wordcount: 2,407 (+3) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (238/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (123/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (115/120) Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (49/80) 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
”Gotcha!” Bowser reassured his daughter as he caught the shipgirl after she pulled off her two times fly by of pizza face.
”Did you see that! I stabbed that pizza face in his face pizza!” Rika cheered, trying and failing to join in on the pun-ishment being inflicted on their absurd foe.
”that’s not how puns work!” Jr called out as he swept in with a squad of strikers, which crashed into the food based mooks who were trying to swarm the pair.
”Awww” Rika sighed only a little disappointed as she started casually lancing and grizco blasting mooks upon being set down onto her own two feet again by the king.
”Good effort though” Bowser encouraged her as he joined in with the carnage.
As they sliced, diced, and blasted mooks, the rest of the crew followed up with yet more strikes on the pizza face. They were so effective that in only a few more moments the boss was descending from the sky, looking ever so defeated
”Well, that was a cake walk” Bowser declared prematurely as he dusted off his claws, jinxing them to world -1 and back in the process, while Jr and Kamek both wondered why the fall looked less like a thing dying and more like a thing crashing.
Then the machine of bread and cheese popped open its face, and revealed the true form of their foe.
”Wait, so, the pizza face was secretly a different guy who also has pizza for a face? What?” Jr called out as he threw his hands up in confusion that was matched by the other koopas, but not Rika, who savantly pointed out that ”Well I mean it’s more like he has a pizza head instead of a pizza face seeing as he has a body and stuff”
Then things got weird, and what had been silly … well it kept being silly, but more of a killer clown silly instead of a regular clown silly. The sky turned orange and filled with pizza toppings, and then they all got what Jr was pretty sure were healthbars, the Koopas getting images of shells, while Rika got a weird warbling mishmash of symbols that after a few heartbeats seemed to give up and just turned into another spiky shell.
Rika declared this supernatural acknowledgment of her new family status as ”Neat” while a much more spooked Jr retorted that ”No, not neat! we’ve all only got 8 hit points or something!”
”What do you mean by that young master” Kamek enquired to which the prince replied that ”That we can only get hurt 8 times and then that’s it, game over!”
”Well doesn’t that mean he also only has 8 of these points of hitting?” Rika pointed out, which got Bowser onboard, declaring ”Yeah, then let's go pulp that pizza face back into dough!” just in time for the foe in question to summon up some reinforcements to stop them from doing so.
Bigger, nastier reinforcements this time.
While four of the monsters emitted bestial roars of one kind or another, while the fifth among them simply gazed at them with the gaping hole in its masked face. Then it reached up behind its back, and pulled the lid off a pot that it had strapped there, unleashing a steady stream of burning mask like whisps that acted like homing missiles, arching up into the air and then flying straight towards a target before exploding violently on contact.
This latter effect was discovered when one smashed head long into Bowser and, well exploded. At which point they found out exactly how right Jr had been about what the little floating icons had meant, as the ones that had attached themselves next to Bowser reappear, only for one to ‘pop off’ of its row and fall away into nothingness.
As the king grunted in pain he flashed white several times, during which more homing wisps slammed down into him, yet none of these seemed to do any additional damage till after a few seconds when the flashing ended and a second shell token got knocked off.
”Gah, make them stop!” the king demanded, unable to really take any kind of cover up on the towertop battlefield, or move fast enough to duke the shots into missing like Rika (with her projectile slowing gaze) was doing just to the right of him.
”Don’t worry papa! I can heal you” jr called out (he and Kamek apparently being further back from the grovetender saving them from being targeted) before raising up his paintbrush staff and calling out ”Cure!” and pulsing healing magics through his father’s body.
The two lost shells, however, did not come back.
”Uh oh.”
The prince tried two more times, even burning away the long cooldown Benediction in a hope it would somehow heal enough, but it was no use, and he was forced to conclude that ”I can’t heal us any more!”
As the prince discovered the greatest malus of this curse, the other two Troop members had moved to lend aid in their own way.
”Toadies, go! Intercept those masks!”Kamek commanded, summoning and sending forth magical minions to physically intercept the grovetender’s own. This not being their intended purpose however, it was a battle he rapidly started to lose a war of magical attention.
Rika’s solution was much more straightforward, one she spelled out rather simply with ”The best defense is a good offense!” while leaping to the side to avoid a whips, and then yelling ”Die thingy!” as she unleashed her nautical firepower upon it.
Rigging turret launched shells soared across the tower, crashing into the grovetender that had been advancing towards them, staggering the monster for a moment, and cutting off the stream of whisps. It also caused its own health bar to appear, and for one of the masks representing its life force to pop off of it.
It looked like everyone was playing by the same rules.
”What’s wrong, cat steal your pot lid?” Rika attempted to taunt it as she struck this first blow, tried being the operative word there.
”Try ‘serves you right for putting your hand in the cookie jar’ instead” Bowser suggested, very thankful that the wisp hail had ended, but perhaps not so concerned as he should be about being down 3 masks after the opening engagement.
”I don’t get it but ok!” Rika replied, but her reiteration of the taunt was interrupted by a warning call of ”It’s charging something!” right before the grovetender finished doing so, and unleashed another attack.
Having closed in while raining down wisps, the masked monster unleashed its other skill, a shotgun blast of 13 scorching hot chains. These lanced out, one right at Rika, nailing her in one of the arms and thereby bypassing her energy shield, while another of the stray shots hit Bowser.
Both troop members lost a shell container, and then suffered the secondary effect of the chains, namely being dragged closer to the grovetender. This would have made its rapid succession of follow up shots devastatingly effective had the invulnerability frames of the pair not been flashing.
As it was it mainly dragged them in nice and close for Bowser to drive home a rocket propelled punch into it.
”How do you like that fuzzy!” he taunted, as Rika followed up with her own punch, only for the invulnerability to be on their foe’s side now, giving it plenty of time to charge up another shotgun blast of chains while they wailed on it ineffectually.
”Dad, get back! You can’t win by just touching it out this time!” Jr cried out in warning, a statement to which Kamek added his own agreement.
Right on cue the chains slammed into the close range pair, putting him down to a measly 3, and Rika to 6, while their blows knocked it down to 5.
Even Bowser could do that math, though his son’s warning had been what actually made him actually stop to do said math.
”Time to go!” he announced grabbing Rika and then leaping backwards, cannons on his shell deploying and firing to blast him back with additional recoil like Rika often did.
”Hey, I could have toughed it out!” the ship girl, who had also done the math, complained, but her papa retorted ”And leave you with one hit left? Not a chance. We’ll still have plenty to do after this shmucks’ done!”
Of course, the grovetender wasn’t going to let them get away that easily, the masked monster firing off another chain of chainshots at them. Rika saw it coming this time, and as the first once lanced close, she summoned her cloyster to use protection, nullifying the attack. Then her Knight to do the same for the next with his shield, but the final striker she had at her disposal had no shield, and so the war cleric was dragged in, sparing them from being grappled, but not her from harm.
Then they were skidding along the ground as Bowser made a landing.
”Your woundednesses, please stay back, we shall take it from here” Kamek told the pair, as the two smaller uninjured troop members took to the fore.
”Yeah, because I’ve got an idea!” Jr added as he tossed up a pokeball, and summoned Dazzle the Poppilo to the field (with the mon getting his own 8 pokeball icons upon entering the cursed zone).
”It’s time to fight fire with water! Dazzle, use your watergun on the flaming masks” he commanded as the grovetender again unleashed its wisp swarm.
The mon did just this, blowing up a trio of bubbles of water from its nose, tossing them up, and then skillfully swatting them with his tail, sending them sailing fourth to strike home, extinguishing the burning lifeforce of the masks and causing them to drop from the sky.
Those masks were only the vanguard of many coming however, and while Kamek sent a reserve of toadies forth to collide with 4 more, after that he was out of reserves.
”You gotta shoot faster!” Jr demanded of his pokemon, but the attempt to follow this commanded mainly caused one of the next three shots to miss as the mon cracked under pressure, allowing a whips to crash home and knock a hitpoint off both of them
”What;s the matter with you, I could hit those no problem!” the prince berated the mon as more shots rained down onto their flashing forms as they pulled themselves back to their feet, only to have an idea.
A moment later, out of the smoke cloud caused by the exploding masks shot another water gun shot, nailing the next mask. Then in quick succession another shot, and another and another, as the smoke cleared and revealed Dazzle and Jr working together, the Popilo serving his bubbles to his trainer, who then used his paintbrush to bat them forward, nailing mask after mask with extinguishing strikes.
”Told you it was easy!” jr insisted, even as his arms rapidly got tired from the swinging.
”I got your back son!” Bowser declared from behind opened up with his own shoulder cannons, shooting twin dosing streams of water from them.
”Me too! Get flak you dumb masks!” Rika called out as she too joined in, her grizco blaster shooting out large air bursting shots of goop that also did the job.
”Well done your extingishingnesses!” Kamek praised the royals, before turning his attention away from making minions for interception, and instead to launching spells at the grovetender itself, correctly guessing that his weakest ones would do, and saving mana by doing so bit simply tagging it with basic spell blasts.
Four, and then three masks remained, and then the tender switched track again, charging forwards and charging chains. Forewarned however, the troop took this as a cue to back up, retreating well out of shotgun range. Then they switched back to shooting down the whisps when it switched tactics back, and another mask fell as they slowly backed up. Just when they thought they had things down however, they ran out of tower top to run across.
Bowster’s steel boots tethered on the edge of the tower, and though there wasn’t much of a drop, what with 99% of it being buried in the ground, it was just enough to get them to pause, and for the grovetender to get into chain shotgun range.
The chains lashed out, catching and dragging in Kamek, Jr and Dazzle in. All three lashed out as they were pulled in, popping off the next to last mask (as well as plenty of redundant damage), before the grovetender proved itself to have the capacity to learn, as it used its hands to swat at them rather than charging at more, the pathetic strikes still chipping away at their hp reserves.
”We got you!” Rika called out as she, held by Bowser for support, launched her grappling hook and grabbed Jr. The prince in turn grabbed Dazzle, hooking his tail under an arm while his arm was wrapped around his body.
While Kamek simply teleported back, the prince was pulled away, only to be faced with the same peril Bowser and Rika had been, and with no damage blocking strikers to his name. Only a paint brush and an armful of sea lion pokemon
”Oh wait” he said, before commanding ”sing that thing it’s swan song” as he lifted the pokemon up a little so its snout was pointing right at the grovetender, and lightly squeezing him. From the mouth of the mon shot a beam of pink sound waves, which struck the grovetender right before it finished charging.
The last mask fell, and with it, so did the monster.
Jr skidded to a halt, caught by his dad’s claw to prevent him from backspiking Rika, and then stood up. He was about to put down dazzle again, when he had second thoughts, and instead slipped the paintbrush under his front to act as support, now holding the pokemon like a living cannon.
”Yeah, that works” he decided, before the troop formed up, with Bowser uncharacteristically at the back of their formation.
”Alright troop, let’s get that pizza head weirdo!” the king roared, gaining a round of affirmations from the rest as before they went charging back across the tower towards their foe.
Location: Midgar Sector 06, the City of Glass Midna’s @DracoLunaris, Geralt’s @Multi_Media_Man, Tora Word Count: 3334 (+4)
Monstrous Physique- The inhuman strength of the Orphan of Kos has suffused into Geralt, improving his already-impressive physical strength to levels far beyond human. This also improves his physical durability, allowing him to withstand more punishment.
Those who decided to venture to Vandelay’s Research and Development division were in for a surprise when Sandalphon informed them where they’d be headed. “Your destination is the volcano situated in the rear of Vandelay Campus, the angel explained. “The R&D division exists beneath it, using the heat of its magma for geothermal energy, as well as its proximity to the plate’s underside and Deep-Paris to its advantage. DespoRHado’s troops are accessing it via the Employee Express, and I suggest you do the same. Oh, and for the duration of this op, hail me using callsign Halo. I will hail your team using callsign Phalanx.”
Following her directions and the trail of destruction left by their cyborg precursors, the trio set off. Even without Poppi to help him, Tora could bounce along at a decent clip, and the possibility of augmenting his quest to recover his companion with Vandelay’s finest tech gave him enough hope to stave off despair. Driven by the thought of seeing Poppi’s smile once more, he forged ahead alongside Midna and Geralt through a belt of structures somewhere between Vandelay’s public-facing front and its purely industrial facilities. These turned out to be primarily residential areas, not for the minority of human personnel who commuted to the campus, but for its robotic workers. They encountered VA-SER, TEC, PGR, and OL units, as well as diminutive SCR-UB, CAR-11E, and O5-KARs. Such machines might not need to sleep, but they did need to recharge, and these motel-esque power stations provided just the place to do so. Of course, being robots they received accommodations much, much smaller and meaner than any hotel might possibly consider offering, barely more than cubbies, and being non-combat robots they’d put up no fight at all when DespoRHado tore through the place. The whole area was in crisis mode, with panicked SCR-UBs and CAR-11Es flailing their arms as they rolled around in circles. That made getting through to the nearby on-site subway station easy, at least, and after descending to the platform the trio found that a train had just arrived.
They also found the DespoRHado rear-guard. Hulking and gorilla-like, the robots had been too big to board the Express themselves, so they remained behind to destroy any Vandelay robots attempting to use it themselves. When they spotted the newcomers, the three Unmanned Gears turned on them, their eyes glowing as they released mechanical roars.
“Mastiffs,” Sandalphon’s voice announced. The angel routed her communication line through the magically-attuned Midna, and came through with just a slight, almost melodic echo. “I do not have authority over these units. They wield brute strength, agility, and hidden arm-cannons. You are clear to engage.” If the Seekers wanted to reach R&D, they’d need to get through these things first. ”Good, I need a warm up anyway“ Midna boasted, before declaring ”I’ll take the one on the left“ and then racing to do just that.
“Then I’ll go right. Tora, can you handle the middle one?” Geralt asked, not unkindly, but also without the tinge of pity the Nopon might be fearing. If he needed a hand, they’d be happy to provide it, but if not, there was no point in putting the extra focus on their friend when they could instead put it on their enemy. Regardless of the answer, he drew steel and cast Quen to protect himself, moving towards his chosen foe.
Tora gawked up at the giant Unmanned Gear, approximately five times his size, with nothing but a medieval hammer to his name. “Mehhhhh…”
As Midna’s wolfos charged forwards, the princess quickly shifted so that both her feet were on its back, and then right before they came close to the brute bot, leapt off of it and into the air. While her steed switched to entirely focusing on evasion, the princess grabbed the massive tree spear she was carrying in both hands, and used it to deliver several swift downwards thrust, glinting from both the charge she had pumped into it crackling as she struck, before slamming a shadowfist downwards to finish her combo. A respectable burst of damage, but these Mastiffs were tough as nails. Planting its back foot, the unit attempted to clamp its arms around Midna’s shadowfist in order to grapple her and pull her in for a pounding.
Knowing about the hidden arm-cannon in advance was very helpful, given that the one he went after raised one of its arms and launched a grenade at Geralt, who was able to quickly pivot around it, avoiding a direct hit and leaving the projectile to detonate behind him as he rushed in. The Mastiff responded with a roar and a downward punch, which Geralt deflected with the flat of his sword before lifting it up and along the machine’s side, scoring the metal but not doing much damage without the time to build up any momentum. The Mastiff replied with a backhanded swipe from its heavy arm, more to ward the Witcher off than anything. It leaped backward out of range, launched a pair of hastily-aimed grenades, then barreled forward to pull off a spectacular dropkick.
Tora, meanwhile, was suffering. Once it registered the tiny, ovoid creature in front of it as a threat, the Mastiff went to town, repeatedly punching and slamming to ground to try and squash him. Having been a steadfast defender for so long, Tora tried to block the attacks on instinct, but even if his hammer were suited to the task he had no extra ether shielding to protect him. After eating a few hits, he focused on evasion instead, trying to dodge the Mastiff’s wallops in order to bludgeon it legs, but he was too slow and the robot just stepped away from him each time. Finally, Tora bounced into the air, leaping as high as he could to bring his hammer down on the Mastiff’s head. The hammer promptly flew from his grasp, leaving only a dent behind, and the Unmanned Gear grabbed Tora in its giant arms to squish him like a squeaky toy. “MEH-MEH-MEH!” he yelped as he struggled helplessly, his eyes bugging out on each squeeze.
”Vibrava! Initiates! Support Tora!“ Minda shouted as she wrestled with the mech that had her by the shadow hand. To do so, she stabbed the spear forwards, and then held it there to use it as additional leverage to keep herself from being reeled in. Then she aimed to punish it for keeping her close by discharging the remaining voltage stored in her spear via a trio of rotating pillars of lighting, while also opening the shadow hand, and rapidly expanding a vollybomb into it. The magical explosive rapidly grew in size, seemingly harmless until its radius touched the floor below and everything inside was wracked with the resulting detonation. It did a number on the Mastiff, cracking its armor in enough places to send pieces flying, and its head in particular took enough damage to render its optics useless. When it staggered drunkenly to its feet it wildly swung what remained of its arms around, trying to swat Midna down before she could sting him again.
While she did that, her minions moved to aid Tora. The hooded initiates of the penumbra cult stepped away from all the fights, and then bowed down, planting their hands to the ground and sprouting psychic roots around the foe that was squeezing the life from Tora (a safer bet than the spears which would risk friendly fire) and repaying the immobilizing favor. Her Vibrava, meanwhile, buzzed around behind the robot, before threatening to swoop in to deliver an armor sundering crunch to the back of its head.
Unfortunately, the Mastiff’s design prevented that–stooped like a hulking gorilla, its head seemed to be completely obfuscated by its hunchback from behind. Sensing stronger opponents, however, it promptly hurled Tora at one of the initiates like a football, then unleashed hell with its arm cannons.
Geralt sidestepped away from the backhand, performed a pirouette to avoid the poorly-aimed grenades (the explosion from one sent some shrapnel into his back, but the Quen shield meant that Geralt barely felt anything), then lifted his sword into both hands to deflect the flying simian robot, knocking it ever so slightly off course and off-balance. He followed up with a heavy downward swing as the machine UG was getting up, gouging deeply into its arm and leaving the mechanical limb sparking. Lifting his blade, he thrusted forward as the Mastiff punched at him, moving closer to let the limb sail harmlessly past his side, a solid foot of his sword penetrating into the machine. Eyes narrowing, Geralt took advantage of this unexpectedly effective attack and withdrew his blade to quickly slam the pommel of his sword into the machine’s face before it could react. Rather than react with any sort of discombobulation, the Mastiff simply grabbed Geralt with both of his massive arms, though the grip on the damaged one was noticeably weaker.
Having rolled to a stop nearby after his head-on collision with one of Midna’s Strikers, Tora picked himself up dazedly, then shook the stars from his eyes. If nothing else, the Nopon certainly possessed a hardy constitution, and being a chew toy for a Mastiff was nothing he couldn’t handle. When he got up, though he saw Geralt subjected to the same treatment “Oh, no!” If Geralt got his back broken by a bear hug here, Tora’s mission would be that much closer to dead in the water. He mustered up all the heroic courage he could find, scooped up his hammer from where it had fallen, and charged toward Geralt. “Hold on friend, Tora is coming!” He lifted his weapon overhead, ready to bring its business down on the Mastiff’s foot with everything he had.
While the boys duked it out with their own gorilla bot, Midna and her minions found themselves occupied with the other two. For the one flailing around blindly, the princess drifted up into the air out of range of the targetless attacks, and then proceeded to summon and drop the massive steel ball on a stick that was her clubba-club right on top of it.
Her Vibrava meanwhile had a bit more of an issue with its brute. Having failed to find a rear weak point it was at least at range when the grenade spam started, and the psychic roots restricted the ability to aim the shots at it. Still, one of the explosive shots managed to clip the dragon, causing a retaliatory darrage thorns shooting out of the pokemon and at the bot, dealing light damage.
What didn’t cause light damage was the mon retaliating by unleashing the power of the earth beneath the Mastiff, shattering concrete and sending geothermal energy raging up in a miniature volcanic eruption that unsteadied the machine as much as it buffeted it with geomental might. As it stumbled, the pokemon hammered it with blasts of dragon breath, tight beams of purple energy hammering the machine while making sure to keep out of range of those powerful arms.
The Mastiff stumbled when Tora’s hammer came down on its foot, and Geralt took advantage of the opportunity to draw the Sign of Aard between himself and it, the concentrated telekinetic blast launching the machine backwards. Geralt turned his head to his Nopon “rescuer” and nodded with a short, “Thanks, Tora,” much to Tora’s delight, before charging back in, steel sword finishing the job on its damaged arm as the UG regained its bearings. Following up with a spinning cut to the body, Geralt carved a furrow into its armor and blocked the punch it tried to counter with.
Seeing the situation Midna and her Strikers were in, Geralt scrunched his face up and, after taking another heavy swing at the Mastiff and dealing far more damage than he felt he ought to against the armored machine, summoned the Judicator in the middle of the group, commanding it to launch its spectral fires at both other Mastiffs to distract and deal some minor damage to them.
Returning his focus to his enemy, Geralt stepped in, deflected a wild flailing punch, and strafed around the side of the machine while bathing it in a concentrated stream of fire from Igni, turning its metallic body cherry-red and ripe for a finishing strike.
Tora knew the limits of his strength -as well as his reach- but he also knew very well just how pliable hot metal can be. While Geralt kept himself one step ahead of the furious machine’s swings, Tora waddled in beneath the purview of its red-hot haymakers, took his hammer in both wings, and dealt a single well-placed smash against the outside of its left knee. Already softened up by the intense heat, the thin metal around the critical joint gave way, buckling in a way it shouldn’t beneath the Unmanned Gear’s weight. It reeled, attempting to stabilize itself as much as possible to counteract the instability before it fell, but Tora just kept hammering. “Meh-meh-MEH!” After two more blows his hammer blasted straight through, and the Mastiff began to fall. Unfortunately, it happened to fall directly toward him, and as the robot’s shadow enveloped him Tora gawped up at the smoldering heap metal. “Oh no!” Thinking quickly, he reached out his hammer toward the Witcher, hoping that he’d be able to snatch it and pull the attached Nopon to safety.
Tora’s hopes were met with results as Geralt yanked the Nopon out of the way of the collapsing Mastiff, and to ensure that their efforts were not in vain, his steel sword was brutally stabbed into the machine’s chest, tearing through the softened metal like a hot knife through butter, and he dragged it through the molten slag with ease, destroying vital components and shutting the Unmanned Gear down for good. “Good work. Now let’s see if Midna needs a hand or four.”
They turned to her just in time to see a giant cyber-bear headbutt the final foe into a wall, before Midna and her vibrava unleashed earth power and vollybomb strikes on it in quick succession, blowing it to smithereens.
She also had the audacity to be standing there with her arms casually folded while doing this.
The Mastiffs had been rather tough nuts to crack, but with the last one out of commission, the trio could finally board the monorail in peace. Tora waddled on and plopped down to rest for a moment, panting, as the monorail automatically pulled out of the station. This had been his first taste of combat since losing Poppi, and the reality of how much weaker he was -and how little help he could be- stung. He wanted nothing more than to stand between his allies and whatever might bar their way, fearlessly negating whatever they might throw at him, but now the others were the ones rescuing him. Twice. Even if he happened to be of some use during that skirmish, the negatives dwarfed the positives. His eyes fell on the hammer, laid down beside him on the ground. If not for Poppi’s unexpected aptitude at the batting cages, he wouldn’t even have this. It was a sobering reality.
Midna wasn't exactly blind to this reality either. She'd assumed the Nopon would have asked if he needed help, but given what she had just seen, it was time to be proactive.
”So, I take it the shield you used to use was a Poppi thing? Do you need a replacement?" She asked, pulling out her green thorn shield out of a portal and offering it to him, before thinking and adding ”or anything else? I've got all sorts of things sitting in the Twilight realm, and I'm pretty versatile in what I use, so it won't hurt to lend it out."
Having said that, she swept a hand around the area, and summoned several crates she had used to store gear, offering up everything but the helmet, pauldrons, mimic tooth necklace and rosary she was wearing.
”Ah, but maybe not that" she added after a moment, sending the cursed sword back to where it came.
Without much in the way of pride in anything but his engineering ability, Tora quickly relented and accepted Midna’s help. After sorting through all the interesting gear, he took both shields -the Sabo Shield to wield and Darwin’s Danger Shield to wear- and the Scorcher Flamethrower (which Midna seemed equally sad and excited to see him choose with for some reason). He might not be proficient with ranged weapons, but anyone could use a flamethrower: just walk forward and hold the trigger. With the extra protection and literal firepower, Tora felt a bit better about what lay ahead, not knowing that the resistance encountered so far was just the tip of the iceberg.
wordcount: 1,032 (+2) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (235/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (120/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (112/120) Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (46/80) 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
”Sausage, sweets and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
”Cheese, peppers and seafood!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
”fruit, mushrooms and honey!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
”Kamek?”
”mushrooms, sweets and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
”peppers, seafood and pepperoni!” “No!” “No!” “No!”
”Kamek!”
”sausage, sweets, and honey!” “No!” “No!” “Ohhh, now that’s my pizza!” Arno broke the tune of the last however long as he looked at the offered pizza with something approaching love, before snatching it and adding “Took ya long enough! Wasn’t my sweet tooth obvious?”
”pepperoni, cheese, and peppers!” “No!” “Mmmm, yes! Now that’s more like it. Nice and spicy“ Willa declared before snatching up the offering
”seafood, mushrooms, and fruit!” “No!” Shyler cried out in fury, before his eyes suddenly dropped the rage at bad pizza they had been filled with, and focused on the final pizza “Oh, no wait! yeah that sounds good actually.” before politely asking “can I have it?”
”KAMEK!” Bowser roared in his advisor’s ear, which finally got his attention, causing both him and the dry bones holding the pizza to leap into the air, and spilling the dish to the ground as a result
”A, um, oh, yes sire?” he turned to ask after landing, leaving Shyler dancing with impatience yet unwilling to simply snatch the pizza now that his senses were back
”We’re heading up” the king simply informed him, jerking a thumb towards
”Oh, ah, yes, of course. My apologies. I got a little caught up in solving the puzzle”
“Can I…. Can I have the pizza now, please?” Shyler repeated, edging closer
”Hmmm? Oh, yes, of course, here you go” the mage replied, before waving the dry bones closer ”Enjoy”
“Thank you” the final troll said, sounding genuinely touched as he took the pizza
“Alright! 3 .. 2 .. 1 .. Pizza party time!” Arno chanted, before all three pizzas tossed their pizzas up in the air, and then swallowed them in one gulp
”I uh … huh” Kamek said as he looked on, stunned as all his work vanished in an instant, with nary a moment given to savor it.
That said, despite their speed eating, the trolls still looked like they had enjoyed themselves immensely, rubbing their bellies in a satisfied manner.
”So” Bowser asked ”Was it worth it?”
”Ehhhhh” The mage examined the mess resulting from rejected pizzas, and wasted ingredients as a result, and then shrugged
“Course it was worth it. Because now we can tell you where you need to go to get out” Arno
”Staff only, boss door” Jr called over
“Uh. yeah. Good guess” Arno conceded for the trio
”Uh uh” replied noncommittally, before calling out ”now hurry up, we have a pizza to face” and then giggling at his own joke.
”yeah booooo, weak! Where’s the presentation!” Bowser jeered in tandem with Nadia’s laughter, not rating this bad guy highly at all so far. 3/10 at most.
”This was the guy we had to get out of the levels before he showed up? Yeesh, we coulda taken it slow if we’d known that” Jr complained
Either in response to the mockery, or because he was just going to do it anyway, the big bad boss of the pizza tower summoned a whole host of cronies to do his bidding.
As Artorias aptly demonstrated as he flipped first into action, those minions were going to be a real hurdle when it came to actually getting a chance to hit the pie in the sky.
”Two can play at that game!” Jr (who was still fighting on foot due to not having had the time or energy to fix up his machine) called out, before summoning minions of his own.
”Flukefey flight, dive bomb those piggy snipers!” he called out, sending a wave of tooth and wing swooping down at a squad of piglins armed with crossbows, before following it up with ”Murlock Marines! Koopa Corps! Goomba Swarm! Meet those mooks head on!” creating a veritable swarm of strikers that surged forwards with the prince at their center.
Goombas trampled over cheese slimes only to be skewered by fork knights, who themselves were knocked down by spinning koopa shells and beaten down by the murlock’s crude weapons. Sympathetic recoil damage peppered the prince as his strikers got hurt, but by using his aoe healing spell, he turned that same sympathetic connection into a boon, healing himself far more by hitting his whole swarm than using single targeted heals on himself ever could.
Of course, he wasn’t the only minion summoner, with Kamek joining in with a pronouncement of ”More than two, actually!” before conjuring up a horde of drybones and a quartet of magi-clones to join the fight, chump blocking and spell blasting more of the minions.
Now, it could probably be argued that adding all these extra minions, on top of the antlions already cluttering the tower top thanks to a certain bee-queen, simply made more of a chaotic mess rather than fixing the issue, but the other two Troop members did their best to work around it.
Or rather, over it.
”One royal fastball, coming your way, you cheap third rate villain!” Bowser called out as he reeled back and then hurled the deadliest projectile he had available.
Namely Rika.
”woo hoo!” the princess cheered as she sailed through the air, before yelling ”I’m going to get a slice of you!” while chopping sideways with a fly-by swing with her halberd like lance, before using her maneuvering thrusters to spin around, her feather fall rune to get a double jump’s worth of extra altitude and then her grappling hook to latch on and come swinging around for a second hit.
She warped the spear under her other arm and aimed to deliver a piercing strike to the back of the pizza pile, before flipping her weapon around in an instant, and opening fire with its rear mounted cannon, along with her rifle and rigging guns, using the recoil to blast herself back towards Bowser.
The king for his part shoulder barged through a scrum of mooks, before lashing out with tentacles and dreugh claws deployed from his shell while he used his own claws to catch his boomerang of a projectile before she could get into trouble crash landing among their foes.
wordcount: 4987 (+5) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (111/100) Location: The City of Glass Warp Charges: 1
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 Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway)
In her dreams, the princess drifted over a lake lit up by a crimson moon. In the distance, but growing closer, was a castle, it’s dark stone tinted the color of dry blood by that crimson sky. Beyond it lay a city. A city she had never seen. A city that no longer existed.
A city she still somehow knew was called Redgraccoon city.
In between the two was a rather grotesque looking bridge, one made of everything from broken ships, storage containers to piles of furniture (anything that floated really) all of it tied together by a disgusting looking biomass.
At the city end of the bridge many of the structures were overgrown with the same biomass, creating a pestilent hive, while on the end touching the castle, Midna got a closer look at the creators of that particular brand of horror.
The mass of them where claw like Drones (some of which carried parasites on their backs) which where in the process of rushing breaches blown in the castle walls by acid spitting Mortarbugs. Stalking above the mass of drones were on their long legs where defensive Shieldbugs while at their feet scrambled much smaller Xenonites a stream of which were being spawned by pulsating eggsack like carriers that where hanging back with the mortar bugs.
”Smart bugs” Midna noted as she took in the fairly robust strategy of shield bugs covering for swarmers in front, while ranged and minion spawning support hung back ”Be a shame if someone flanked them.”
A moment later, the princess did just that, shadow hopping to one of somewhat intact boats behind the alien swarm’s backline, and then charging in for the kill on wolfos back. Her shadow hand rose, fell, rose, fell, and pounded the vulnerable support forms into paste, before she surged forwards into the breaches they had formed to help whoever they were attacking.
She expected to find beleaguered knights and foot soldiers, and though there were knights, they were by no means ones in shiny armor. A handful of skeletal blood grinder knights wielding chainsaw toothed blades carved through drones, while dripping hounds known as Gieremund rushed to meet them claw to claw.
After those monsters, however, things took a turn for the strange rather than horrible. Above bizarre harpy-esque creatures. who’s heads sat within large beaks, hurled feathers at foes below or clawed at annoying buzzers, while absurd elephant sized horned cats snarled and clawed at the shieldbug’s chitin barriers.
Ironically it would have been the giant cat that gave away what these were to someone in the know, namely demons. That, and a lone woman with a spade tail who was wearing, of all things, a bunny costume on the battlefield, and delivering swift kicks to her foes.
The princess, not in the know, and also not one to judged based on appearances given her own, did not see this as reason to be anything other than cautious while joining the battle.
Despite the infernal powers of the defenders, they were sorely outmatched, for while the swarm moved and fought as one, the demons fought as individuals, with little concern for coordination or eachother. Indeed, some were simply standing around at the far end of the entrance hall, and made no move to get involved unless the fight came to them.
As a result, even as the princess drove into the back of the bugs, the demons were falling one by one. The giant cat, distracted by the shield bug ahead of it, was swarmed by drones due to having no one to protect it flanks, while a harpy swooped to close to a parasite, and was promptly infested by the leaping horror, causing her to explode into a shower of them a few moments later.
Despite their sizes, said parasites turned out to be the worst, as only the undead knights were immune to them. That at least gave Midna the knowledge of how to beat them, as she summoned up an undead darknut to distract her foes while she struck from the rear.
Explosions of twilight energy blasted away hordes of drones, her shadow hand reached out and crushed the exposed rears of shield bugs, or swirled up miniature tornadoes that sucked in and blended up parasites, Xenonites and buzzers.
Despite her efforts, once the last invader was crushed there were only a handful of defenders left. Not that they seemed to care. They at least didn’t seem to care about her either, be it hostility wise or thankfulness for saving their skin wise, which she found odd.
”So, not even a thank you then?” she asked which got her a brief look from some of the demons, but all but the most human looking one looked away again. For her part, the bunny eared one gave quizzical look and asked “for what?” ”For saving you all?” she clarified
“Pff, the rest of those weaklings maybe. I’d have been fine” the demoness insisted, before scoffed “What, do you want a medal or something? Go ask the master then, you weird little imp, I’m suuuuuure he’ll care about all you’ve done to further his little human extermination plan”
That last certainly raised the princess’ eyebrows, before her gaze tightened and she asked ”And where would this master be at the moment?” tersely.
“What. Are you really going to do it?” the demoness asked, before breaking down laughing at the idea.
For her part, the princess merely rolled her eyes, and floated off to seek out this master who wished to end mankind.
For a time she drifted through the halls of the castle through which demons of dozens more shapes and sizes roamed free. Roamed, she thought, was very much the right word, for the monsters were just as aimless, unguided as the ones at the front gate had been. There were no leaders or even general consensus, and certainly no patrols or guards to stop her seeking out the master of this place.
She found him in a high up throne room, backed by a great window that exposed it to the moon, and would allow the master of this castle to survey all that lay before it.
It came as little surprise that the ruler, a man with alabaster skin, which in places was turning to a crystalline mosaic, a man she knew was Gebel, sat with his back to this view. Blind to what was occurring below.
Her arrival caused the man to start from some form of languishing contemplation, eyes widening with surprise and, for some reason, horror, before everything about him hardened and he locked his eyes upon her.
“Why do you disturb me, imp? Your rightful place is on the field of battle, is it not?” he questioned his unexpected guest sullenly. “Or have you perhaps come to bring me news that humanity has already been wiped from the face of this world?”
Minda was somewhat confused by this man, who looked human, wanted humanity’s death, but she certainly found his confidence amusing given the state of his forces, and decided she could afford to poke fun at this fact ”There’s not much progress on that front. Can’t even make it out the front door after all”
She directed a finger past him, out of the window, to where already a fresh alien swarm was surging forth from hives they had grown within the city. Whatever alien intelligence or instinctual collaboration guided those monsters from beyond the stars, it was going to carry them to victory against the leaderless demons.
”If I hadn’t come, it would be those things disturbing you instead of me soon enough” she told him as the man beheld the state of his forces.
“How truly ironic that the forces of hell, unleashed at last after such wanton sacrifice, turn out to be so…impotent,” Gebel bemoaned, his voice stricken by a crushing mixture of frustration and despair. “To think that my crusade of vengeance would come to such a bitter end, brought low by mere…insects.”
”The complete lack of leadership doesn’t help” Midna noted, before asking ”So … what are we even getting vengeance on humanity for anyway?” curious
“Is it not obvious? Look upon my blighted body, imp.” The patches of sanguine crystal stretching across his skin creaked slightly as he moved, gleaming with unholy light. “Look upon the conspiracy of the damnable Alchemists. Those mad fools, desperate to cling to power in a world quickly leaving them behind, infused myself and others with such shards of demonic power. To be sacrificed, and throw open the gates of hell, so that the world might need the alchemists again. And what you see before you,” he waved his hand at the decimated cityscape. “Is what followed.
”That’s … awful” Minda replied, genuinely appalled, before frowning and pointing out a slight logical consistency ”but you’re also still alive?”
“I do…and yet, I am human no longer. There is no place for me in this world. The greed and cruelty of humanity made me a monster…so a monster I shall be. Humanity deserves the hell they brought upon themselves.”
”All of them?“ she asked ”Aren't they also the victims as well as the perpetrators? Aren't you also human? Aren't there any you knew before who deserve to live?“
For a moment Gebel was silent. He could think of only one face he cared about, and yet she seemed so very, very far away. After a moment his face hardened, and he replied. “Throughout their lives, every human on earth is given the choice. The power to choose between heaven and hell. And what do they choose? Violence. Debauchery. Self-interest. They so the seeds of self-destruction. And so they shall reap. I merely expedite the conclusion of humanity’s sorry tale.” He slumped suddenly on his throne and muttered. “Or…I would. If only these demons could quash some wretched bugs”
”I see“ Midna replied, and really, she did. He was wrong, of course, but she could see what had driven him to this madness. She had not expected to feel bad about putting down this master of demons, but she would now, as there seemed to be something in there that could be saved. Yet there was no time, he was a threat, and if allowed to run rampant he’d eventually break out of this nightmare city and bring devastation to the rest of the world.
Or just be eaten by bugs, but then those bugs would get out and … the princess paused her thoughts, as she realized that should he fall, then it might break an equilibrium and allow the alien swarm to launch forth instead. When he fell, rather.
“Is that the extent of your business with me? I’ve entertained your quest for information, little hellspawn, but the novelty begins to wear thin.” Gebel told her, interrupting her thoughts, or rather bringing a conclusion to them.
”Well, see, I could go out there and just punch bugs, but that’s a losing battle. The demons are leaderless, acting on their own, so they’ll get slowly whittled down one by one. Without a general, your vengeance will never be achieved“ she told him, before swiftly adding that" ”but lucky for you, I could be that very general you seek. All you need to do is make me your right hand woman, and I can take charge. Lead your forces to victory, bring order to this city. Crush all the monsters within and bring it under our rule“
“A bold suggestion. And an intriguing one. For no other demon has demonstrated such initiative, nor conviction. ” Gebel concluded “Very well. I shall give you the chance to serve as my field commander. Lead my forces as you see fit, if you can. Crush the bugs, take this city, and once you are done, sweep forth from its borders wipe out all humanity!”
”Should you still wish it, it shall be so“ The princess agreed with a bow, that in being the crux of her plan. To see if she could peck peck away at his anger and find the part of him that doubted that plan, and bring it forth into the light.
The first part of that plan was quite simple ”As your general, may I recommend that you yourself accompany me for a time, so that you can inform the others of my new position. Plus, a king should be seen by his subjects after all, not languish on his throne, if he wishes to inspire great deeds“
A look of doubt, then a nod of agreement before he pulled himself off of the throne, declaring “Very well. Let us hasten the end of this tragedy” before he and she went forth to do just that.
What followed for the princess was a blur, the greatest hits of a violent rise to power. She was proclaimed his general before a throng of demons (including one ever so shocked bunny-eared demoness) and immediately set about organizing and training them into an actual army under her thumb.
Soon after the forces of hell surged out of the castle once more, now drilled into a cohesive fighting force. Harpies scouted out targets, gieremund wolf packs struck swiftly at exposed targets, while cohorts of undead knights steadily advanced under the orders of demoness officers, and demonic cats crashed through the enemy’s defensive positions, along with close to 100 other kinds of demons, all of which she found a palace for in her forces.
Hellfire scorched clear the hives of the alien swarm, and then they pushed out into the rest of the city, crushing undead hordes and mutant scourges beneath her giant glowing orange fist, while subjugating the forces of other hells and incorporating them into her forces.
As for the human survivors, well, Midna’s rapidly growing power allowed her to squirile them away, or simply temporarily transform them into other forms such that they were no longer ‘technically' human any more and thus did not need to be exterminated. Babysteps and logical twists, slowly trying to worm around her “master’s” burning hatred, while she also delicately poked at it from other angles, trying to bring out the person beneath the stained glass corruption.
She even managed to slow the corruption that was still ravaging his body even now, amassing a library of tomes on dozens of different eldritch and demonic lores to draw dark knowledge from, yet a true cure was always tantalizingly out of reach, as if an unseen force was foiling her at every turn. All she needed was one more conquest. One more piece of the puzzle seized from monstrous hands. That was all she thought it would take, until, at last and in the blink of an eye, there were no more hands in the city from which to take.
The dream solidified once again, weeks, months, maybe years having passed in minutes of sleep, on the day of victory.
Gebel never truly cared about a throne. Nor did he intend to rule–only to avenge, and destroy. Rather than indulge in hypocrisy by affecting any sort of ostentatious royalty, he wallowed in solitary misery, the throne -and the limelight- ceded to the architect of the region’s conquest. So it was that in a grand hall in his netherworld castle, in which the victorious demons were celebrating their complete and utter victory, their general sat in a throne of her own making to enjoy the spoils of war.
It was good to be a proper princess again, rather than a wanderer with only the title to her name.
Yet it was all to an end. An end to the fighting. An end to the threat of this cursed city. An end to Gebel‘s suffering. All of them now at hand, or oh so close.
And then, like a nightmare, the doors to the chamber crashed open, bringing with it a chill night breeze that extinguished all light in the hall but the glow of the ever present moon, as a masked man showed himself inside.
Gebel turned away from the balcony, where the blood-red moon always beckoned. He watched in tacit silence as a huge man, clad in strange armor crowned by a tragedy mask and accentuated by a black satin cape, strode through the throne room. The heavy oaken doors lay open behind him, revealing half-melted demon corpses beneath the candlelight, massive trail of carnage left in his wake.
The shardbinder quickly moved toward the throne to join the Twilight Princess. His voice betrayed his wariness and confusion. “My lord Consul? To what…do we owe the pleasure?”
“I’m here about your debt,” Consul D announced, his booming voice resounding through the room. “You here in this castle have been living large on borrowed time. Working hard to earn your keep, filling up your Clock, shining ever brighter. I’ve been watching with bated breath to see just how high you’d rise.” Pausing, he lifted a glass to his mask. In it lay a vivid, rich red fluid, though it shone in a way that normal wine did not. What manner of spirits, Gebel wondered, was this man imbibing? Somehow, D managed to drink it through his mask, and he drained the goblet dry. Though he’d satiated his thirst, he seemed rather hungry too, for he was really chewing the scenery. “...Imagine my disappointment, then, when your splendid string of victories came to an end. Were you content with your achievements? No more foes left to conquer, no more mountains left to climb? I suppose it’s true, what they say. Once you reach the top, there’s nowhere to go…but down.” With a swing of his hand, D cast his goblet at Midna’s feet, shattering it into pieces with a noisy crash. His voice was low, menacing, laden with intent. “...And so I am here. To collect.”
For her part, the princess carefully set down the drink she had been enjoying, and then rose to face this new challenge.
”I wouldn’t be sure of that, as it seems like I’m looking at one more mountain, and this one’s a real pinnacle of arrogance by the looks of things“ Minda said as she drifted up from the throne while brimming with her arrogance, arrogance she was actively using to push down a primal fear gnawing at her gut ”one I am oh so looking forwards to mining the secrets out of once we take you down“
Her shadow hand shot up and made a clenching fist, ready to throw down, while the princess raised one of her mortal hands, fingers curling around a pulsing locus of power that called fourth the titanic drake Valac, who’s twin heads pierced in through the grand windows on either side of her throne.
Her exposed eye glanced to the side at Gebel, not forgetting about who this was all for, and then inviting him to join the dance with ”Let’s show this interloper who he is messing with.“
Only silence answered her, however. When she looked back, she found Gebel hesitating, his eyes narrowed and his face deadly serious. Slowly, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers. When he did, the undead dragon turned lowered its loathsome heads, bowing to the Consul before them. “Now, now. Let’s not be hasty. As their invoker, these demons are mine. Your authority is but borrowed.” Gebel then put a hand on his chest, and bowed his own head toward D. “Forgive me, my lord Consul. I allowed this foolish upstart to command my army, but I did not anticipate that she’d lose the will to fight, nor lose her mind, as well.”
”Lost my …“ Midna started to echo in confusion, eye opening a wide for a moment, before narrowing back down to a glare as her gaze flicked back to the Consul and demanding to know ”Who are you, really, and what hold do you have over Gebel? Tell me! Because you are both sorely mistake if you don’t think I have the will to fight for what matters“
“What matters?” D looked from Gebel to Midna, then back at Gebel, the annoyance and incredulity hidden by his mask made crystal clear through his voice. “As if prattling knave, an insignificant speck like you, could possibly know.” He lifted his cape, and within roiled an illimitable darkness, smoldering with hellish flame. “I see how it is, Gebel. You’ve made a high-minded friend, amassed a little power, and let it go straight to your head. Well, so be it. If you will not stoke the flames of war, your usefulness…is at an end.”
“Wait!” Gebel extended a placating hand, his voice urgent. “Lord Consul! My aim is as it’s always been: the annihilation of mankind. And I will stop at nothing, I swear.” His eyes landed on Midna, and he grit his teeth. “It was her. She is behind the cessation of conflict. You understand? She came to me in my hour of need and convinced me to put her in charge. Only too late did I realize that I had been usurped. Had I the power to claim the reins once more, I could give you war everlasting…”
”After everything I’ve done for you, you’d just cast me aside?“ Midna asked, half in anger, half in sadness, for surely this could have been avoided if only she had found the cure she had been seeking.
But it was too late for that now.
”Fine then. Call me a usurper? I’ll show you what usurpation really looks like!“ as she rises up her hands and a dozen twilight portals open, spewing out demonic artifacts and tomes of eldritch lore that all swirled around her in a mass of dark power that poured into the fragment of fused shadow she was wearing.
The princess became engulfed in dark power, re-completing the work of her ancestors using her amassed power, while around more portals unleashed a trio of twilit Argorok that took to the air, while before the throne a legion of undead darknuts rose up to defend their princess. Gebel, meanwhile, retreated into the shadows.
”Bow down before the princess of twilight, or face my wrath!“
“And what is twilight?” D spat, his tone venomous as he stood, unflinching. “Nothing but a prelude to darkness!”
The Argoroks inhaled, preparing to let loose torrents of fire, only for two of them to be crushed and immediately killed in immense, hideous twin maws of Valac. D threw wide his cape, and from within erupted a fusillade of unholy fireballs. The hellfire rained down upon Midna and her legion, bursting into pillars of incinerating flame on hit. From parts unknown descended rays of ghostly green power, cutting through the inferno and any monsters yet to succumb to it. Midna strove to power through, pushing her monstrous form through the withering bombardment of dark magic to plunge her trident down upon the spot where the Consul stood, but before she could so much as scratch him he exploded into a swarm of bats. A blazing light shone down on her from above, and when she looked up she caught only a fleeting glimpse before a barrage of flaming meteors pounded her into and through the floor, smashing her all the way to the castle’s entrance hall.
Forcibly returned to normal, Midna lay half-senseless in the dusty debris, broken and bloody. Her Fused Shadow lay beside her, just close enough that she could weakly extend her throbbing arm in hopes of reaching it. Before she could touch it, her hopes were dashed as Consul D stooped to take it for himself, casting it into his cape to disappear. “What’s the matter?” he smirked. “I was told there would be wrath. Can’t you muster some up? Just a little wrath, as a treat? Ahh, a pity, muahahaha!” Chortling evilly, he reached down and picked Midna up, cradling her in his arms. “Well, no matter. You’ll just have to give me…” As he spoke, the mouth of his helmet unhinged, coming apart to reveal a real mouth underneath, filled with cruel, moon-white fangs. D bent down, reaching for her neck. “Something else.”
The princess gasped awake, bolting upright and clutching her throat.
”That … was different“ she eventually muttered to herself after she’d steadied her breathing ”Normally it’s … him, but. Instead. A Consul?“
She’d had dying dreams before. She knew exactly what it felt like after all, her life slipping away at the hands of another. At the hands of Ganondorf. But it was always him, always that moment when he had ended her life. Never another. Till now.
”Did… did it all get to me that badly? Or is my mind trying to tell me something“ she asked herself, trying to reach out and grab the already decaying dream and lock parts of it in her memory.
”The clock. Fueled by war. Eternal war. Maybe? That makes sense. Like the clockwork castle Chaos mentioned, feeding on the war“ she mulled it over, far too restless to sleep, and, by the time on her new watch, there wasn’t much night left anyway.
The desire to do something welled up along with her musings, and so when dawn came it found Midna full of milk and oats, and using an old bonesaw she’d retrieved from the clinic base to try and fix the mess Blazermate’s shield had made of her undead Darknut.
It also found her having settled on a mostly accurate, but obviously mostly baseless, guess as to the nature of flame clocks and the Consuls’ interest in perpetuating conflicts to fuel them, but obviously no idea as to why. Other than a plain lust for power.
The other was having second thoughts about her suggestion about working with Armstrong (working for a lesser evil hadn’t exactly worked out in the dream, and she assumed it had been her mind’s way of telling her that) a plan Goldlewis promptly came along and nailed into he coffin she had been putting it into with the news that Riden’s half of DepoRHado had gone to war with Vandelay over the announced replacement.
”I mean in a way I guess my suggestion was right though, if these people can be trusted, and it’s a big if“ Midna commented, but she’d go along with the plan no matter what, because it would mean they could get Tora into Vandelay with plausible deniability about what they were actually doing there, namely trying to find a way to counter the machine virus.
Yes, they needed a reset to fix Poppy, but keeping her fixed and stopping the other bots from being turned were also important.
Either way, she had no objection to opening up a portal, and sending them all on their way to what would likely prove to be an exciting start to the day.
Midna hoped the general public either got well clear, or were still in bed, as she took in the devastation of what had once been the gaudy city of glass.
It made the clean and stylish garbs of the ones who invited them to the party stand out even more.
Their leader, Sandalphon, said a lot of the right things, she had to admit, but the twili found herself asking ”Uh, huh, and what about the rest of us that aren't human?“ when the woman spoke of a way forward for humanity.
Still, she did have a point, and was offering a fair amount of support, so the princess was happy enough to go along with this for Poppy’s sake.
”I’m with Tora. I keep my promises after all“ she announced when they started making callouts about where they were going, before summoning her wolfos steed and riding into the fray by the nopon’s side.
wordcount: 1,434 (+3) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (106/100) Location: The City of Glass Warp Charges: 1
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 Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts) Below City of glass entrance (plate maintenance tunnel) Vandelay Campus (Alleyway)
Midna exited the arena riding someone’s shadow, mind abuzz with all the information they had just gleaned, and whether they could trust, well, any of it. As a result, she hardly noticed how the city of glass had changed in the dark, which was unfortunate, as she would have appreciated the soft pink, almost sunset like, glow the bay was reflecting onto the area around it had she seen it.
Rather than take in the scenery, what she wanted was to both rest, and talk things over, but there was still a bit of work for her to do before she could do either.
Whisking people back to home base was fairly taxing as a result of the day’s exertions, and the way her thoughts were running in circles inside her stressed skull. She was still in control, and there were no close calls, but it was extra taxing. Then she had to go back, and pick up Giovanna and what was apparently a new member she’d found somewhere.
”Alright? Are you adopting stray dogs out of alleyways now? What was he doing, tailing us?” she asked when informed of the news, and when the latter turned out to be true she was too tired to be surprised or concerned that someone could do that ”Huh. Alright. Another sneak for the team it is then. Could come in handy”
”Welcome out of the light. We’re completely outnumbered, working with barely any information, and fighting a false god” she told him as welcome ”So, you know, typical hero stuff from what I’ve heard”
”Now stick close, I’d rather not lose you in the twilight realm and have you turn into an actual dog” she beckoned them close and then away they went, wheezing across the city in only a few heartbeats.
”This here is our current little base away from our main base. Make yourself at home” she announced as they arrived, before doing the same herself.
The fact that Goldlewis was giving a recounting of events she had been present for gave her the time to do so, the princess storing her armor, giving herself a quick wash, and then getting some water and granola bar into her body. She would have loved cooked food, but, well, she had no real idea how to use the modern kitchen appliances. So snacks it was.
Maybe she could convince someone to make something nice for them in the morning.
Once everyone was up to date on what had gone on after the show, and she was not dying of thirst and hunger, she joined in the conversation on what to do with all this information
”Only way to find it is to capture something infected and try it, I suppose” Midna replied to the two robots discussion about how they needed to “reset” Poppie in-order to get her back, and how a friend heart might do it ”But before we do that, we’ll need to work out how the city’s forces resist it in the first place, so that you are both safe from the virus. Or just keep you well away from it”
She made a mental note to not use her cyber-bear when the machines were around after giving that advice.
”As for Peach, well, we need to work out where the resistance are keeping her, get into the Supernatural Life Research Facility to work out how they make the stuff that gets her her mind back, and after that well, if we can get 10 of the same kind of spirit she can turn into something that isn’t an Other at least” Which might well result in them having two impish princesses, which meant that she was speaking from experience when she said ”It’s not easy, but you get used to not being you anymore after a while”
There was hope then, though she could already think of all the ways it could be dashed. Resetting could not work, the cure Peach needed could be far too hard to use full time, or deeply unethical in its own way.
”Lastly, if that Bede kid is anywhere, he’ll be at that pokemon capture site that they use to produce more psychics” she added a yet another place for them to break into, on top of the end goal of the area’s boss.
Speaking of it, the princess had a theory or two about what it was doing down there ”Maybe the guardian was something made by, or someone working for, Shinra before the merger? Then Galeem promoted it to the position due to being strong, and coming with a whole lot of inbuilt defenses”
”Which is going to be a problem, because while Shinra might be awful if we do a lot of damage while breaking in it’ll hurt the city by reducing the forces they have to use against the crises, and make it much harder to work in the city as well” she worried. Not that they weren't exactly working outside the law a lot already, but becoming public enemy number one would make that oh so much harder.
”Same issue for this Konoe person. If they have most of the regime’s forces under their thumb, then, well, dealing with him is also going to get messy” she added, regarding Zenkichi’s in-depth knowledge of the man who had been put on the path of becoming the, well, secret third candidate for president in a way.
”So as much as I hate to say it, as much as he is probably also bad news, we might need Armstrong. He’s the only one who can fill the power vacuum that we’ll end up causing when we go against shinra” Midna suggested, not at all fond of the idea but as far as she saw it ”What other options are there? Even if we can get them on side, the PSYC-OFF rebels have just been broken, Konoe has his fingers in Neuron, we have no contact or clues about any of the other rebel groups, if they’d even work out as replacement powers”
The idea that they might be able to fix a man with such twisted aims as Konoe never even crossed her mind.
The same kind of thinking guided her thoughts on Roxas’ question on why the Consuls would serve Galeem in the first place ”Given that Galeem already destroyed those worlds, sucking up to the new god to get some power here sounds like something worms would be willing to do for a lick of power in this one”
She had to disagree with the boy’s assessment of Darkness as well ”You can control dark powers, if you know what you're doing. I’ve got proof right here after all” she tapped the ¼ of the used shadow she had set down on a table while they were talking ”and generations of wisdom in my head about it too. There were disasters and horror at the start, my ancestors were not nice people and they didn’t care who got hurt in their pursuit of power, but my people are past that now. Power is power, what matters is how you get it, and how you use it, not if it is light or dark”
She was apparently finding herself arguing a lot with Roxas, which did not feel good, but she then also found herself disagreeing about Organization XIII as well, at least in part.
”If Galeem’s pawns are trying to stop us, the path the Organisation is helping us on must be a right one. Plus, given they probably didn’t know about us till we’d already done a lot of damage, it is probably best not to let them in on the existence of the Organisation either” she retorted, before trying to smooth things out a bit at the last moment by suggesting that ”Plus, it would be far easier to ask one of them, next time one shows up, anyway. We could have Raz read their thoughts or something like that even, no trust in their words needed”
While she and the keyblade wielder had their disagreements, she was in full agreement with Geralt’s assessment that they should leave it for the morning once things started winding down ”Given that everything's going to go wrong tomorrow apparently, that’s probably for the best. The enemy can’t ruin our plans if we don’t have any after all”
Once everyone had had their say, Midna found herself a spot for some well deserved and very needed rest.
Unfortunately for her, her dreams would not be allowing the night to be anything close to restful.
wordcount: 1,865(+3) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (235/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (118/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (110/120) Rika: Level 8 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (44/80) 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
”Young master! Young mistress!” Kamek called out with a mix of frustration and chiding in his tone as he floated over to the pair. Quite relief that the pair seemed to have gotten out of the surprisingly dangerous pizza tower levels unharmed had been replaced by dismay as to what they had acquired.
”Did you really get sweets? For breakfast of all things? And you’ve been eating them already too, you’ll spoil your appetite!” he told them, having spotted a smear of chocolate on Jr’s cheek.
”That’s funny. The weird cookie baking meat grannies said that too before Sectonia banished them from the face of the world” Rika commented, not actually getting what she was being chided over, while Jr quickly hopped in to deflect blame ”Also it was 100% her idea. Sectonia I mean”
”Wha-! Why?” he demanded to know, only for jr to reply simply ”She’s a giant bee” as all the explanation needed
”Ah…” the mage replied, deflating, while Bowser caught up and immediately asked ”Oh neat, are those cookies?” before helping himself to one of them ”Mmm, those are really good. But why do you have them”
”You can put them on pizza papa!” the prince replied, which Bowser found a weird but neat idea.
”Yes, well, perhaps go for something else for breakfast” Kamek suggested before the king started to set a bad example for his children.
”Sure, I wanna try all the other stuff too after all” Rika replied to that suggestion, having had her fill of sweets for the moment, to which jr nodded in agreement with strength away, making Kamek wonder just how much sampling the pair had done while gathering. Probably as much as their father, he then immediately guessed, which given the king had snacked at every shop they’d been through, was probably a lot.
Still, despite this, there was nothing like running for your life to work up an appetite all over again, and so all of them had space. Kamek especially, seeing as the area he had been to had not been compatible with his dietary habits.
He was thus very pleased with the dancer and the thief for having acquired a whole host of fruits, and said as much, after which the mage immediately went ahead and ruined the troll's day by putting far more of those than should ever be on a pizza, well, on a pizza. Then he put some honey on-top for good measure.
When presented with the veritable fruit salad Arno and Willa were understandably appalled by the fruit itself being on there, while interestingly Shyler, who had asked for more toppings when presented with just Sectonia’s fruit pizza now objected, presumably due to the presence of the honey.
They were then all horrified to be next presented with Rika’s everything pizza, which, well, had everything on it. There was barely any pizza to be seen under the complete food pyramid she was having. Admittedly she had made it so that there was a spread of toppings across her pizza rather than everything being everywhere, resulting in an extreme version of a half and half pizza. An eight eights perhaps.
Regardless, none of the trolls were having any of that, getting her a chorus of “there’s something on there I don’t like!” equivalents. So she stuck her tongue out at them, and then moved on.
Bowser meanwhile drizzled some pork sausages in honey to get the closest he could to honey glazed ham (Willa and Shyler where not fans of something on there, Arno wanted more), mushrooms and peppers (no one liked that combo) and then finally a prawn and claw grated lemon zest combo (S more, W + A no).
Finally Jr went with a pepperoni pizza (W more, A+S no, indicating a difference between plain and spiced sausage in terms of preference categories).
Incidentally Kamek was the only one keeping track of all this out of the 4 of them, the rest far more interested in chowing down after having made their snubbed pizzas.
”I see, I see, it's like a puzzle in a way. How interesting” the mage noted to himself, before declaring that ”Well there’s only one way to go about solving that, and it's to find the ingredients they do like individually, and put them together after the fact”
Then, rather than get up and do that himself, he just snapped his fingers, and summoned some dry bones to do that for him. What should have been an easy and lazy solution hit a snag as, having reviewed 8 pizzas already that didn’t meet their vague requirements, the trolls were starting to get antsy. As a result, after a pizza with just peppers (W more, S&A no) and just sweets (A more, S W no) a frustrated Willa gave the offending skeletal server a slap that sent it skidding backwards a few steps, unharmed, simply displaced, alongside the usual cry of dislike.
”Well now, there’s no need for that” Kamek complained from over where he was dictating pizza production ”Here, how about, hmm, just honey, how do you feel about that?”
“MORE TOPPINGS!” Arno shouted as he delivered a powerful looking right hook that, rather than breaking the dry bones as the force involved would suggest, instead launched it ceiling-wards. Like a rocket. Or someone at 999% damage being hit with a home run bat.
”Wha-” Kamek began, only to be even more flabbergasted as the skeletal minion somehow penetrated through the ceiling and just kept going, phasing through a dozen floors of the pizza tower, through solid bedrock and then out into the open air high above.
”Whaaaaat!” Kamek, who had a vague amount of sense sharing with even the dry bones, cried out as he jolted to his feet. Around him, the other dry bone’s slowed as the increasing distance added significant tax onto Kamek’s mana reserves.
He was too transfixed to simply cut the connection however, and instead got to watch as the drybones flew high high into the sky, then arched down to go diving straight back towards Peach’s castle, the place where Kamek had started his journey.
It fell, fell, faster and faster, and then suddenly physics switched around and it started to decelerate to the point that it ended its journey by softly touching down outside the castle gates.
A gobsmacked Kamek, surrounded by collapsed manaless drybones, got a hazy vision of a very wary looking toad peeking his head out from behind the gate before both the bag of bones and its summoner collapsed from the manadrain caused by the extreme distance involved.
”He launched it all the way back to peach’s castle. All the way. Intact!” he murmured in awe as Bowser picked him back up, dusted him down, and settled him back down into a sitting position.
”Gotta admit, that’s pretty impressive” Bowser replied, before frowning down at a half eaten pizza now splattered on the ground ”Though he did also make you drop your pizza, the jerk”
”Guess I’ll make you another one” Jr offered, and before Kamek could weakly protest commanded ”Goombas! Go make him another one!”
”Yes I suppose that would work” he muttered as the trolls said something about the goombas not being fleens as they set about making pizza, before starting and crying out ”No wait!” right before an unfortunate goomba was smacked in the face for having the audacity of making the same pizza twice.
Unlike what Kamek had shouted out in fear about, apparently knockback did not apply to the spirit’s control, and as the slap did no damage, well, the only consequence was that another goobma had to catch his pizza, and the toad at the gates of peach’s castle got even more confused by the second falling and then disappearing Bowser minion.
”Speaking of Peach’s castle-” Bowser moved on from all this as if this was the most normal thing in the world, and people weren't going to have to either copy Jr or request his aid when it came to making their pizzas from now on, (which was going to make mass production somewhat of a pain till someone solved the puzzle) ”none of the rest of you had joined up by that point, right? Guess I should fill you all in on how this all started”
”See, while you lot were minding your own business when the worlds ended, I was right there, at ground zero, facing down that big glow ball and his army of master hands. We were all going to take down a couple hundred of them each, when that loser of a lightbulb pulled its cheap trick and blasted everyone and everything. There was a buncha big deal heroes like Link, and Mario, and Samus and Snake and stuff there, along with big bad guys like me, and we all got blasted away” He started, which wasn’t the most encouraging beginning to the tale it had to be said
”All except one. No idea how, but Kirby, he’s like a round pink ball this size who just eats and stuff apparently, he got away somehow. Flew faster than those beams of light and survived it all free from Galeem’s influence” he told them, ”and then he crashed down at the top of this hill. Now I don’t know what I was doing there, but me, Tora, Blazermate, and a few others were already there, and I guess maybe someone used that power F used in the city, because we all tried to take him down”
”Now, uh, obviously I knew something was up, and was holding back with my super strong willpower or something, because the pink ball beat us up, and free’d us all using those heart things. Handy that he knew how to use those” Bowser said, downplaying how he got his butt kicked.
”Anyway, then he went off on his own, and the rest of us, well we saw Peach’s castle in the distance and so I set us off to go there. Along the way we fought some robots and other stuff. Oh, and we met that Master of Masters guy who told us how to use spirits. I think he said he learned how to do it from use in the future or something it was weird” he added, casually dropping some kind of time travel or clairvoyance into the picture before going on ”oh and then the master hand also summoned a bunch of people the others cared about and forced them to fight. Not me though. Kinda weird, but I guess it was a bit pointless seeing as most of the people I cared about where inside Peach’s castle already”
”Wouldn’t that have made summoning us easier. You know, just have me or Peach or whoever walk out the door?” Jr asked, finding this very odd
”yeah, I dunno why that didn’t happen. Anyway, some of the others beat up their friends and freed em, and some, I dunno, gave up and became Galeeming because they didn’t wanna fight, and then we had to beat both of them up” Bowser explained, dropping yet more knowledge, and finally finishing with ”and the after that we went inside and beat up another version of me. One with wings and things. Not sure what the deal with that was but apparently there can be more than one of you in here”
”It was you from that time with the rabbids when the mega bug mind controlled you, so maybe it was really just that bug looking like it did when it was at its strongest. Though I guess Mario did kill that bug so, um, more time travel?” Jr scratched his head, not entirely sure if he was right ”maybe, I guess, well, the Consuls are servants of Galeem and they’ve had time powers so far so, maybe Galeem also ate all of time as well as space? Which is, you know, kinda scary”
And wasn’t that some fun information to mull over over breakfast.
Central hub: Smash City Alcamoth Accessible locations: Peach’s castle Limsa Lominscuttle Town Lumbridge Twilight Town Kosm’s Beach
”We have to work for our breakfast? What do you think I am, some kind of, I dunno, a person who does that, I guess?” Bowser asked, his brain floundering even more than usual due to the lack of nutrition. Sleeping had at least rubbed away a lot of the raw fatigue from last night, and unlike some, the Troop had a deep, mostly dreamless sleep.
Rika was the only one who had had any issues, and hers had been entirely natural nightmares about the event that had just occurred, ones that an instinctual unconscious hug from her new dad had soothed away without further incident.
Now they were up, awake, and ready for breakfast, which was something they did not have. Fortunately, the tower hosted a large number of food themed levels from which they could scavenge the necessary ingredients to make a fine feast for both today and several tommorows.
”Mmmm, I’m thinking pork. Dunno why but i’ve had a real craving for it since last night” Bowser said, licking his lips at the thought, before glancing to the side for some validation ”Sound’s good right? Nothing else here beats it!”
”I do not… yes sire” Kamek agreed rather than trying to push the issue of his herbivorous diet, and simply hoped someone else would pick up the slack.
”I mean it does but juuuuuuust pork? On all the pizza? We should get some variety in our diets, right Kamek?” Jr piped up, which got a slightly suspicious ”Yes… I do often have to remind you of that” from the mage in question.
”I wanna try everything, maybe we should split up more and…” Rika began to suggest, before petering out as she and the rest of them were all struck with worry about what might befall the others if they did so. Rather vivid worries, ones that caused them to all collectively agree that going just two ways was plenty.
”Try to stick together troops! We don’t know what’s going to be in there other than, mmmf, oh so much delicious food” the king started to warn the rest of the team before he wound up salivating at the thought of strings of sausages and glazed hams.
"Hahaha!" Laughed Ganondorf as he emerged from the corner of the room he had sequestered himself in last night. He’d overheard a bit of the conversation and found it rather amusing, "What’s wrong, Bowser? Feeling a little short on minions, are we?" But the closer he came to the group the quicker they would all notice that something was… different about him. Most notably it looked like his cape had become split into two down the middle, resulting in it now fluttering in opposite directions behind him. But a closer look would make it apparent that that was far from the only change. Obviously he had fused with one of the Spirits he had brought to the tower with him during the night.
Notable Spirit consumed: Igos du Ikana The host has become somewhat more gaunt. His jaws and teeth are a little larger. His forehead diadem is now mounted on a skull mask worn on just the upper half of his face. Bony ridges now overlay his armor and clothes. His cape is now two shoulder capes, and he has heavy golden wristlets/anklets. This spirit confers the Power Violet Flare, giving the host the ability to breathe purple flame. It covers a decent distance, but its damage is middle-of-the-read, and while it inflicts fire-elemental damage it cannot ignite flammable materials. This spirit also confers the Weakness Mirror Sheen. The host can take continuous mild damage from light reflected off a mirror.
Ganondorf offered a mocking grin, which with his new appearance did actually look fairly spooky, ”I can still summon some of my own servants. Are you… not able to do the same?”
Then king bared his teeth at the king, but before he could give a growling retort Kamek casually stepped forwards and waved his wand, causing a small horde of dry bones to rise from the ground around them as a simple demonstration that some of the king’s forces were still on hand.
The act also gave Bowser the time he needed for his brain to grind out a response to the taunt.
”If you have any minions to speak of, guess you’ve improved a bit since we last worked together. We used my guys, ROB’s bots, and the tattoo guy’s subspace army, while you didn’t contribute a single mook. Which put you on the same level as Wario of all people” Bowser retorted bitingly, before tacking on ”Or, wasn’t this a weird time thing? Where you haven't done that yet? So maybe that means you’ll get worse” with a toothy grin
”Probably drove them all away by being a jerk” Jr chipped in, projecting from one of his own experiences with that added jab, before addressing the source of his new fusion with ”and a weenie who couldn’t escape the city without taking lives, just like F wanted”
Ganondorf’s expression remained unchanged. They’re retorts came across as weak at best. But when the Majikoopa summoned the group of dry bones, he offered them a slow clap. ”Alright, alright, so perhaps I misjudged you.” he said, his tone not sounding entirely genuine. Oh he still had a rebuttal of his own in mind, but decided to let actions speak louder than words.
All of a sudden the Gerudo inhaled sharply and without warning let out a gout of purple flames from his mouth. The flames covered a modest distance, enough for him to envelop the dry bones by sweeping his breath attack from left to right. As he recalled those creatures were quite brittle and easily shattered. The breath attack would do little to the Koopas, especially Bowser. But at the very least the King of Evil demonstrated that he could wipe out the dry bones in a single fell swoop.
”Now allow me to show you what real footsoldiers look like.” Ganondorf said with his grin turning into a more intimidating grimace. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned his Moblin Attack Squad who appeared behind in puffs of red and black smoke. They stepped forward and thrust their spears forward as if in a military phalanx. Unlike the dry bones, the moblins were just short of being human-sized. Which meant they were bigger, and a bit heartier as well. What they lacked in intellect, they up for in numbers and obedience.
The troop had backed up while giving shouts that were along the gist of “what’s the big idea!” when the flame burst happened, and though they were fine, the dry bones had been reduced to piles of bones. Piles of bones that then proceed to get back up, bits and pieces floating up and reassembling themselves to the tune of a xylophone, as that was very much what dry bones do.
Of course, when squaring up against the spear armed moblins, they were still sorely lacking in height, being about half that of a regular human, and in reach due to having no weapons but beak and claw.
There were, however, dozens of them staring down the moblins with their yellow glowing eyes.
”Let’s put that to the test, shall we?” Kamek inquired, before pointing a finger forward and sending the undead horde marching forwards towards the moblins.
”Gladly.” retorted the King of Evil, gesturing for his own soldiers to advance.
The two sides advanced towards each other, but the moblins were first to stop, raising their spears and jabbing forwards at the shorter dry bones. The actual points of their spears did very little, but most managed to physically poke a skull off of one of their foes, decapitating them in one or two blows.
Yet there were still more coming, and the dead kept on rising back up, so while the moblins did not come to any harm, they did have to start backing up and up towards their king, scoring dozens of ‘kills’ each but making no actual progress. Rather than be pressed up against their leader, they broke ranks and began skirmishing instead, resulting in the 5 running around the lobby being chased by individual packs of dry bones.
The whole thing was, it had to be said, very inconclusive, though that did not stop the koopas from egging their bony minions on and groaning whenever a seemingly cornered moblin snuck away at the last moment.
After about a minute of this, Rika worked up the social energy to cough and say ”So uh, this is fun and all, but maybe we could leave the war games till after food? Please?”
”Fine.” Ganondorf replied, not bothering to argue back. He was, after all, just as hungry as everyone else. And so with another snap of his fingers the Moblin Spearmen vanished in a puff of shadowy smoke.
”Ah, yes, good point young mistress” Kamek agreed, while Bowser grunted with accent
”Oh, right, yeah, so we were gonna go do a different one so, uh, we’ll see you” Jr said as he started to step away, giving Rika’s sleeve a tug to get her to come along.
”Yeah we were gonna do-” Rika began to say, only to be very unsubtly sh-sh-shhhh’ed by jr which left Kamek for one very suspicious.
”Yes, for the variety. That said, I do think it would be best if you teamed up with another person for this one, just to keep you, and them, safe” Kamek suggested, partially out of actual concern, partially to try and guide them away from poor dietary choices.
”But-” Jr started to retort, only to sigh and accent when his papa agreed that would be a good idea.
An, a little disheartened, Jr and a clueless as to what that was all about till her new brother filled her in on it Rika were soon off, leaving the kings and the mage alone together.
”Well, don’t you have somewhere to be? We’ve got pork to get” Bowser grunted at the Gerudo after a few moments.
”I’m going in there to get pork, myself.” Ganondorf grunted back and then added, ”Feel free to follow me if that’s what you want.” And then the Gerudo strode off towards the door.
”Wah, hey, gah! Fine! You better not slow us down!” Bowser retorted, poorly, before stomping after him with Kamek in tow.
The gateway to pig city lay open before them, revealing a city street that had perhaps seen better days. Two to five story apartment buildings lined the streets, all of them looking rather run down with decaying brickwork marred with talentless graffiti, sporting the odd boarded up window and doors locked tight against intruders.
The street was hardly better pockmarked with potholes, faded (and often incoherent) road markings, and dotted with the odd burnt out car or truck, making it rather inconceivable that it was actually capable of being used.
The only things in any good repair were a few glass fronted stores, sporting within them the advertised pork products stored in thankfully hygienic conditions.
Beyond, there seemed to be other streets, other buildings, as far as the eye could see, giving the impression of a far larger city surrounding them. Impression being the key word, as closer inspection revealed the further away of these to be either wooden cutouts or painted onto the wall of the large room they were actually in.
”Wow, this dump has seen better days” Bowser said, as he stepped inside, before commenting ”but hey, impressive they fit an entire city in here” entirely fooled by the facade.
”Hmph, this room is supposed to produce food? Ridiculous.” commented Ganondorf with an incredulous tone.
Once they were all inside, a door suddenly slammed shut behind them, and when inspected or challenged, revealed no discernible manner to open it. They didn’t have much time to look into it, however, as almost as soon as the back door slammed shut, the doors to the buildings slammed open, and the residents of the not-city, blocky porcine creatures namedpiglin, came to introduce themselves.
Given the gold baseball bats, kitchen knives, frying pans, sledge hammers, chains and other improvised weapons in their hands they were not here to give a polite greeting. Instead the mobs began forming into an actual mob arrayed against the invading villains.
”Wow, hey, we’re just here to do some shopping, so if you’d just move out the way no one needs to get squashed” Bowser tried to calm the situation down for a moment, only for the response to be a feral chorus of squeals and oinks of mindless aggression.
”I’m pretty sure we’re looking at the source of the pork for this tower.” Ganondorf said grimly. Certainly a gruesome way to keep a stockpile of pork, but, seeing as how there were no other pigs in sight…
The sound picked up as the mob congealed into a formidable mass, one that at some unknown signal suddenly surged forwards, the mob revealing themselves to be less of a mass of angry individuals and far more of a horde with zero self preservation instincts.
”Alright have it your way! Bring it swine!”
Ganondorf just shook his head, still appearing incredulous to the idea of this silly tower. But nevertheless he drew both of his swords from their respective scabbards, ”Then so be it.”
Before anything else Ganondorf decided to kick things off with another Violet Flare. As he had done in the previous room, Ganondorf let loose a purple-colored fire breath attack. The flames spewed forth and certainly damaged a few of the piglins in the horde. But it was still a horde, and quite a sizable one at that. So the fire breath alone wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things. So after that the Gerudo brandished his swords and got to hacking and slashing away at the piglins as they approached. Each swing of his blades caused them to become coated in dark magic that appeared to slowly increase the more Ganondorf attacked, ”Well don’t just stand there you big lizards, start pulling your weight!” he shouted to the nearby Koopa Troop.
”Don’t give me orders! Also I’ll pull twice as much weight as you, just you watch!” Bowser shouted back, before unleashing his own flame breath, orange flames washing though the piggy horde scorching and igniting those caught in its path. Then he stomped forwards, driving a fist into the snout of a pig-faced foe to establish dominance, and then slashing mecha mit claws through the guts of two more before he really laid into the rest of them.
Together both flame waves made bacon of the front runners, but there were plenty more where they came from. Plus, though they were in a dead end of a street, there was still plenty of space for flanking, with piglins running along the sidewalk and then rushing inwards to the center of the road where the kings were making their stand.
And it was just the kings making a stand, because Kamek was already airborne and getting a bird’s eye view of the mob mob as it naturally flowed through the street to wash against the pair of hard headed rocks below. Yet he also saw that the horde had a limit, one he estimated was based on which houses could and could not have heard the door slamming shut.
”There’s a limit to these sire, so keep fighting and we’ll get a respite!” he called out, before swooping over the feral hogs and dropping dark mines within their midst, blowing handfuls of them skywards in shadowy explosions with each spellcast.
”Time to unleash some reinforcements.” declared the Gerudo, briefly stopping his attacks. In a swift motion he thrust the blade of one of his swords into the floor and then summoned his moblin squad with a snap of his fingers. Five moblin archers emerged from the puff of smoke. Armed with bows, they loosed volleys of fire arrows into the oncoming horde. Ganondorf then picked his sword back up and returned to the fray.
”Keep your distance!” he ordered his archers, ”If the horde advances, then fall back. Don’t advance unless we start pushing them back!” It was an interestingly cautious tactic to go with. Not something most people would expect from the King of Evil. But Ganondorf had had his share of experience in commanding armies. He’d previously led a successful campaign against the Kingdom of Hyrule, after all.
As he continued to cut a swathe into the horde, the building dark energy around his blades continued to grow. With each swing that dark power grew, further increasing the power of the weapons. It was like watching a melon-sized snowball roll down a hill until it gradually grew into the size of a mighty boulder. And then, when it seemed like his dark power couldn’t grow any more, Ganondorf decided it was time to unleash it. With his great strength he slammed both swords into the ground. Then he raised his fist above his head, and even began to slowly levitate upwards. He charged red and black magical energy in his hand while purple rings of ancient Hylian runes circled on the ground below him. ”DIE!” roared the Gerudo with a mighty shout. The King of Evil came crashing back down onto the circle of runes, slamming the energy in his hand into it and unleashed an omnidirectional wave of explosive dark energy around him and blasting all the piglins with a 15-20 meter radius with an inferno of darkness.
And just like that, the dark power that had been building up in his weapons was gone. Ganondorf pulled them up out of the ground and continued his previous hacking and slashing. All the while the swords appeared to begin building energy within them all over again.
There wasn’t much left to hack, the hyrule warrior having decimated the vast majority of the mob that was still to come at them using his explosive attack.. After that, the remaining piglins ahead fell rather easily to his hacking and slashing.
That still left the flanking ones, and while Bowser kept the ones on the left side of the street occupied, the ones on the right pushed back the moblins who quickly found they had no where to go, as the way back was barred by the closed door to the stage, and the other two directions occupied by the two indiscriminately swinging kings.
Before they got overrun however, familiar bones rose up out of the ground between them and the piglins, as Kamek summoned a horde of dry bones to shore up their flanks. As with the time they had fought the spear wielding moblins, the undead did not achieve much on their own damage wise, but they act like a tarpit for the piglins who got bogged down trying to beat down the perpetually regenerating nuisances.
As the pigs squealed and hacked at the dead, the moblins opened fire, launching arrow after arrow over the shorter dry bones, the combo of minions rather effectively cutting down the foes in a way neither could have achieved on their own.
Soon after, the opening brawl came to an end, the last of the street’s piglins falling to the ground and crumpling to ash, leaving a plethora of spirits behind in their wake.
”I’ll gather those up for later, I don’t expect much of use will come of it, but perhaps we will be showered with gold for our efforts” Kamek said, as he directed some toadies to start scooping up the spirits for him ”Though given the shear number we’ll be acquiring, we may need to acquire some kind of … shopping trolly? Or something of the sort. I do not believe they will be compatible with the pizza boxes”
”You’ll figure something out” Bowser replied, in a strange combination of reassurance and order, before giving an impressed whistle at the tole that had been wrought, not by Ganondorf, but by the minion team up, telling them ”Nice job mooks”
Ganondorf gave a wave of his sword and commanded the Moblins to go ahead and assist with the spirit gathering. After returning the weapons to the scabbards he glanced in Bowser’s direction, ”So what now? I don’t see a scrap of food anywhere.” He said, taking a moment to crack his neck a bit. This had better not turn out to be a waste of time, or he was not going to be happy at all. Not that he was ever all that happy to start with, but still.
”What, you've never seen a deli before?” he asked as he directed a finger a fair ways up the street towards a glass windowed store. What was inside was unclear from a distance, but the eclectic nature of the koopa’s world meant he could both live in a castle and know what a deli looked like.
”Well then they’d better use the same currency that the City of Tears did.” Ganondorf grunted, ”Because I’m not leaving here until I get what I came for.” the King of Evil added, ominously.
”You’ve got that right at least, so let’s go check it out” he declared, as he started to stomp up the road, which proved to be a basic gauntlet of jumping over cars, navigating around thrash, avoiding falling down manholes, and the odd place where the road had been swallowed up by a sinkhole. The odd pack of pilglins tried to take them on while they did this but these smaller groups were of little concern.
Kamek hovered above the mini platform challenge, while Bowser took to criticizing it as he waltzed on through, it being ”Nothing compared to some of the stuff I’ve come up with”
And then there was Ganondorf, who largely just walked through the challenge. Literally. He just sidestepped the manholes and sinkholes. And any car that was in his way, the Gerudo would use his massive strength to literally shove them aside and out of his path. ”You call this a challenge? Where are the locked and barred doors? The block and switch puzzles? Or any puzzles for that matter?”
Once they finally arrived, the store did indeed prove to be as well kept as it had from a distance, with its windows filled with rows and rows of sausages. Just regular sausages oddly enough, no ham, bacon or pepperoni though there was still a nice selection of everything from burtwasts to hotdogs.
”Oddly specialized, but I suppose we’ll take it?” Kamek asked, glancing at his king for confirmation and finding the turtle visibly drooling at the sight.
”I’ll take that as a yes then” Kamek sighed, before going and trying the door, only for it to rattle a few times as he did. Confused, he hovered up to human head height to look inside to see if something was jamming it, only to instead see a little closed sign sitting in the window of said door. Below that there was also a list of opening times which did not include early mornings.
”I do believe it is shut until mid morning” he calmly informed the pair of royals, which caused Bowser to throw his arms up in frustration at the news.
”Oh, don’t throw a tantrum.” sniped Ganondorf, ”As if a simple locked door is going to keep ME out.” he grabbed the handle of the door and yanked it with some extra strength. Assuming there weren’t any enchantments or the like he could rip the door right off its hinges with minimal effort.
He did indeed, the door falling ever so easily to his might, opening the way to the sausage fest within.
It also set off the intruder alarm.
”Tsk tsk, now look what you’ve done. Now they’ll think we’re here to steal from them” Kamek chided the king of evil over the ringing bell, before floating into the building and giving a brief inspection.
”Would you have preferred we wait around for it to open?” Ganondorf offered as a retort. Sure, maybe Kamek had that kind of patience, but Bowser? Not likely.
”It looks clear” he informed them before adding ”and also a fair bit bigger on the inside too”
Indeed, while the front of the store made it out to be simply a little deli, the actual inside of it turned out to be more of a sausage warehouse, the back wall of it simply missing and instead leading to a filled up with 20 long rows of a dozen or so shelving units each worth of pig meat.
”You know, I don’t think this is a store at all? I’m not sure if it's a clever or utterly foolish disguise however” the mage noted as he waved his wand, and sent forth some minions to collect armfuls of pork to stuff into pizza boxes, which were themselves then slotted into the bag of infinite pizza holding.
Bowser meanwhile stomped on in and immediately started helping himself to the display pieces, pausing only to announce ”Mmmf, this is good stuff”.
Ganondorf wasn’t quite that reckless. After walking in he inspected the meat. Making sure none of it was spoiled or rotten. He had no desire to eat a breakfast that would just make him sick.
Sadly, the break in breakfast was interrupted when the alarm, naturally, attacked another horde. Fortunately, the front of the fake store made for an excellent chokepoint to funnel said mob through, which allowed the royals to effortlessly take care of business with alternating flame breath attacks.
”Ha, is that all you’ve got!” Bowser taunted, and in doing so tempting fate.
”Hmph, pathetic! Ganonorf concurred.
Unheard over the tail end slaughter at the front there came a few quiet whistlings and thunks, followed by a much more audible cry of ”Ah! My arm!” from Kamek.
Bowser immediately turned and rushed into the back, meeting the retreating mage, who had an arrow sticking out of his limb, half way.
”Above sire!” He warned, prompting the king to look up, and see the source of his avisor’s pain. Standing upon several metal catwalks overlooking the warehouse were more piglins, who had slipped in via the windows lighting it, having presumably climbed up various fire escapes. These weren't the same as the mob outside however. Instead the half a dozen foes wore golden armor, and were armed with wooden crossbows with which they had picked off Kamek’s sausage transporting minions, and then nearly skewered the mage himself.
Thinking quickly, Ganondorf snapped his fingers and re-summoned the Moblin Archers. He ordered to open fire on the piglin marksman perched above. But another sound got his attention before he could do anything else.
They weren't alone either. A roller shutter at the back of the warehouse had rolled open, and though it stepped six bigger, meaner, tougher and battle ax armed piglin piglin brutes. In their midst was also a larger boar, who was smoking a cigar, had several butcher’s knives hanging from his belt, and was armed with a flamethrower.
Uncle butters, who had come to respond to the alarm at his ‘store’ jabbed a finger forwards and squealed a command to attack, sending the goons of the organized swine syndicate who ran this down charging forwards or snap firing crossbow bolts at the royal intruders, while he himself stomped forwards, ready to roast some fresh meat to replace that which Bowser had noshed on.
Ganondorf dived to the side to avoid being shot by crossbow bolts. He quickly drew the white sword from its scabbard, while his other hand went for his newly acquired Ikana Shield. The Gerudo had surmised that a more defensive fighting style was called for against foes firing projectiles at him. And he wasn’t wrong either, the shield made it easier to block and deflect incoming crossbow bolts while the Gerudo himself charged forward to meet the incoming piglin brutes head on.
For Ganondorf his tactic was all about giving and taking. He’d keep his shield up long enough for it to block some incoming attacks, and then the King of Evil would quickly retaliate with a wide-reaching spin attack of his own. He wasn’t too fond of overly defensive fighting styles like this, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to utilize it when necessary.
The brutes meanwhile were all attack attack attack, berzerkers to the last. The lack of immediate tactics and the shelving units let the king’s tactic work perfectly for a few moments, the first brute hammering on the shield till it got winded, and then got a sword to the gut.
Unfortunately, the sheer number of opponents meant that flanking inevitably happened, with two brutes charging down the row of shelves on either side of the king before coming smashing straight through them. Splinters and sausages went flying as they shattered the shelves with singular ax blows, before proceeding to lunge through the wreckage they’d created right as a third brute came charging in from the front.
Ganondorf almost rolled his eyes. Such a simplistic and rudimentary tactic these brutes were going for. But he knew exactly how to defend against it. All it required was for him to mimic one of the favored techniques of his most hated enemy. The Gerudo held his sword out and spun his body around in order to attack with a circular spin slash that kept the charging brutes from crashing into him. Then he jumped backwards. Two of the brutes had charged from the sides, the third from the front. So that left the rear as the only remaining place Ganondorf could fall back to.
Ganondorf then snapped his fingers to summon one of his Strikers. The gelatinous embryo Blastocyst appeared directly in front of him and immediately jumped straight up. Then the three charging piglin brutes crashed into Ganondorf’s shield, after which he used his monstrous strength to knock them all back a few feet just in time for the Striker Spirit to come crashing down on top of them. It also consequently released its acidic bloody tear projectiles in all four cardinal and ordinal directions, just in case any of the brutes managed to dodge out of the way. After that the spirit vanished.
Meanwhile the crossbow bolt wielding ones tried to use their elevated positions around the room to try and shoot him from multiple angles which would have been quite nasty had they not started taking fire of their own.
”If you're going to be cowards fighting from up there, then I’m gonna come get you instead!” Bowser roared as he leapt up onto a shelving unit, cracking it under his weight before he leapt the rest of the way up to the catwalks. These two, ground under his feet, but it was the ones on the opposite side that the king started his assault by blasting with an indiscriminate broadside of cannonfire that were the first to fall, taking a few of the snipers with it.
The rest either turned their fire on the koopa king, which the scaly brute either toughed out or blocked with his dinky energy shield, while those up close drew golden swords to meet him in melee. The first one getting kinetic strike module punched clear out of the building was a pretty good indicator of how that would go.
”Ha! At least make it a challenge for me!” Ganondorf gloated, so far finding no real challenge in any of these foes.
Just as Gandorf finished dealing with the trio, the last two came at him, only for one to be engulfed in flame as it got caught in uncle butters’s opening attack, the blaze of his flamethrower igniting shelving as well as he tried to roast the king of evil’s bacon.
With a smirk, Ganondorf put up his shield in order to block the incoming flames. When that attack finally subsided he hurled the shield like a frisbee at the last remaining brute. The shield’s sharp square corner lodged into the piglin brute’s head and took him out on the spot. Of course, that left the Gerudo without a shield. When uncle butters tried firing more flames at him, the King of Evil responded by spewing out his Violet Flare, breathing his purple flames to clash with the flames of uncle butters’s flamethrower weapon. This created a brief cloud of smoke obscuring vision in the area.
Perfect, Ganondorf thought. He snapped his fingers and summoned his newest Striker:
New Striker spiritbound: Riptor A genetically engineered bioweapon manufactured as a deadly weapon of war by Ultratech, combining primal savagery with cutting-edge sophistication. She has the moves Fire Mortar (lobbed fireball), Flame Carpet (short range), Shoulder Charge (has 1 hit of armor armor on the slowest/heaviest charge), Talon Rake (a pouncing slash that if blocked bounces her off for a follow up), Tail Flip (somersault tail slam that travels forward and recaptures airborne opponents), and Clever Girl (a bite grab then slam that causes a ground bounce). All of these moves are on short-medium cooldowns and she cannot take any other action.
The cyborg velociraptor, Riptor, appeared and sprinted through the cover of smoke. She ran at uncle butters with a Shoulder Charge, blowing into the coughing hog and, though the burly boar was not struck down, he did lose grip on his weapon. It was all the opening Ganondorf needed to come charging through the smoke as well and impale the hog on his white sword.
The blade went clean through his chest, out the other end … and right through the gas tank at his back as well. Gas hissed as the dying hog weakly tried to beat his killer with his bare hands while his life blood drained into his own guts. Despite being rammed, impaled, and now dying, the hog had never let go of his cigar, and instead sucked deep on it, flaring the lit end before the king’s eye.
A perfect match for the leaking gas.
Ganondorf wasn’t about to let this swine take him with him. He tightened his grip on the white sword’s hilt and spun around. In this motion he was able to fling the body of uncle butters from his blade. The burly boar still exploded, but at least it was far enough away to only temporarily knock Ganondorf off his feet rather than engulf him in flames.
Up above Bowser finished off beating the snot out of the last armored piglin, before he glanced down and noticed where all the smoke was coming from and cried out ”Gah the sausages they’re burning!” as he saw the flaming mess that was the warehouse floor.
”Ganondorf what have you done!” he furiously shouted at the other king, falsely accusing him of the mess that uncle butters had left his own establishment in.
”I’m winning this battle you pigheaded turtle!” Ganondorf furiously shouted back as he grabbed Uncle Butters’s spirit, ”THEY set this fire, not me!”
”It’s not just this bit that is on fire!” Kamek warned as he and a white mage clone he had used to heal himself floated into the back, only for the mage to cry out in alarm and dodge to the side as a molotov cocktail came flying through the air and nailed the doppelganger.
The piglin mob had apparently upped their game.
”May I suggest we head out the way those other pigs came in?” he suggested with forced casualness as his copy burned to death, and then drifted up to do just that, leaving behind a blazing storefront. The mage exited via a window, followed shortly by Bowser who’s steel capped boots slammed down onto the concrete of some back alleyway.
Ganondorf leapt through the window, but not before he ran by and snatched up his Ikana Shield from the head of the piglin brute he’d thrown it at earlier.
”We still got some right? Tell me we didn’t just lose all the sausages to the fire” Bowser asked his advisor once they regrouped a little ways away from the burning building, voice full of concern .
”Yes sire” the mage confirmed, before sniping ”Also I am fine, thank you for asking”
”Yeah, obviously. I knew you could handle yourself” the king replied with out of left field praise that left Kamek blinking in surprise.
”Ah yes. Well. Shall we try and find a way out now?”
”Are you kidding? There’s got to be like, a bunch more of these stores we gotta hit!” Bowser declared, which got a groan from the mage,
”To what end? demanded the King of Evil, ”They all have the same pork, don’t they?”
”He does have a point” Kamek found himself agreeing despite himself, resulting in the koopa king giving them a gobsmacked ”Whaaaat?” before he went off that ”But we don’t even have pepperoni!” which had, for some reason, not been in with the rest of the sausages, possibly due to it needing spices ”Or bacon, or ham, or salami!” again, apparently more specialized than the regular sausage storage would hold.
”are you really telling me there’s no difference between those? You must be crazy. The trolls will for sure know, they have got to have taste he demanded to know, before he suddenly grinned and taunted the other king with ”or are you at your limit and want to tap out huh?” in what he thought was a very clever ruse.
”Ugh, fine. If it’ll shut you up, let’s go to another store then.” Ganondorf responded with a facepalm and roll of his eyes. Honestly Bowser could be such a child.
The koopa did not exactly do anything to dissuade that notion with his fistpump and ”yes!” of victory, then he pointed in a random direction and commanded them all to move ”Onwards!”
After that, and with a fair bit of air based scouting from Kamek to reduce the random wanderings, the trio became a 3 person crime spree on the city, hitting store after store without to much issue, having learned how to deal with the assorted piglin types and their flamethrower totting uncles. After a while, even Bowser found the motivation of new types of pork to cease being enough of a motivation to keep it up, and they started to look for a way to unlock the front door.
The obvious option was the only other nice building in town, which rather than being just a clean shop, was made of shining marble, complea with red tiled domes and a whole courtyard of tropical plants out front. The governor's palace certainly did stick out like a sore thumb, and had some tight security to boot, but it was nothing that they hadn’t seen before. Golden guards fell before them, the front gates were breached, and they entered the front door with only a few scratches to show for the defender’s efforts.
The insides were full of decorations depicting some pizza faced guy, a real monument of ego, but otherwise turned up little of note till they entered a random back room and found it contained a sentient pillar.
“Hey. Here to kill this part of me I take it?” it asked them with very little concern one way or the other on the matter.
”Well aren’t you a pleasant ray of sunshine.” Ganondorf scoffed, ”All we want is to unlock the exit.” he added with a shrug. He had no clue if killing the pillar was required or not. But if they could unlock the exit without wasting time with another battle, then all the better. ”I don’t suppose we can do that without killing you, can we?”
“Fraid not. If it makes you feel any better, pizza face’s made me into a horrible hive mind so it doesn’t really matter to me one way or the other” the pillar, who could not be bothered introducing himself as Pillar John, explained apathetically “I mean pizza face will be mad but that’s your problem, not mine”
Ganondorf gave an exasperated sigh. Terrific. Even when he did try to spare someone, it turned out to be impossible. Of course. Approached the pillar while shaking his head and… struck it with a Warlock Punch.
Despite his impressive size, the strike caused the pillar to fly through the air and smash through a window before vanishing from sight. Any question as to if that had done it or not was put to rest when the clocks in the palace, and there had been a lot of them, all done up to look like pizza face’s face, all rung once, and then had their dials spin around rapidly till they all showed four minutes to midnight.
Then they started counting down.
”I do believe-” Kamek began to say, only to be drowned out by the sound of police sirens rapidly closing in on their location. After a few wasted seconds he corrected himself and said ”I do believe that is our cue to get out of here”
”Good effort, that guy was just weird” Bowser told Ganondorf with a pat on the shoulder, before he turned and started to stomp back towards the exit, stopping only to punch one of the clocks in the face.
Ganondorf followed suit, turning and beginning to sprint back in the same direction the koopas were going. That exit had better have been unlocked. Otherwise he had no idea how else they were gonna get back to the lobby.
As it turned out, it was pigs. Pigs that were also pigs.
The wailing sirens had all congealed outside of the palace, and the flashing blue and red lights of the vehicles producing it reflected off of its pure white walls. Trying to drown out said sirens was a mass of muscle in an ill fitting police uniform squealing into a megaphone from behind a row of cop cars. Whether the pig of the LARD was demanding they came out with their hands up in pig, or was just going through the motions was unclear, but given that the reaction to anyone sticking their head out to take a look was for the rest of the pigs to try and fill them full of (thankfully slow moving) pellets from their double barreled shotguns it was clear that there would be no arrests today, if there ever where.
”This place has cops? But we already robbed a whole load of small shops, where were they when that happened?” Bowser shouted over the top of all the noise the pigs blocking them into the palace were making, while time on the clocks all around them tick, tick, ticked away.
As it turned out he got his answer when a set of portals shaped like John’s face opened inside the building, and deposited a pair of pigs on either side of them.
”Bah! We don’t have time for this! Forget the pigs, just go for the exit!” Ganondorf barked before he took off in another run. The somewhat slow projectiles weren’t too hard to avoid. And even if they couldn’t be, Ganondorf kept the Ikana Shield out so he could use it to block any shots he was too slow to dodge. True to his suggestion, Ganondorf simply tried ignoring the pigs. If they stuck around to fight them all they’d likely run out of time.
Ganondorf instead focused on retreating and getting to that exit. He did at one point summon Phantom Ganon and had him ride straight into the pursuing pigs to serve as a temporary distraction for them so he could try to put some distance between them and the Seekers.
He had to physically punch his way through one of the walls surrounding the palace while the pigs were distracted by his phantom to do so, but that was no issue. What was was when he knocked said wall down it revealed that the piglin and boar’s liberal use of flaming weapons in their rundown tightly packed city had had a few adverse effects.
Namely the entire place was now on fire.
”Well, that’s bad” Bowser unnecessarily commented when Kamek and him caught up, the pair having fallen a touch behind due having to take down the two portaled in pigs who would otherwise have been right on their tails.
”We’ll just have to deal with it” Kamek replied, and then the three of them went racing out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Despite the city currently burning down around them, the LARD still endeavor to hunt the fugitives, heavy 4x4 police cars doing their level best to navigate the terrible twisting roads, while above a few helicopters buzzed around above, shining searchlights down on them as they ran for it. Worse, the portals kept opening, depositing fresh pigs, piglin and boars in his way as the clocks in every single home he was in ticked down, many stubbornly continuing to do so despite being engulfed in the inferno.
While Ganondorf wasn’t keen on wasting his time fighting all the pigs, that didn’t mean he was completely unwilling to fight. Once they were running through the street, the Gerudo switched to wielding both his swords so he could efficiently cut his way past any pigs that appeared in his path. This would also allow the swords to gradually charge up their Dark Meter in case Ganondorf needed to use the explosion attack again during the pursuit.
”This… is getting… IRRITATING!” he shouted with frustration when he had to take down yet another pig that appeared in his way, ”I don’t know what the hell pizza is, but it damn well better worth all this trouble we’re going through!” After that he paused and summoned the five moblins. As he had done with Phantom Ganon earlier, they could go back and engage the pigs to serve as a distraction.
”Wait, you don’t?” Bowser gasped, pausing in the middle of ripping the door of one of the pursuing police cars that had tried to ram him off the road to declare ”Just you wait, it’s going to change your whole world!”
”I don’t know about that. We’re running out of time!” Kamek commented as he blasted another pig before he could take a shot at them, the mage very much slowing his pace to keep pace with the two mighty glacier’s own.
”Well we’re running as fast as we can! What else are we supposed to do!?” the king asked as he pulled the car’s driver out of the vehicle and punched his face into pulp.
”Note to self: Get a horse!” Ganondorf muttered to himself as he had to pause and use his strength to flip an entire car out of their path and over to the side. If he had a good warhorse he could gallop out of here in less than half the time. Something he’d have to keep in mind for the future.
He saw a trio of piglins portal in in front of them. Ganondorf rolled his eyes and charged forward, managing to slice them all aside with a single sweeping circular clash of his swords. The darkness in the blades continued to grow, but not quite enough for him to make the most use of it against the pigs. That would take a bit longer still.
”Wait wait wait, I’ve got it!” Kamek said, overhearing Ganondorf’s muttering, the comment having clicked a piece of a puzzle that made the full solution obvious ”Why get a horse when we can get a car!”
”Ok, sure, but where are we supposed to do that?” Bowser demanded to know, before following his advisor’s pointing finger to the vehicle he had just deprived of its driver ”Ohhhhhhh”
The mage swooped into the backseat, and then chanted a few bars, causing the already oversized vehicle to scale up even more, becoming suitably Bowser sized, and hogging most of the road in the process.
”Gahahahaha, now this is more like it! Running is for chumps anyway” the king declared as he honked the horn a few times and then demanded that Ganondorf ”get in, we’re blowing this joint!”
”Huh…” he said in a perplexed tone. He didn’t complain though, he just jumped up into the vehicle, ”Color me surprised, Bowser, turns out you’re good for something after all.” the Gerudo complimented in the most backhanded way imaginable. He turned himself around and decided to use his Violet Flare as a ranged attack to try and fend off pursuers. It sort of worked, but it was here that Ganondorf discovered the inconvenient nature of his purple flames. They damaged enemies, but they didn’t set any objects or terrain on fire. Oh well, it was better than just sitting there and doing nothing.
He got to have a bit of fun when the odd daring pig patrol car got close to try and board their monster of a machine, or something was portaled ontop of it, but for the most part the passengers main concern was surviving Bowser’s aggressive driving across the not at all smooth roadway. That said, be it potholes, pigs or other cars, all fell beneath the souped up police car, and the trio covered about twice the distance they had on foot in almost half the time, turning what had looked to be a doomed race to the finish line into a certain thing.
”and that” Bowser declared as he pumped the brakes and parked them in front of the exit with 30 seconds to spare ”is how you do it the smart way!” seemingly claiming credit for the whole thing before he instead told Kamek ”good thinking”
”Thank you sire” the mage nodded as he floated out of the car, which rapidly shrunk down after he stopped channeling the enlargement spell.
”Hmph, yes, great, now let’s leave this stupid pig city already.” Ganondorf added with a bit of impatience.
Not wanting to tempt fate, the trio wasted no time in stepping through the exit door, and got handed an A for their efforts, having absolutely demolished the town’s population where the other royal team had bypassed a lot of the obstacles in their path (and jr had got hit a lot).
”Hey nice. Can't do any better than that right?” Bowser incorrectly declared, unaware of S and P ranks.
”As long as we got the food, I don’t really care how we were graded for it.” Ganondorf said with a shrug, ”But did you really expect anything less of the two of us?”
That earned him a laugh and a friendly slap on the back from Bowser ”You got that right. Those pigs are never going to forget the day we came to town!”
”We came, we saw, we conquered.”
Bowser’s second statement was rendered rather incorrect as the stage reset behind them. But that didn’t matter, what did was that they had a whole load of ham and a new dish to introduce Ganondorf to.
Hopefully one that some of the others had decided to get the essentials of cheese and sauce for, Kamek thought, as it turned out they only had pork, fruit, and sweets at the moment.
Location:The City of Glass - Vandelay Campus Attendees: Susie, Raz, Goldlewis, Zenkichi, Roxas, Midna, Karin Viewers: Blazermate, Tora, Giovanna, Geralt, Sakura, Pit, Benedict, Partitio Word Count: 2141
Even if the candidates’ answers to the previous question did little to set the audience’s minds at ease, the show had to continue. The moderator took a sip from his drink, instantly realized he’d forgotten to shake it up again, and sighed before proceeding into the next question. This time he cleared his throat dramatically, the shadow of a curious, almost amused look on his face as he read it aloud.
“Our last question to round out the subject of the Ever Crisis, gentlemen. We’ve covered the OSF, as well as Anderson, Reunion, and redshift. Other and Chimera attacks are sudden, sporadic, and devastating if left unaddressed, but in the eyes of the public, no conflict is more high-profile than the war against the Machines. The people want to know: how do you plan to neutralize the overseers of the Machine Network, the brothers Adam and Eve, who in order to solve the riddle of humanity, have determined that conflict is what it means to be human?”
For once, Armstrong seemed to be at a momentary loss for words. “Ad…Adam and Eve? The hell?”
Shinra seemed to be drawing a similar blank. “Who in the…how do you…?”
Roland hadn’t heard any of these names either, and he was something of an intel gatherer himself. How did this moderator come across that information? Well, considering who he just embarrassed, Roland felt bad for the poor sod, as either himself or a Claw would be sent later to ‘clarify’ the situation.
Realizing this question seemed to be a big one, Raz glanced between the candidates, not too sure who would be best to probe. So he settled his focus on Shinra, hoping his being in power meant he knew more about the situation.
”I’m guessing Giovanna didn’t know about those two either?” Raz asked Goldlewis. ”She would’ve said something about them if she did, right?”
“And even more importantly, how are you going to address the man who made a deal with the Machines, who stalks the Dystopiascape in his clock-faced mobile fortress, soaking up all the life lost in this forever war to one day fuel his grand ambitions?” The moderator shuffled his papers, then offered a questioning gaze to the candidates. “The man known only as Nox?”
What is this nonsense…some kind of trick…if this was real…would have told me by now…someone keeping secrets…and those details from earlier…traitor in our midst…going to have hell to pay…must come of up with something…this angle should work…
After a few tense moments, Shinra cleared his throat. “Once DespoRHado is out of the picture and Psych-OSF, Neuron, and Vandelay Technologies are all able to face the Ever Crisis as a united front, we will be able to push our enemies back from Midgar’s doorstep and take the fight to them in the Valley of Ruin to destroy their leaders wherever they lurk.”
Annoyed at the incumbent’s quick turnaround time, Armstrong followed up quickly. “Being the only ones actually fighting the Machines all this time, DespoRHado Enforcement is the only force with the equipment and combat experience to challenge these Machine ringleaders on their own turf. You all know the saying: cut the head off the snake, and the rest will die. Our grand offensive to achieve this is already in the pipeline; the only thing that could stop DespoRHado bringing the war against the Machines to an end is the interference of the Administration, so desperate for control that they’re willing to prolong this conflict indefinitely just to make sure DespoRHado’s out of business, and the city’s defense is under their thumb.”
Though Armstrong couldn’t resist a jab, the atmosphere in the theater after that last question was one of almost unilateral confusion. Adam, Eve, Nox…none of the citizens had heard those names before, laden with critical importance though they seemed. Not even Goldlewis could claim to know, though he didn’t feel quite as bad thanks to one other realization he glommed onto. “Shinra and Armstrong ain’t heard those names before either,” he breathed, his brows as high as they could get. “Neither of ‘em–they were scramblin’ to say anythin’ at all, and probably just lyin’ through their teeth, to boot. Who are they?” As the candidates engaged in some careful back and forth, each trying to point out that the other didn’t know what he was talking about without revealing that they themselves didn’t in the process, Goldlewis’ eyes drifted to the moderator. “And more importantly…who in the hell asked that question?”
”It’s also weird that the announcer didn’t seem surprised as they were? Did they pre read these and he thought it was a joke? Is he in on whatever this is?” Midna asked, growing rather concerned, before asking what she thought was the most urgent question here, and that was ”and is that the only lizalfos they're throwing in the cucco pen, or is that a signal for something?”
With that thought in mind the princess tried to take a look around the room, away from the stage, to see if she could spot something suspicious, but with all the bright lights and people in the way, not to mention shadow level not being the best viewing angle (she was mainly listening to rather than watching the debate), she didn’t have much luck.
So she tried a different approach
”I’ll be right back”, she announced, before shadow hopping away, seeking out a better, higher, vantage point from which she could better check if anything unusual was going on. Even after tuning out the general hubbub filling the debate hall, however, she couldn’t spot anything amiss. There was nothing unusual whatsoever around the candidates’ podiums or the moderator’s desk, nor were there any signs of outside forces on the prowl.
”And there it is. Although it seems… odd that the moderator would give a question not screened beforehand. Perhaps this means far more than we even realize.” Susie said, thinking. ”Either the moderator was making this up to jab at both the constituents, or there is a third party here pulling all the strings. Perhaps that guardian we’re looking for? And from how everyone is taking it, I assume it's not the former.”
”Not just that question,” Raz added, ”Shinra’s been surprised at pretty much everything so far. Seems whoever was part of his team didn’t tell him what was gonna be asked. He thinks there’s a traitor working for him.”
More names that Roxas didn’t recognize. But unlike the name Jena Anderson, these names seemed to be a surprise for everyone. Well… everyone except for one person: the moderator who asked the question in the first place. Something about that felt off, but Roxas simply couldn’t put his finger on why. At least not until he thought about the question Goldlewis brought up. Roxas recalled someone mentioning that the questions were supposed to be submitted by the audience members, and that memory made him ask himself another question. Why would the whole audience be surprised? Surely at least one person in the audience should be showing no reaction if they were the ones who submitted the question… right?
”Hm… If Shinra thinks there is a traitor among his group and if he is wrong… that could be an ally for us possibly. An interesting development.” Susie said, noting what Raz had just said about reading Shinra’s mind. Especially considering Shinra had been the standing ruler for quite some time, even those working under him would have some juicy info.
”I…have so many questions.” Zenkichi unhelpfully commented, before seeming to settle on one. ”Why would whoever submitted that question tip their hand in such a…public-facing setting, instead of going to someone, anyone, to give them that intel privately? No, that smells like a trap. But for who? DespoRHado? Vandelay?” Or, perhaps most disturbingly, them.
Karin said nothing, though she refocused her attention on the moderator, a look on her face that was equally amused and skeptical. ”Clearly our new friend Mister Udo is not all who he seems, hmm?” She said aloud. ”Or at least, has some interesting connections. Dropping some names merely to make the debaters look silly?” Karin tisked her tongue. ”My, my, things just got much more interesting.”
This question seemed to throw everyone for a loop, dispelling a lot of the friction created by the previous one. Machine Network? Adam and Eve? Did they see anything like that while out in the Valley of Ruin? It didn't seem familiar to Pit, but then again they'd only been in the city learning about this stuff for a couple days. The bar's patrons were all confused by the question, just as if not more so than the candidates on the screen. Pit was no exception to the confusion, but when he kept thinking about it he realized there was one part of the question that wasn't totally lost on him.
"Clock...?" he said, tucking a fist under his chin in thought. "I think we might have seen that when we went after Poppi? It was huge and had legs like a spider. All the little bug robots were buzzing around it too."
”That's so weird they didn’t know about those people. I mean neither did we, but we have some place to start looking for Poppi maybe? But I don’t know how this whole politics thing works or anything. They could be like nicknames or something.” Blazermate said, looking at Tora to see what the fluff ball would do, still concerned for him.
This turn of events definitely concerned Tora more than anything else he’d heard so far. It hadn’t originally occurred to him that the Machines might even have some sort of leadership, just the vague and faceless ‘network’ appropriate for the cold, impersonal, faceless evil the robotic hordes represented. With the mention of Adam, Eve, and Nox however, the gears in his mind were turning once more. Back at the crater lake, he’d only cared about Poppi, but the giant walking clock Pit mentioned hadn’t escaped his notice either. The man who made a deal with the Machines…soaking up life. He remembered the sight of that Rust Crew soldier, restrained by the robots and drained of some vital force by those strange, almost clockwork drones. Even the disorganized Machines weren’t just mindless zombies; there was intelligence to their actions, a methodology. And now, he knew, someone pulling the strings. But what did that mean for Poppi…for him? If the Machine Network was administered by, or perhaps personified in, one or two individuals, then could they be forced to set Poppi free? Or destroyed, and their Network along with them? Why grapple uselessly against the virus when he could go straight to the source? As a road opened before him, distant and vague though it was, Tora dared to hope. But no. Even if the team knew where to begin, he’d be relying on the others one hundred percent of the way, and it would get them no closer to their goal. Why would anyone bother sticking a neck out for Tora?
“So we’ve got a target, then. That’s a start.” Geralt’s eyes narrowed as he started thinking like a Witcher, wondering how they would be best served in taking the fight to that walking clock. If there was a large body of water they could bring it to or ambush it at, he could bring out the Bastion and wreak absolute havoc on the Machine, as long as the others kept it from destroying the gun platform. “When we get back, we’ll go over what you all saw when you went after Poppi, and work on a plan. I’ve already got a couple of ideas in mind.”
Tora looked at him gratefully, close to tears.
"Yeah, okay," Pit replied to Geralt. He'd gone over it once already, and now with some hours between them and the loss maybe they could remember some more information. One could almost see the gears turning in his head as he slowly came to the same conclusion as the Witcher and Nopon.
"So if we find the robot leaders we can make them tell us how to cure Poppi's virus! Right, Tora?"
Suddenly, that flicker of hope was glowing brighter. The Nopon nodded his head emphatically. “Right! Baddybots cause problem, so baddybots can fix!”
Sakura did a bad throw, licked her lips, and stood behind Giovanna. “Sounds good to me!” Sakura added her assent.
wordcount: 5,261 (+6) Bowser: Level 12 EXP: ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (222/120) Bowser Jr: Level 12 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (103/120) Kamek: Level 12 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (97/120) Rika: Level 8 EXP: /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (29/80) 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
The troop kept running. Climbing. Ascending. Towards the pizza tower. It was a silly sounding place, and surly, even with Purse’s warning, how bad could it be, they thought.
Well, the gabaghouls floating through the air as they got closer certainly were an early warning sign, the possessed pizza mass swooping down to try and impale them with sharpened protruding ribs or fangs. While not the most deadly of foes they, along with the other unfriendly denizens of the caverns, were slowing the troop down, and with the grinding pace they were already taking, that in and of itself might prove lethal.
It was Bowser of all people who was the main thing holding them back. Weighed down by all the extra bits and bobs fusion had shoved in his shell, the late night gauntlet after an already exhausting day had finally caused the king’s stamina to falter. His limbs burned with lactic acid, his breathing was heavy, and his pace was labored. He soldiered on, a relentless stomp stomp stomp, but it was barely above walking pace.
Kamek was only doing a little better, as both his general age and use of the enlargement spell had taken their toll atop the day’s fatigue. Had Mimi not taken over the duty of keeping their former transport enlarged, he too, would have been entirely out of it. As it was he hovered alongside his king, offering the exhausted koopa what assistance and words of encouragement would be accepted by the stubborn royal.
Meanwhile the energy of youth was keeping the two royal scions going, that and a combination of magical and mechanical assistance, with jr’s flying machine and Rika’s levitation rune letting them make the platforming a breeze, but it also left them as the ones running around smacking down the local hostels when they came to try and pick off the haggard heroes.
At least, thanks to Purse, they knew the locals were not under any kind of spell, and so there was little remorse to be had for those who attacked them of their own free will, resulting in several packs of vengeful rattling bandits and cheese slime revolutionaries falling to gunfire and good old fashioned grit.
”Urrgh, what I’d give to have the Koopa Chase right now” The king gasped, after summiting a crumbling hill of cheddar, before groaning as he looked onward towards the final climb leading to the tower, one still oh so painfully far away.
”Keep going, sire, it's not that far, and once inside, I’m sure we can barricade the entrance. Then we can rest, and presumably eat all the pizza we can manage” Kamek hovered up to his side to tell him encouragingly.
”and if we don’t keep moving we’re gonna get sunk and turned into fish food!” Rika added as she landed next to them and before she pushed forwards and leaping up into the air once more. Once at the top of her arch she fired her grappling hook down behind a pile of cheese wheels and smashing down among a series of ambushers who had been hiding behind it, filling the air with the shrieking of death delivered at the tip of her chainsaw bayonet.
While she could deal with foes ahead, none of them wanted to deal with the one behind. Unfortunately, the giant flying idol that was SAYU, and the captain of the guard, Undyne, who she was carrying in her free hand had other ideas. While up until now the pair had been spreading out their fire, bombarding heroes whenever one of them did a particularly tricky bit of platforming, they now caught onto the weakness of the troop, and began to rapidly close in on their position.
”More rain incoming!” Jr called out in warning, as he was first to track the new vector, and sure enough, as the aquatic duo proceeded to give the troop one last taste of rain, courtesy of the home of tears.
“In the name of love, we’ll punish you!” the flying idol cried out, before stabbing her usb symbol styled trident skywards, launching a beam of light into the air. What came down in stead was a flurry of bright red 2d fountain pen nibs with triangle fish tails the size of human torsos showered down like rain of arrows
“In the name of Justice, you mean!” Undyne called out, before jabbing her spear skywards in a similar motion, one that caused a shower of bright blue spears neatly contrasting the red pens to strike down as well.
”Here we go again” Jr groaned, readying his staff and starting to weave to and fro to avoid the red and green rainfall. Rika had basically no issue in avoiding the rain, the mere act of looking at projectiles heading her way slowing said shots enough for her to block them, or grappled, or boost away. Kamek’s flight meant he too could mostly avoid the shots just as well as Jr could.
The problem, ultimately, was Bowser. The king was a big slow target, and had to stick to the ground for the most part, meaning he took the brunt of the shots, which jr had to heal back up. They’d managed to endure previous probing barrages, but this time was different.
“First we’ll deal with you, then the rest! So Stop running and fight me so I can move on already!” Undyne called out, putting words to the sinking feeling in Jr’s gutt, before he found himself groaning at SAYU’s addition of “I can sea that you’re tired. Wouldn’t it be just fin to stop running and sleep with the fishes instead?”
Once over the pun the prince had a thought however, and a look at his papa’s pained and embarrassed face confirmed it: that Bowser wight well turn and fight if it meant he wouldn’t be slowing be slowing the rest of them down any more. Jr mulled this over, for but a second, and then saw the only way to stop that.
He had to do it first.
”Keep going, I’ll hold them off!” Jr called out, and then turned his flying machine around, taking to the skies.
”Wait, young master!” Kamek called out, while Bowser took one look back, and then kept going, trusting that they’d both be ok.
”I’ve got this Kamek, you don’t need to babysit me for it” the prince insisted as he rose up to the same altitude as their pursuers.
”We have this, young master” the mage retorted, as he flew at the prince’s side, the two becoming a pair of dots daring storm and titan both.
“Finally one of you shows some guts!” Undyne cheered, before beckoning them closer with her spear and commanded them to “now, come at me, if you dare!” before tilting the flow of the spear storm 90 degrees so that the pair were flying into it rather than through it, transforming the game of dodging falling rocks into a true bullet hell.
”Then look out, because here we come!” Jr called back, before putting pedal to the metal, and sending his clown car charging forward, weaving between the flying spears as he closed in.
“Wait, don’t come too close though! No tapping on the glass!” SAYU added in quite the opposite desire of Undyne, and as she was the one with control over their movements, the absurd sight of the titanic mermaid fleeing the comparatively minuscule prince graced all those who deigned to look up.
She did not do so passively however, and instead thrust her fork forwards, not to physically jab at the prince, but to instead blasted an energy beam forwards, one that the prince narrowly managed to veer to the side to avoid.
”You’ll have to do better than that to keep me away!” Jr shouted, delighted that all he had to do was fly at her to get their foe to give up ground.
“Stop running away! Fly me closer so I can hit him with my spear!” Undyne demanded
“I wasn’t made for physical interaction! ” SAYU replied, before contouring with “Besides, we’re reeling them in towards the city!”
”She’s right Jr, don’t get too far away!” Kamek called, having himself fallen behind the daring prince.
”Gahhh, fine!” jr called back in frustration, seeing the logic, and reversing his pace and falling back away, flying with the flow of the rain of arrows. He was determined to not leave empty handed however, and so left a parting gift, deploying his splatter blaster from his car and firing off a short burst of shocking goop right as SAYU switched to pursuing them again, causing her to fly straight into it.
“Ewwww! He-ey-ey-ey! Rud-u-u-u-de!” the giant mermaid complained as the electrical sparks buzzed at her lower torso, and her voice seemed to glitch out in response to the shock. She did not seem to actually be hurt though, but the prince would take her being deliberated.
He got to take that for about five seconds, before SAYU, who had failed to shake off the goop, declared “let the sea’s of change wash this away” before spinning around glowing with light that dissipated after a few moments, revealing the mermaid now wearing armor mimicking that of some of the guards, but done up with pastel hues of pink white and blue, and love heart decals “With a whole new look!”
With the shocking goop cleared away by the costume change, and Jr on the retreat again, SAYU went back on the offensive (as did Undyne, once she recovered from the nausea of being spun around).
“In this fight I’m the cute face and you're the ugly eel, so let's give you some company!” She called out as a shoal of blocky electric eels launched out from behind her and raced ahead of the prince, where they started swimming too and fro in his path of retreat, creating shocking barriers that he had to dodge around while also avoiding the other projectiles.
To make things worse, she also started summoning fish shaped pen nibs around him in a ring that would follow him for a few moments and then jab them at him all at once.
”Hey, that’s not fair, you can’t just make stuff next to me!” Jr complained before diving down to avoid being skewered from all sides, getting away with a cut on the cheek and one cat ear, as well as a trimmed ponytail
“Oooooh, are my oceanic strikes making you salty?” she retorted with a giggling laugh
”That is quite enough banter from you young lady” Kamek called back, before adding ”Now dodge this!” before he started sending a slow stream of his multicolored shape shots at the flying titan.
“You’re dougongna have to try harder than that” the mermaid replied as she effortlessly weaved from side to side to avoid the projectiles, though it did lower her focus on attacking to do so, much as Kamek had intended.
“No, he had a point, stop playing around and hold them still so I can finish them off” Undyn told her, to which SAYU replied with a huffy “Awww, but that attack’s so not on theme yet. We need to reskin it to be squids or something”
“Do it!”
“Fine fine” she conceded, before pointing one of her fingers at the prince (while still holding the trident with the rest) and thinking a moment before going “oh!” and calling out “time to get caught on the net!”
For a moment nothing happened, and then jr suddenly lurched to a halt as something grabbed his clown car. He looked over the side as he started to get hammered by spears, and found a 2d white gloved hand holding on tight.
”Hey! Get off!” he shouted at it, swatting at it with his paintbrush and knocking it away, only for it to turn into an arrow as it flow away, and then quickly shifting to a distinctive pointing finger when it caught its own flight, and started coming in to try and grab him again.
”Wait, what the heck, is that a mouse cursor?” Jr shouted in confusion as he tried to swat the thing, only for Kamek to nail it instead with a magic blast that went much faster than the ones he was using to ward off SAYU.
The prince called out thanks, and then, after a moment's thought, came upon a realization: ”Wait. The way she sorta got made out of thin air at the start. The glitching out. The whole artsy pen theme that just does not fit. The mouse. How she keeps getting like, design changes …. she’s not real!”
That prompted a little hurt gasp and a retort of “But I am real! As real as Undyne and Alphey’s love for each other” from SAYU, who looked genuinely offended rather than, well confused at the accusation, which was in and of itself telling.
“Hey! No telling the criminals about my love life you lot!” Undyne retaliated, which got a gleeful “I knew it!” from SAYU
”I’m not sure what you mean by all this, young master?” Kamek asked, while jr pressed on, now entirely convinced.
”She’s like a VTuber” he tried to explain, taking the entirely wrong angle when it came to clarification, and earning himself an ”A what?” from Kamek and a “Hey, I am way more sophisticated than one of those!” from the mermaid in question
Jr groaned at his out of touch caretaker, and then put it in words the old koopa would understand ”It means she’s not a real person. She’s a puppet, like one of your magic minions, which means …”
”Ahhh, which means we can destroy her without consequence!” the mage replied, finally catching on to where this was going.
“Wait what?” SAYU started, and then cried out in alarm as what had been warning shots turned into targeted strikes, though ones pointedly aimed at not striking down her real living monster passenger.
Jr opened fire with his Flaming Balloon cannon, before deploying and cranking the handle of his mulcher machine gun, while Kamek gave the mermaid a taste of her own medicine by summoning spinning card suit shapes right around her, and hammering her with massive blue magic fists as well.
“Ouch. Hey. Stop that!” she demanded as the shots chipped away at her exterior, and revealed her digital nature in full, particularly as damage started to accumulate and she began glitching out more, both in voice and in movement, actions repeating and beckoning much more jerky “That’s i-i-i-it. I’m fed-ed-ed-ed up! This isn’t a per-form-orm-orm-mance any more! Enou-gh-gh of you”
“Hold it together you lot!” Undyne demanded, but it was no use, it looked like she was going to fall apart at the seams.
Until she didn’t.
Bright light engulfed her once more, but instead of a costume change this time her entire body started to warp, shift, invert, until the koopas where left facing the fully revitalized horrors of a reverse mermaid
”Gah! What the heck did they do to the cute mermaid idol!” Jr called out with genuine horror as to what they had done.
“You made us resort to this. Now you're going to pay! Right Undyne?” she cried out before getting a confused look and repeating “Undyne?” and then suddenly realizing the issue. They’d replaced the arm she’d been holding the guard captain with with a stubby fin.
“Down here you dolts!” the fish woman in question called out from where she was hanging from an ankle warmer.
“Oops” she replied, and then “ah! Hey!” as the captain used her impressive strength to haul herself up the leg, fins, and then on top of SAYU in a few seconds, where she grabbed the mermaid’s hair antenna with one hand and used it as a steering control to force the giant fish to surge forwards towards them, the captain declaring “now we do things my way!”
”Ach, what do we do!” Jr called out, as the fish started to rapidly gain on both them and the struggling Bowser, who had just made it to the bottom of the not undaunting climb to hill atop which the base of the pizza tower sat.
”Cover me!” the mage called out, before summoning 4 clones of himself ”Or rather us!” and then starting to charge up a massive energy ball using all of their combined power ”We need to strike her down in one shot!”
”Alright, here goes nothing!” jr replied, as he switched from dodging to blocking, the prince wielding his paintbrush like a tennis racket or bat and using it to swat spears and pen nibs out of the sky, suffering mightily from each missed parry.
The sphere grew bigger, and the fish surged closer until it was big as her and she was right on top of them to have that comparison made plainly clear.
“Swat them from the sky!” Undyne commanded, and so SAYU tried to do just that, swinging a mighty kick forwards to try and give the boot to the mage, only to strike the prince instead as he rushed in to block one more strike.
The prince went sailing off into the distance like a football, while his mentor cried out ”Young master!” in alarm, before slamming the super sized magic right into the idol’s underside.
“Nooooo!” SAYU screamed out, before her final words distorted and then came to a sharp end as she fell from the skies and crashed down onto the dirt, flopping like a grounded fish for a few moments before going still.
Kamek did not wait to guarantee the strike had worked, the mage turning at once and calling out ”Don’t worry young master, I’m coming!” as he flew after the blasted away prince.
Which meant he was not there to see as Undyne pushed a flipper off of her body and slipped down from her fallen steed. Iron boots struck cheesy soil. She breathed deep to steady herself from what she thought had been a near death encounter, and then the chase continued.
”No no no, go away! Just leave! Go home!” Rika called down at Undyne, as the guard captain ignored her pleas and stepped a foot upon the bottom of the hill, and began to climb after them step by step, mouth grinning wide “Not gonna happen, I always catch the crook, and you lot aren't gonna be any kind of exception!”
In response to that, the ship girl grit her teeth and then, as the captain raised her spear to unleash another hail, made the same choice Jr had, despise her having seen how that had gone for him ”Keep going dad, I’ll be right behind you”
”Rika wait!” Bowser hoarsely tried to call after her, but it was too late, as the aquatic armored woman started running back down the hill towards the one who was ascending it.
“Finally, a proper fight!” Undyne replied, taking half a moment to appreciate the look of the ship girl storming towards her with the feathered cape trailing behind her, before she opened fire, directing her spear forwards and heralding a flurry of mirrors of the weapon to surge forwards once again.
Yet just as before, as they got close to the ship girl, the shots slowed, as if becoming submerged in water, allowing her to weave between them with relative ease. She came closer, and closer, barreling down the hill with the clear intent to slam into the guard captain like a horseless knight.
Her lack of knowledge of what to her was archaic military tactics prevented her from seeing just how bad of an idea this was to do vs someone armed with a spear.
Coming in with a gauntlet reeled back ready to strike, the ship girl attempted to deliver a slamming punch to her foe, only for Undyne to neatly step to the side and drive her longer weapon forwards, jabbing it straight towards her heart. An electrical sound fizzled, an alarm rang in Rika’s ear, as her energy shield absorbed much of the jab and left the resulting dampened blow merely scraping off her armor.
Undyne’s one eye widened in surprise and then narrowed with resolution in an instant, as in her other hand a second spear formed, which she planted right in the jaw of the gauntlet slamming towards her. With a grunt she resisted the power of the blow, skidding down the cheese hill a half step yet staying on her feet, and halted the strike a foot from her face.
Which left the barrel of Rika’s rifle pointed right at her forehead.
The ship girl hesitated for half a second to pull the trigger, unable to assess if this situation counted as an “unless you have to” moment, and that was far more than Undyn needed to take away the choice. The captain wrenched the spear to one side to pull Rika off balance, and at the same time slammed a kick into her side, sending her sprawling to the side of the hill.
Then she raised a spear to hurl at the ship girl, only for Rika to be suddenly launch into the air as she squeezed the featherfall rune. Undyne reacted quickly, tracking the ship’s accent and hurling the spear up instead, yet again, Rika rapidly changed momentum as she grappled to the ground once again, feet touching down once again.
“Impressive move” Undyne offered in compliment, before letting out a wordless warcry and charging forwards. Rika counter changed, yet lacking the momentum of her downhill run, and with Undyne knowing about her energy shield, there’d be no repeat of their first clash.
With swift strikes Undyne jabbed and probed at the shipgirl’s defenses while dancing just out of punch range, while Rika blocked with her gauntlets and hull blades and tried and failed to knock her foe down. While some might have mentally cursed about the limitation on her arsenal put upon her by the denial of lethal strikes, Rika’s order following mind had no such complaints.
Instead she got increasingly annoyed about new parts of her mind helpfully analyzing the spear fighting technique of her opponent from a rather useless and detached perspective, while also inducing an empty dysphoria feeling about her lack of a weapon to allow her to meet this foe at her same level.
But it was not like she could summon things from nothing to fill that lack, this she knew. Or had thought she knew, because that was, of course, a falsehood.
It was a realization that made her falter for just a moment, stalling her motions enough for Undyne to slip past a guard, and as the shipgirl saw the tip of the spear coming straight for her eyes, and heard the blaring alarm of her shields being down in her ears, she rushed the thought she had to its conclusion.
Pain stabbed her, but not in the head but in the heart, a familiar feeling as she called a belonging of the Pacific Princess into reality. Yet it was not the whale this time but “a spear?”
Undyne blinked as seemingly from nowhere an arched spine caught the point of her spear, halting it an inch from the visor of Rika’s helmet. The captain’s eye also saw the point at one end of that spine, and then traced down to where the heft was awkwardly held by the shipgirl’s gauntleted hand. Then she grunted as Rika slammed a kick into her as repayment, knocking the captain down this time.
She had no jumping trick like Rikas to save herself as she went rolling down the hill, but instead jammed a spear into the cheese to halt her fall, and send a volley of more forwards to ward off a follow up strike from Rika. Then she pulled herself up in time to see the shipgirl spinning the spear around her gauntlet, using a long strap attached to the weapon to keep it from escaping, the rotation battering the barrage of points away.
She also saw one more thing: “Wait, does that thing have a cannon at the base of it?!”
Captain Ahab (Pacific Princess): Rika can expend stamina to teleport the spear of the Pacific Princess to her person (stamina drain scaling with distance) or vitality to form/repair it should it be damaged or destroyed. It is about 4 meters long, and tipped with a double barreled ship gun at one end (used for ranged force or added force/propulsion), and an arched spine of sharpened vertebrae ending with a long thin point at the other (creating a rather unconventional halberd head). A band runs from one end to the other, which can be used to sling it over a person’s back or for particularly convoluted flourishes. Just like the whale that is its twin, only one spear can exist at a time. Comes with the secondary superpower of knowing how to use the rather unorthodox weapon effectively.
“That is sooooo cool. Like a gun sword out of an anime, only better!” Undyne marveled, before grinning and deciding “I’ll be seizing that as evidence”
Rika planted the barrels of the twin cannons to the ground and tried to give a witty remark in response, only to instead cough up blood that splattered against her visor, a result of her summoning the dead princess’s possessions, a cost that had been undone by Jr a lot of the time, now having to be paid.
Awkwardly, she pulled the helmet off and then tossed it aside.
Now properly mirrored, the two armored helmet-less spear-women faced each other down for a dramatic moment.
And then both rushed in and clashed once more.
This time it was no close range brawl of speed vs power, but a more artful ranged duel, as each spear-wilder jabbed and parried, gave and took ground, seeking either to pierce their foe in Undyne’s case, or bluntly bash them in Rika’s as she used the butt of her own pole-arm.
They went beyond mortal movements however, as Undyne summoned a second spear in and out of existence, switching between one and two handing her magical weapon, while Rika’s own spear flashed from hand to hand, into gauntlet jaws, or flipped orientation to bring point or cannon to the fore for the purpose of blocking or thrusting.
As opposed to the taunting bout between the pop-star and arrogant princess, the two soldiers fought in silence, though by no means a grim one. The shipgirl found herself matching the captain’s daring pointed smile as the two of them showed the world that swords were not the only artful weapon of stylish duels. Not the only weapon of heroes. That the weapon of the common soldier could be so much more than a faceless part of a spear-wall.
Tips grazed off of armor or won thin cuts against dodging faces, butts bludgeoned and left bruises through metal, and sheer fatigue took their toll, yet on they danced the rest of the world forgotten. It was a song, a clash of spear tips, of magic and metal, one no less beautiful than SAYU’s.
It was also a song that was rudely interrupted.
A thunderous blast roared, causing both fighter’s gazes to snap to the side, and for Rika’s to catch and slow the cannonball whizzing towards them. Both spear-women leapt to the side as a gang of Ratlings took that moment to try and both take vengeance for their fallen king and take down the captain of the guards who had been a mighty thorn in their illegal operations.
“We were having a moment there, criminal scum! Now lay down your arms, you’re all under arrest!” Undyne called out as she rushed in, and, in an ironic twist, tried to avoid killing where she could do so, while Rika flipped to the exact opposite.
The captain parried a rapier thrust and then grabbed a ratling before hurling them down the hill, smacked another with the but of her spear, hammered a volley of spears around a third to create a cage of spear shafts around him, and then just booted a fourth in the gutt.
Rika meanwhile used the cannons on her spear base for the first time, hoking the shaft under an armpit for support and then letting lose nailing the cannon fire-er the chest, before flipping the spear around and using its massive reach to skewer a rat bandit through the eye before it could even get close with its sword.
“Hey, stop killing the people I am trying to arrest!” Undyn demanded after the second kill, and was then very confused when Rika offered an ”Oh, sorry” of apology, and switched back to non lethal, bonking her third foe over the head with her spear’s shaft, and then catching several more in a whirlpool of water created by her Cloyster striker, which spun them around till they dizzily bumped together at its center, at which point it dissipated.
A few dozen heartbeats passed, and by the end of them the surviving ratling bandits were all groaning on the ground. Which meant only one thing
“Right, now where were we-” Undyne started to say as she pivoted around to face her main foe again, only for her eye to close half way through the movement and for her to tumble to the ground.
”What?” Rika asked, barely able to hear herself over the sound of her blood pumping in her ears, before the cause revealed itself.
An obsidian scaled wyvern swooped down, and upon its back were a tired looking Kamek and a beat up but smiling Jr holding his paintbrush, the latter having cast Repose upon the guard captain under the cover of the wyvern’s cave camouflage.
”Cool spear, and cool fight” jr complimented her as he slipped before slipping off the wyvern and tossing her a tape, telling Rika to ”Record her while she’s asleep … wow that sounds weird … do it anyway I wanna know if it works. Meanwhile I’m gonna prep a way to get her off our tails”
”I, wah, ok?” the shipgirl replied, much too tired to question any of this, catching the tape, slotting it into her tape player and then crouching down to record the captain's loud snoring while Jr splashed some paint on the ground next to her.
Ten seconds later and both were done and jr unceremoniously used a foot to roll Undyne onto the low detail painting of the city of tears he’d made, causing her to promptly explode into bubbles which raced into said painting, transporting the captain back to her city.
”Oh. Huh. I guess that works” Rika said, before her gaze snapped up the hill as she started to ask ”Is dad ok-” only to meet his eyes and receive an awkward wave from Bowser who still had a bunch of hill climbing to do, having been rather slowed down by being unable to tear his eyes away from the spear fight.
Not that Rika knew that was why. Mainly she was just relieved everyone in the troop was ok. It was a mutual feeling.
”Let’s get moving before these ratfolk get up, shall we?” Kamek suggested, as he stared down at a ratling that promptly shut its eye and went back to pretending to be knocked out.
The others agreed, and set off to catch up with Bowser for the, hopefully, safe from pursuers and full of friends Pizza Tower.
wordcount: 444 (+1) Midna: level 9 EXP: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (103/100) Location: The City of Glass Warp Charges: 3
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 Underground Roadway (Seiran Rebel Base Outskirts)
”It’s a full body disguise” Midna tried to clarify when her plan for stealing a ship while under guise was shot down, but at that point the conversation had moved on. Specifically all the way to mind control, which was very concerning to her.
”Can’t say I’m the most comfortable with that. We can give back a boat, we can’t give back the sanctity of someone’s mind” she argued, but fortunately, all of their various criminal schemes were rendered unnecessary by Sakura doing the simple thing and just, well, asking.
”I. Well. Don’t we look like a bunch of cynics right now? Guess we should have put more faith into the milk of mortal kindness … or the eccentricities of the idle rich I suppose” she joked to try and diffuse some of the tension/embarrassment resulting from their nefarious scheming being all for naught.
At any rate, Sakura had succeeded in getting them a lift from a man who just wanted some true friends, and thinking about it, she somewhat related with his sad situation, being royalty and all herself. A little. She felt a fair bit more bad that they were more or less using him for his wealth as well (they as in the rest of them, rather than Sakura who at this point she very much expected to genuinely bond with the man over the boat trip), and decided to avoid being part of that whole moral quandary and keep hanging out in shadows instead of introducing herself.
In doing so, she happened to overhear Zenkichi’s thoughtful comment and she had to admit, she was also not particularly fond of Goldlewis’s thoughts on ends justifying the means, or Benedict’s tacit approval of it.
”While I hope that taking down Galeem will give us a way to put everything back to normal, there’s no guarantee that we can just put everything back to the way it was. The dead might stay dead, and other harm might remain too. When time in my reality shattered apart, we had a goddess to put it back together. I’m not sure if we have anything of the sort that can do that for all of space” she offered, before thinking for a moment and gingerly offering a personal anecdote on the topic of ends and means.
”I’ve … been there. In a way. When I was overthrown, I got sent to a different realm, with different people in it, and I didn’t care about them, only saving my own from the monster who took my throne, and was happy to use all other people as tools to that end. It is not, looking back on it, a pleasant way to live. I also wouldn't have succeeded if I hadn’t learned to turn away from that kind of thinking, and care about those people as much as my own” she paused and glanced towards their ship’s captain and then concluding ”because acting like that definitely isn’t going to win you any friends”
After all, she thought, would even half the people who had joined up since they left smash city have done so if they were going around doing whatever they wanted, and damn the morality of their actions?
Fetzen
Frettzo
teenangstlife
Lord Zee
Neziul
Ariamis
rush99999
Simply Not Real
Shadowheart
