
While the youngsters mucked around with slime, their elders were trooping through the halls of the soul sanctum. They were rapidly vindicated by their decision to leave the kids behind, as both agreed they could do without any more creepy experiences.
Thus it was up to them to tough out the horror, horror that came about soon enough, first in the form of half melted creatures that swarmed them without end.
”Ok so, shoddy boos, we can handle that” Bowser inside even while he was creeped out by them. At least they weren't the most durable, with Bowser and Kamek both able to pop them with a fireball or two. The problem was that they just kept coming. Still, when it was just them, that was manageable, with the mage and king watching each other's backs as they gradually climbed the sanctum, and both grateful for Sectonia‘s minions who took up most of the chaff cleaning.
The problem arose when they started running into other things. The main bulk of the issue was the patients, which proved to be much more durable, and when accompanied by the unending trickle of mistakes, a complete pain to handle. The sheer durability and relentlessness of them forced some of the more fragile members of their crew to have to kite them in order to survive, inevitably splitting up the team.
Anyone that stuck with Bowser however, would have the king himself to act as a roadblock for the bulbous headed creatures.
”Well this is a wretched place make no mistake” Kamek commented as he conjured up a number of doppelgangers, and made two of them red. As soon as said clones were painted red they started blasting, slapping mistakes out of the air with magic bolts.
Behind him and them Bowser raised his little energy shield to block a patient, who despite its small size left cracks in the buckler with its eldritch strength. He then delivered a rocket powered counter strike that sent the patient flying through the air until it smashed into a heartbeat monitor, before glancing back and asking his advisor ”So you think that new guy was right about this being some kinda trap?”
”I’m not sure. It certainly will make it clandestine once we reach the top, seeing as any spies would also have to get through all this to listen in. So we will have to see” the mage said, admitting he wasn’t sure either way, before he waved his wand and cast ”Sphere of protection!” on his king, wrapping him in a shimmering barrier that rendered the physical attacking patients mostly harmless to the already tough as nails king.
Empowered, Bowser advanced, punching his fist with glee while taking up most of the hallway, a wall of force that slowly but surely smashed its way through any patient or mistake he encountered.
Kamek then handled anything coming from behind, along with clones for fire support, and a toady for spirit collection. It was a good setup, however as he was in the midst of finishing off a patient that had tripped one of the dark energy mines he had been trailing after them, he realized progress had stopped.
”Everything alright there sire?” He asked, only to focus and hear the grunting of exertion before the king replied that ”This. Thing. Won’t. Go. Down”
The thing in question was a half melted mermaid-ish creature with a massive jaw and bulging muscles. It came at the king with biting jaws and flashing orbs from its eyes that cut right through the barrier surrounding him. As it did it babbled incomprehensibly with overlapping words
“Welcome to my special hell” “Do you think I'm pretty?” “I've felt this before” “but nobody came”
The king was forced to physically hold it back, hands pressing into melting flesh and shoving, because his blows seemed to cause it nary a scratch, impact wounds and claw marks melting away as if they had never occurred.
Eventually Bowser responded to its unending determination with some defenestration. With a roar he sunk his claws into its melting flesh, and heaved, lifting it over his head and then hurling it at one of the sanctum’s windows, which shattered and sent the melted creature plummeting down alongside a shower of glass. Amalgamate and shards then splashed down harmlessly into the dockside’s waters.
”Urrrgh, disgusting” the king complained as he tried to shake the liquid determination off his claws, then sighed in relief as Kamek got some white mage clones to start fixing him up, causing king’s mushroomy charm filling up the air with spores that wore down the mistakes without either of them having to do anything about them.
After that they continued as before, now hoping they did not run into any more amalgamates.
”Aaaaand, done!” jr declared after about half an hour of tinkering, to which professor Goopton nodded his massive noggin in agreement.
“Now if you could pass me the last tank of spit please?” he said to a very very dry mouthed and parched Rika, who complied wordlessly and tried to resist the temptation to grab and drink down some questionable fluid from the professor’s stock, and instead took in what they had done to her gauntlet.
The arm cannon, which had had the shotgun she had gotten removed from it mere hours after it had been added, had undergone a complete overhaul that involved splicing the grizzco blaster into it. At the back was a large tank containing a shocking ink based swooping stu, who would be endlessly harvested to provide power to the whole weapon.
Said weapon itself was lodged in the core gauntlet to where most of the original mechanisms, other than the triggers, had been stripped out and replaced with the guts of the blaster. From this body, one tube led up to a sucker around the tip of the gauntlet’s horn, while several more tubes lead from this up to the 4 shotgun shell sized canisters. One was filled with her saliva, while the other three contained one of each kind of Jr’s brush’s ink.
The various goos accounted for, they would then all meet in a central chamber, where saliva and Brachydios slime would interact, beginning their detonation countdown, and ink could be introduced to give the goop an elemental flavoring.
Finally, the weapon would draw electrical power from the shocking goop produced in the rear tank, and use that to launch the slimy mix forwards towards the enemy.
That was the plan anyway. The slight snag in it was that the shot would then explode a mere 3 meters in front of Rika’s face. At least the explosion was impressive, as was the once every second fire rate.
”You turned my artillery gun into .. into.. Into a useless flak cannon!” Rika complained after she peeked up from behind the counter she had thrown herself behind in response to the way to close range detonation.
“Ah, but now it is goopy!” the professor pointed out cheerfully, while Jr ”and you won’t run out of ammo seeing as you can produce it yourself. And i can provide the spice”
”I guess … ” Rika said with a sigh, popping off a few more explosions (over the water so as to not goop up the place up) and getting a bit less annoyed as she started to re-orientate how she thought about the weapon. After 3 more shots her brow furrowed for a moment, before inspiration struck and she set about fingering the trigger a 4 more times till she reached her 8th shot. That triggered her all out assault passive, causing the gun to fire 5 triple shots in rapid succession … all of which detonated close to each other, and produced a curved zone of goopy death far more practical than the triple shots of her long ranged shells that had a tendency to fly off all over the place and hit everything but her target.
”You know what … I think I like this new weapon” she said once the salvo ended, grinning a sharp toothed grin back at the two engineers who had taken her place hiding behind the stall from the explosive carnage she could lay down. The two took a moment to recover from the shell shock, and then they cheered, celebrating their glorious contribution to goop science.
Then they got a warning from a mermaid guard about disturbing the peace with said contribution to goop science. They were spared the fine she started writing up, however, when something came crashing down out of a window of the soul sanctum and splashed into the water, causing the mermaid guard to run off to investigate that instead.
After they’d all calmed down, and done a bit of gawking at the tearful if a bit confused reunion between the Amalgamate Bowser had yeeted out the window (who it turned out was named Lemon Bread) and her sister Shyren, the three of them got down to regular business again.
After humming and ha-ing over his inventory, they decided to just go with lots of ammo. At 150 a pop per gun to fill up the ammo stores, it was pretty pricey, but after the conversion of her main gun into a goop filled blaster, Rika only needed 3 instead of 4 to top herself up. One full stock up + a spare box for each put them at a 900 gold charge, which was a lot.
”Worth it though, those other mask holders don’t stand a chance against me now!” The ship girl declared, now firmly back in action after burning though close half the money they’d just gotten that very morning.
”Sooo, now what?” Jr asked ”Do we go buy more stuff or what?”
”Hmmmm” Rika thought, before suggesting ”How about we go test out your new invention on something?” which had Jr nodding in agreement.
”Also a drink” the shipgirl who had been spitting for hal an hour to produce one half of an explosive compound ”because I am thirsty!”
After finding out, thanks to Rika, that the other half of the team were in town, the Troop had immediately trooped on over to the hotel they were directed to by the mermaid guard. A check at the desk confirming that the others were indeed there, they had promptly piled on into a cheap room and slept through the rest of the night.
Despite their thriftiness and resulting cramped row, when the next day dawned and they tried to get breakfast it turned out they were in quite the financial woe, at least when it came to raw cash. What they were flush with was spirits. Lots of spirits. The troop had practically hoarded them the previous day, having everything from giant spiders and mosquitoes to mushroom and centipede people, deadly basilisks and virulent lightseeds. Oh and an oversized turkey too.
Within, surely some riches would be found which could be used or pawned, (along with the assorted minerals and gems that made the whole situation, frankly, a lot less bad than it could have been). As for why they had not used it? Well the troop had been told of a certain accusation by a certain queen that would increase their pay out. One residing at that very same hotel, and who’s arrival the toast munchers were eagerly anticipating.
It would also be nice to hear how the other party was doing of course, but the lack of meat in the royal koopa’s bellies was very much driving their thought process at the moment, a mood which was dragging the other two along for the ride.
It wouldn’t take long for Sectonia to make her way to the breakfast area. While she was one for beauty, she was practiced enough to not take ages to make herself presentable, although the little bit of extra makeup to cover up that small tattoo she had gotten from her excursion in the basement added a little bit more time than was usual. Still, she made her way past the troop to grab a cup of juice before glancing at the large koopa family. ”Oh, your here.” Sectonia said flatly. She wasn’t mad or angry at the troop, just neutral. It was early in the morning after all. ”Where were you all.”. Sectonia finished her first cup of juice, and went for another, this time using her new fire breath to heat the juice a little.
”Huh? Where were we? You were the ones who up and disappeared without a trace” Bowser replied, and though his words could come off as accusatory, his tone made it clear that he was mostly just confused.
”To, ah, clarify, we ran into a spot of trouble with some very large spiders, which took a little while to handle, and then after we turned around and came back we could not find a trace of you. Other than the map making man that is, but after that, nothing” Kamek injected to smooth things over ”So where did you end up going that made your route so hard to follow? I’m quite sure we ended up coming down here by an entirely different way, considering the man we met on the last leg of our journey hadn't seen you pass by”
Sectonia let out a huff as she turned to the koopa family. ”If you're curious, we went to a place called the ‘basement’. A horrid underground dungeon full of bodily horrors, undead, feces, and all sorts of horrid abominations. Which ended with us having to fight some eldritch fetus thing. It was awful.” Sectonia said, almost a bit glad to vent about what had happened yesterday, letting out a sigh that let loose a small puff of fire. ”Spiders are easy to handle compared to that place…” With that being said, Sectonia finished her juice and got a third cup. It was clear that the cups made for the smaller bugs of the hotel weren’t enough for the bee queen. ”I suppose my group did come out of it with a few benefits, but many things there were not for the taking considering how badly it seemed some of them could disfigure you. You’ll see when Nadia comes down.”
”I. Well. There were a lot of them” Bowser tried to respond, but his heart was not in it. Going the long way, it seemed, had definitely been the more preferable way of going about it.
”What’s a fetus” Jr then asked, which could have been a very awkward question, had he not been a reptile. As it was Kamek simply explained that it was ”It’s what a baby is while it is growing in the egg”
”Oh. Ew. Yeah no one eldritch baby is way more than enough. I am glad we missed that” Jr said, referencing the orphan of Koss, ”Worst we had was …. I mean the wall to wall spiders were pretty bad. And then there's a zombie plague down here too apparently which we ran into like one off. Then it was down a massive tree, and then along a beach, and then we met this place’s ex-king and learned some stuff”
”Hm… It sounds like you all had a much easier time of it. A good thing you didn’t surf down a river of blood inside some eldritch stomach… Ask Nadia, Therion, or Omori about the details. I’d sooner forget that place” Sectonia said, the bee queen visibly shivering for a moment. She then channeled her jealousy of how much of an easy time they all had compared to her from the sound of things to recover her own face, as annoying as it was, the fact that the king koopa was being deflated was more enjoyable than she thought. Although she wouldn’t tell that to his face. He was being far more refined than he used to be from her knowledge.
She then remembered what Jr. had just said ”So what did you learn from the ruler of this realm? Or the ex-ruler.” Sectonia asked, curious. Perhaps their explanation would explain who made that disgusting dungeon.
Unfortunately it did not, but what did do was clue her into a much greater veilness at the heart of the world that Galeem had created. Kamek, naturally, took the lead in this, explaining to the best of his ability how the flame clocks worked. How the people in this world were fueled by the lifelight, the same very thing blinding them to the true nature of that very world, and that the only way to get more was to take it from others. Or, more specifically, from the clocks that could only be filled by the deaths of others.
”It explains where most of everywhere we’ve been has been in a state of conflict of some kind or other” Kamek concluded, ”It’s not just that its set up like that at the start, its that its necessary for a place to even survive”
”That the war my …. My people were dying in was actually keeping them and Limsa Lominscuttle town alive and their clocks fed is, well, ironic. Right? That’s how irony works isn’t it?” Rika commented, before furrowing her eyebrows and then asking ”Wait, so what’s keeping them alive now then?”
”That. I. Oh dear” Kamek replied as the reality of what they had done suddenly dawned on them all.
Sectonia thought to herself after hearing about all of that. ”Well this does tell us one thing. Galeem was able to merge worlds, but is unable to actively control things beyond that. Instead, to keep its ‘perfect world’ in order, it requires a constant culling of its inhabitants. A poor ruler indeed.” Sectonia said, going on a bit about what she figured that all meant. ”A ghoulish situation indeed, but not one we can relent on. Without looking at this ‘clock’ myself, I can’t confirm your suspicions. Perhaps there is something not being told or something not even this ‘ex king’ was aware of.”
Sectonia’s input probably wasn’t what the koopa troop were thinking she would say, and Sectonia waited to see what their reactions would be to these words before continuing. ”There are three things this story doesn’t account for. What happens when an area is freed by the defeat of a guardian? What about areas that allow people to constantly ‘respawn’ as they called it, and finally, how long has Alucanth been up and have they been required to engage in this barbaric behavior? Either way, we can’t lament on the past if we are to push forward and end all of this.” And to ease their worries, she said something else. ”and perhaps later down the line, an alternate method may open up to us to resolve this issue. Can’t run a kingdom built upon the corpses of its own citizens.”
The mood that had been getting more and more dower as she talked suddenly perked right back up when the queen reminded them of what their mission was.
”I … you know what, yeah! If we punch Galeem in its stupid not face none of that matters. Coz when you punch the big eldritch god thing everything goes back to normal!” Jr cheered
”It does?” Rika had to ask if it really worked that way
”Most of the time, yeah” Bowser agreed, having punched a fair few jerks in the face for daring to try and usurp his position as his world’s big bad guy.
”And if it doesn’t, and we are stuck with a mishmash of a world, it would be quite the dominion to rule over, once things were put back into working order.” Sectonia said.
Kamek meanwhile had more of a thing and, thanks to the queen’s insite, came up with something ”Alcamoth! Yes yes the whole place is free, so we can check something. Asgore said we weren't part of that cycle, which means that if there is a clock there, it shouldn't be burning down any more! If we can find it, and confirm that, well, then we might want to rethink how we go about things entirely!” he declared.
”And perhaps that insight will explain how to free entire towns, assuming something with these clocks is keeping them enthralled. Yes.” Sectonia said, musing. She finished her most recent cup of juice as the koopa troop looked much more inspired. And almost as if to change the subject, Sectonia asked. ”So, with that all cleared up, is there any other business that must be attended to?”
”Couldn’t we just do it manually?” Rika started to suggest but, unfortunately, the dragony bit of Bowser’s soul reared its head in response to that question, prompting him to pull out a set of bottles bristling with spirits and set them down on the table while saying ”Yeah. We need to borrow your hat. You talked real big about it giving out good stuff earlier, and I need meat money”
”Also cool stuff!” jr butted in to add, the act of holding off on cracking open the little mystery boxes that where spirits having been quite the act of self control on his part
”Also cool stuff for my boy”
”and maybe I’ll get some ammo? Or ammo money?” Rika added hopefully, already dropping her prior comment in the name of reloading her dakka.
”That too!” Sectonia laughed, amused. ”Very well. But as I’m sure you are aware, since you aren’t my minions there will be a cost to be incurred.” Sectonia then withdrew the soul of It Lives, having kept it wrapped up as she didn’t want to touch it. ”Remember that thing I told you about? As you can guess, none of my minions want to touch this thing. I am repulsed looking at it as well, but even I won't deny it might have something strong if crushed.” Sectonia then pulled out the Symbol of Avarice, presenting it to the koopa troop. ”The cost incurred by you will be you crush this horrid thing, I get to look over what you gain from what you crush to see if anything interests me, And a percentage of profits.”
It wasn’t a bad deal, all things considered. There were very few things she was interested in as it was, and she doubted that hideous abomination would drop anything anyone would want, but what it gives might sell quite well. She would also warn the troop that if an item spawned atop a stone pillar upon crushing the It Lives spirit to stay far, FAR away from it until she analyzed it, otherwise something absolutely dreadful could happen to them as a backlash to touching said item.
”I think Blazermate got a big bean from one of those in the Maw?” Bowser said in response to the stone pillar thing, before grumbling about her requesting a share of their loot.
”What percentage, exactly?” Kamek asked regarding the tax that was apparently being levied on them, which did not seem very jolly or collaborative to him.
”Not much. We are allies at the end of the day, but I’m not a charity.” Sectonia said flatly. ”And you lot are much more amiable than that Ganondorf…” Sectonia continued, giving the troop a compliment.
”Yeah, we’re way more whatever that is than him for sure!” Bowser declared, while Kamek grumbled a bit about not getting an exact number. He was used to that however, so in the end there was little more complaining as they set to work
Or rather Rika did, because she was the only one the ugly helmet fit properly.
”Ouch! Ow! That stings!” she complained as she learned about the helm’s downside, and resulted in Jr having to go on healer duty again, topping her up whenever the biting got too bad. Sectonia’s healing aura did help reduce the damage Rika took and aided Jr. with his healing.
It Lives
I’m Stuffed (got this one already)
3 Lesser Kindred of Rot
3 basilisks
6 Mushrooms
6 giant spiders
12 giant mosquitos
12 lightseeds
Smelter A thermos-sized cauldron. If an item that confers passive effects while equipped or held is dropped into the smelter, the item is destroyed and the effect is applied to the person who dropped it permanently. Spirits itemized by this item's bearer are more likely to become trinkets Kindred of Rot's Exultation A talisman depicting the exultation of pests. Raises attack power when poisoning or rot occurs in the vicinity. "Rot for the scarlet goddess. O scarlet blossoms, flourish in distant lands, and return to us, the unwanted children" Pest’s Glaive Glaive made from a hard, sharpened shell. Wielded by the pests who emerged from the Swamp of Aeonia. Slightly increases non-physical damage negation. Though men might recognize the keen intellect of the pests evidenced by this spear's uncanny design, it will never be understood by them Mauldrone A somewhat intelligent insect the size of a dinner plate, rather heavy and quite durable. Balanced between speed and attack, it deals blunt damage by ramming into its targets on the wing. However, the only way to communicate with it or get it to do something is via light or chemical signals; it does not understand intention or speech Souls x500 Staff of Water While equipped, it provides an unlimited amount of water runes, effectively eliminating the need for water runes for any spellcasting that involves runes. Otherwise it doesn't not behave any differently compared to a normal casting catalyst, aside from being good quality Basilisk Boots Power armor for rangers. It provides a damage boost to physical ranged attacks (darts, arrows, bolts, javelins, spears, throwing knives, etc) but doesn't offer great protection Mycelia x3 A valuable crafting ingredient used in the creation of medicinal inhalers (which restore health) and gas masks (allowing one to breath in poisonous areas) Bacon Agaric x3 Mushrooms that look and smell tasty. Eating one instantly restores 20% of one's life Spider Eggs x2 If checked by someone with sufficient farming skill, these eggs will become tame spirit spiders that can be used to farm silk if fed bugs Spider Eye x4 Will provide some sustenance but poison the consumer if eaten. Can be used as a brewing ingredient to make potions of poison or fermented spider eyes for stronger potions The Blood x2 A tincture of sanguine liquid suitable only for the satisfaction of crimson cravings Souls x80 geo x12 Snake Shotgun A shotgun with recoil and others stats comparable to a sawed-off. When its trigger is pulled it shoots three green snakes at once. The snakes are alive and can be killed but don't have spirits. After being shot they single-mindedly pursue the nearest living thing they can smell in order to bite them. The bites are venomous, causing pain and paralysis that builds up over multiple bites. The snakes can and will attack both allies and the shooter if they're too close. The trigger can be pulled ten times for a grand total of thirty snakes before the shotgun is useless. Ammo pickups do not replenish the snakes
Looking over all the items, Sectonia was surprised when she saw something so… mundane come from the It Lives spirit. Otherwise there wasn’t much of anything she was interested in. The magical staff might’ve been something, but really there wasn’t much here she was interested in. If only she knew more about the smelter looking item…
”Hm… From what I can tell from these items… I was expecting something more horrific from that spirit. It seems this item confers what item you throw into it to the person itself. And it has no transformative properties? It could be useful?” Sectonia then looked at the other items, having little interest in them but giving her appraisal of each one as she magically saw them.
”It seems many of the items here could be used by those down here. If I remember right, Therion could use those boots for example. Kamek, that staff looks like it could be useful for you. And of course this thermos, who has the courage to see what it does? The other items though, I am unaware of any of us that can use them. Perhaps they will sell well?” Sectonia said, finishing her analysis and taking the helmet from Rika.
Rika was mostly just glad for it to all be over, the ship girl rubbing her now unhelmeted head. After she got a reassuring pat on the shoulder, some praise for her endurance, and a once over to make sure she was well and good she said ”Mmm, might as well find out if the thing your bitty hat is any good I guess” apparently not done with the mornings bout of minor self sacrifice.
Indeed Bowser tried to step in and assure her that ”Hey you don’t need to do that, I can” but the ship girl shook her head and picked up her dated sunglasses from where they were laying next to her spartan helmet.
”Having both of these on has been super uncomfortable. And makes it kinda depressingly dark too. So I wanna check if this works or not” before she touched the floating cauldron. As predicted, no horrific mutations ensued, and instead the item simply stopped floating and bonked down on top of the stone pedestal (which someone was going to have to remove somehow if they wanted it to not go on taking up table space).
With the risky part out of the way, Rika picked up the cauldron and plotted in front of her, before folding in the arms of the sunglasses and popping them into it. Heat flashed as the item ‘melted’ in the smelter, and when Rika peeked a moment later it was gone.
”So… how do you feel?” Kamek asked
”Hmmm. About the same” Rika said, before asking Jr to ”Toss something at me to check”
A spider egg went flying over the table a few moments later, only for it to slow in the air when it got close to the ship girl, like it had got stuck in molasses, giving her plenty of time to snatch it out of the air.
”Yup. Looks like it works” she confirmed as she plopped the egg down.
”While your at it, got any idea what any of these do?” she then asked, pulling out a pair of Mithril Stone Spirits, a Burnt Pan and an Earth Talisman from her pockets (and getting Kamek to enlarge the frying pan for her) ”I mean it’s probably just a normal frying pan but you never know”
Sectonia looked at the items but her expression showed everyone they weren’t all that good. ”just some weird consumables and a weapon that doesn’t look all that interesting. Probably best to sell them.” Sectonia said dismissively at the new items. With the cauldron item having been tested by Rika, Sectonia motioned for her to hand it to the bee queen. ”I will hold onto that.” she said simply. She wasn’t interested in any of the other items so the koopa troop was free to do whatever she wanted with those. She was curious as to what they would sell for.
”Hang on hang on, I wanna try another one” Rika insisted, before plopping the pests talisman into it, only for her to become confused when nothing happened
”Oh wait shoot, did I break it?” she asked nervously, picking out and then popping the talisman back in again a few more times to no avail.
Looking at the item, it seemed to have cooled down after smelting a single item, getting slightly warmer as time went on. ”It needs some time to recharge its magical power. What it’s doing is fairly strong after all.” Sectonia said.
”Oh. Good. Phew” Rika sighed in relief, wiping her brow, before asking ”So can I use it again once it’s, uh, warmed up I guess?”
Sectonia put a hand on her hip, exhaling a bit before saying. ”I suppose. However if I remember right, you were also lacking in food funds?” Sectonia wouldn’t mention her funds were fairly low after yesterday, but from what she knew of this group, funds in general were low. Speaking of, Sectonia got even more juice. One would think she had a sweet tooth.
”Well we were, but now that we have all this, we should be able to make up some funds with some sales” Kamek said, gesturing to the items ”Some kind of herbalist or alchemist for most of these, for example, would solve our problem nicely”
”And some kind of smith for the other stuff, yeah?” Bowser added, referring to the various minerals he had in his pockets ”then finally some kind of general merchant for the gear”
”No no no we should try putting all the things in the pot first” Rika insisted, and then when someone pointed out half of it would not fit she retorted that ”Kamek could just shrink it right?”
”I suppose?”
”Alright, that’s the plan then. Let’s head out, make some cash, and then we can buy a second breakfast!” Bowser declared, before scooping up a share of the things they were going to sell, while Rika darted around grabbing things she wanted to try smelting.
”Would you care to accompany us?” Kamek asked, to which Rika added ”So I can use your thing”
Crushing her juice cup after fishing it and throwing it away, Sectonia looked at Kamek’s politeness, contrasted with Rika’s unabashed bluntness and said nothing for a time before replying.”I suppose I should. Perhaps there might be other trinkets in the shops as well that interest me.” She then looked at Rika, saying. ”Just remember, we do not have a method to separate the magic from whoever smelts an item with this thing, so take into consideration if someone else could use it better than you.”
”Sure sure. But I mean no one was interested in the other stuff right? Except the boots you said Therion might like, and I guess the magic stuff” She said, putting those to one side, along with the magic looking staff and talisman, while taking the spear, the pan, the weird shotgun and the little talisman for herself.
And the bug.
With that the Troop set out, but stopped briefly by the front desk to let people know they were going shopping. In doing so they also received the message Nadia had read earlier.
”Well, that is, perhaps, a little ominous” Kamek noted, before glancing back at the others, and asking ”Thoughts?” of which it turned out the rest of the troop had very few. Sectonia didn’t really have much insight either and only shook her head.
”I suppose we’ll hear them out then. After selling and shopping” Kamek decided for them.
”As long as it isn’t this Counselor P I heard about yesterday. But from what I heard of that one, he puts everyone to shame when it comes to greed and debauchery. And that would lead to many enemies” Sectonia said. But besides that she was eager to go shopping, although her face barely showed it.
As the group of royals and their entourage. (Although it was mostly just Sectonia moving with the Bowser family) a thought occurred to Sectonia. ”So, I remember some of you never doing the things you were doing or looking like that. What did you find along your path in terms of new powers?” While this was a lead into what she gained from her little excursion, it would be best to at least take note of what these people could do. Things changed so rapidly in this world being behind in knowing what people did could be an issue.
”Oh wow, where to even start with all the new awesome stuff we can do?” Bowser asked, a bit rhetorically, only for Kamek to answer him anyway with ”Maybe focus on the biggest changes to our group’s abilities, rather than just our ability to blast stuff better?”
”Huh, and what would that be?” Bowser asked, to which Kamek simply pointed at Rika
”Hi! I’m Rika, and I guess all of me is new? I mean I guess I wasn’t even a person when you all met before? But I’m a boat, and I shoot things with big guns. Or well I did, but I used all my ammo. Now I punch stuff good, and grappling hook stuff, and chainsaw it, and hack it with my hull blades and stuff like that” she explained, shadow boxing a bit as she explained herself.
”Yup, that’s my girl, a real go getter and credit to the team” Bowser praised her, before also pointing out that ”Now my boy meanwhile has picked up a bunch of healing magic and stuff, haven’t you son?”
”Yup. So if you're hurt and stuff I guess I’ll fix you up. Try not to though, its kind a pain” the prince replied ”I can also cure like, curses and put people to sleep and other stuff to, it's a whole big tool kit” ”I meanwhile can give shields that increase physical resistance, shrink things, and create magical mounts” Kamek explained for himself, while Bowser’s own was just ”I can smash, bash and blast even better now” before releasing the looks that simple explanation got him and tried to add ”Oh and I can breath underwater I guess?” to save face
”I suppose you all have been busy.” Sectonia said, really having more of a ‘that's neat’ tone of her voice. ”I meanwhile have only gained some moderate boosts to my antillions and a vague control over fire.” Sectonia said, summoning a single antillion which was much bigger than it was the last time the koopa troop had seen them, followed by making a flower of fire from her flame breath, having practiced doing this a bit beforehand, which gained her an ooo of appreciation from the young ones. There was also the whole ‘she had a smelter’ thing now as well, but that was obvious.
Still, much like she thought, Kamek seemed to have the most useful abilities. Although the royal oaf’s son being a healer was interesting. Considering the lack of healing while going through that dungeon, having that back would be quite nice.
First off they sold the Mycelia, Spider Eyes and blood vials which got sold to an alchemist, and the Staff of Water, Earth Talisman, Scissorman’s Shears and Insect Scythe to a general weapon’s merchant. Then they made the big bucks selling Bowser’s assorted ores, some Mithril Stone Spirit and, most worthwhile of all, a massive chunk of gold ore the queen summoned down from the surface.
They finally stopped by a monstrous pet’s vendor called Beastmaster Raha, who they sold the spider eggs too, and Rika also got some instruction on how to utilize the large attack bug she had acquired. In the end it turned out it would respond to chemical signals, which was weird, and, apparently, light, which Rika interpreted as ”Oh like a target designator laser? Weird but ok”
Their incredibly ad hoc solution to this involved picking up a laser pointer from a stationary shop for pittance, taping it to Rika’s gauntlet, and then having Jr rig up a way for Rika to flick it on and off. After that, it got introduced to its new home, i.e. the now empty hanger on that same gauntlet.
While they were wandering the streets making sales, they made use of the smelter a bit more. Rika melted down the pest talisman, and then got more ambitious and got Kamek’s help to shrink and then melt down the entire pest spear mostly to see if it was possible. Then Bowser gave it a go, doing the same with a frying pan. Out of the curiosity of experimentation, Sectonia wasn’t confrontational about the use of her new little way to empower herself and her minions.
Kamek initially thought this was something of a waste, but after they tried and failed to melt the Scissorman’s Shears, meaning that they must have gained passives from the other melee weapons. Sectonia wasn’t sure exactly what they got either, noticing that what power those weapons had wasn’t all that impressive. Perhaps turning them into money would’ve been better, but they weren’t her items after all. Still, the experimentation was useful.
As for the money, well the troop got a healthy 1285 geo out of their sales, though it was likely less than they could have got, had they actually known the value of half of the items Sectonia didn’t fare much better at knowing the true value of things, although her tidy sum of 1517 gold was about what she expected. She could probably have pushed for a bit more, but making a scene in front of the koopa troop wouldn’t have done well for her. And now she had access to all her antillions, not just the couple she had been working with.
With all the selling done, all that was left was breakfast. A real, proper breakfast, not some slightly burnt bread like they had had before they set out. Seeing as it was undignified, Sectonia let the koopa troop look for a place to eat. Upon finding a place to eat however, Sectonia finally brought up the matter of ‘payment’ for using her symbol of avarice.
”Now then, about that payment…” Sectonia said, giving a bit of a haughty laugh as she started to count on her fingers. ”I will give you a discount for helping test that new item of mine. Considering all the fees regarding how many items you crushed… the total comes down to…” Sectonia said, enjoying this quite a bit. ”Lets just call it a meal.”
There was a bit of grumbling, and most of it was due to the mass of gold they all knew the queen had just gotten her own hands on, but in the end they relented and Kamek cordially invited her to join them for breakfast in his king’s place.
As for the place that Bowser’s nose had lead them too, it was run by a half sized women called Chef Bridgette who was apparently something called a Harvin, not that any of them knew what that was, nor did they find out much about the species. What they did find out was that she made the best big breakfast anyone could ever ask for.
Plates of bacon, hash browns, beans, pancakes, waffles and anything else you desired could be bought for surprisingly reasonable prices, and though none of it was fancy, it still managed to be a slap up feast where every individual part was cooked with oodles of care, attention, and skill.
Truly, it managed to be one of the greatest breakfasts of all time in Bowser’s book, and certainly the best second breakfast. By the end of it the troop was down a bunch of money, mostly due to the king and queen being able to put quite a lot into their large forms, but the meal was such a bang up job that no one was upset about that afterwards.
Sectonia still had to show dignity as she was not eating in the royal quarter, but watching the koopas having quite the boisterous energy was amusing. Although Bowser and his kin needed to be taught a bit of elegance, or at least as much as he could muster if he was a king. Perhaps she’d have to teach him that later, especially if they were going to be allies. But now they had a place to be. ”Now with that done, we had to meet with the others and see who this IGV person is.” Sectonia said as the group had exited the eatery, making sure to keep them all on task.
”Not got P or F in it, so we should be good, yeah?” Bowser said, which turned out to not be a joke. As it was, now that they were fueled up, chased up, pasives up and Rika had a string operated shotgun kinda awkwardly strapped onto her left gauntlet, they were ready to face the day and whatever mysteries it contained.
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