wordcount: 3,711 (+4)
Location: Forbidden Kingdom - Shinjuku
Bowser Jr: Level 15 EXP:
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Rika: Level 11 EXP:
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The two sides stared each other down for a moment. On one side stood a turtle and a centipede. On the other three burly bandits, another three bandits with crossbows up in the second floor of the school building overlooking the, and an unknown number of other mooks currency running down the stairs.
In between, a dropped bag containing Jr’s Rotom Phone and the sentient NetNavi called Seek installed upon it.
You could have cut the tension with a knife, but the Rampaging Brute who led the bandits had no such time for weapons as subtle as that, and instead took a sledgehammer to the tension by bellowing “Don’t just stand there you wimps! Get them!”
Upon his shout, the two electrogauntlet armed boxer brutes charged forwards, and in response so too did Rika, wearing the form of the beast as she did so, a dozen or so legs skittering across the ground.
Behind, and above, the boss, the crossbow mooks raised their weapons, only to be drowned in a hail of lead as Jr summoned his Blodia striker, the massive mecha delivering an equally massive amount of firepower their way. Bullets ripped the already shattered classroom they were looking out of to shreds, and they fared no better.
Running under this hail of lead, Rika lowered her horns, not in charge, but instead to slip one into the strap of the bag Seek’s phone home was trapped in. She managed this and then lurched her head back up, leaving the bag dangling from the Beast’s horn. It also left her entirely exposed to attack.
The two boxers got into range and tried to use her as a punching bag, electrical gauntlets swinging forwards in a pincer strike combo of left and right hook. One hit home, sending the Bug princess staggering, only to face the wrath of a bug queen as Rike summoned the giant wasp woman that was her Irchor Queen striker, and had her slam down her meters long cleaver. The titanic blade was barely blocked by an electrified gauntlet, and it was hell on the thug’s arms despite this, but he failed entirely to block the follow up shank of her venomous stinger, which was speared into his chest.
The other Boxer didn’t even get to land his strike, as his fist was parried by a
double sided blade which was then slashed into him, emitting a secondary slash of blood as it did so.
Still, that wasn’t enough to take him down, and so while his ally stumbled, veins on fire, he drove a second punch at Rika. She took this one as well, but did so better than the first, the shocking blow failing to interrupt her sinking her jaws into the man’s arm and drinking his vitality.
Behind Rika, Jr tossed up a pokeball, bounced it on his shoulder, and then caught the released mimikyu Mimi on that same shoulder while catching the ball back in his hand and stashing it once more.
As he got his own reinforcement into play, the thug boss got plenty more, as a handful of
arsonists and
raiders came spilling out of the building.
“Get them, get them!” Their boss demanded, prompting the raiders to close with Rika while arsonists fanned out and unleashed a hail of molotovs towards Jr. The boy took a half step forwards in response to this, and then surged forwards in a Magma rush, leaving behind an explosive disk that detonated dramatically behind him when the flaming bottles rained down on it.
”Start shocking em Mimi!” jr commanded his shoulder riding mon, who responded by charging up an electroball and tossing it back at the arsonists. Jr joined in this ranged strike by forming and launching a series of spears their way, while also dropping off his striker
Sho to hurl an electrified scyth at them as well.
He then used Roxa’s flow motion to smoothly leap onto RIka’s centipede back, and to then leap up and grab the bag from her horns, yelling out
”Got em!” to let her know she was free to fight unconstrained.
The bug shaped ship girl responded by slamming her horns down into the boxer thug’s helmet, cracking it in the process. She then backed up, spewing a spray of purple poisoning globules from her maw that spattered both the boxer and the incoming raiders, their exposed flesh especially vulnerable to the attack.
One of them still managed to come at them, the raider grabbing his electric baton in both hands and then twirled it around himself wildly, turning himself into a shocking spinning top.
Jr created a spill of iron ball bearings in response to this, spilling them over the ground and causing the already unsteady raider to go crashing to the ground. Rika then sunk her teeth into him, before savagely tossing him to the side.
She then roared and surged forwards to horn smash into the next raider before he could try the same trick, while Jr took a moment to rip open the bag of loot he’d gotten off her horn and free his Rotom Phone from it.
”I got em!” Jr cried out to his sister as the device floated up into the air with ghostly power, a relieved looking Seek displayed on the screen. They became slightly less relieved upon seeing the absolute devastation the kids had inflicted on the gang while they’d been trapped in the bag, and even less so when Rika took a molotov right to the Beast’s face.
At this point the thug’s boss was getting absolutely furious, but the clocking on that all this was over a phone tipped him over the edge. He hoisted his enormous pillar and stepped forward, ready to smash the miscreants flat. “That’s it–I’ll crush you myself! Any last words!?”
“Razor! Just one moment.” As the boss paused, a lithe figure, previously unnoticed, slunk out of the shadows and into view. It was a
shady-looking woman with rat ears poking out of her dark hair, a fur-lined slate-blue jacket, matching platform boots, and high-waisted shorts with ripped stockings over shapely legs. As she sauntered forward, she kept her thumbs hooked lazily through the buckles that hung from her jacket from black straps, and a long tail, thin but muscular, hung behind her. In sharp contrast to Razor, she seemed completely calm, collected, and self-assured. “These little scamps aren’t worth you getting your hands dirty. Sure, they’re a little stronger than they look, but do you really want it known that big bad Razor had to go all-out on a couple uppity brats?”
Still seething, Razor turned toward his underling, seemingly tempted to curb her sharp tongue by venting his rage on her instead. After a second, though, he gave a grunt of acknowledgement. “Hmph. You ought to watch your tone, Jane, but you’re not wrong…” He scowled at the Koopa Kids. “What do you propose?”
“Why not leave these pipsqueaks to me?” Jane suggested.
“Oh?” Razor set down his pillar with a loud thump. “I’m surprised to hear that from you, seein’ how often you leave things half-done. Fine. Here’s your chance to
really prove yourself. Wipe them out.” He crossed his brawny arms. “Or you’ll be next in line.”
With Jane facing the kids, they got the briefest window to see something that Razor didn’t: the shadow of disgust sweeping across her face. The next second it was gone, though, and Jane sallied forth wearing a sly smile. “You got it, boss~”
After two steps, the woman launched forward with inhuman speed, practically a blur as she zipped straight toward Rika. Only a metallic gleam gave away the sudden appearance of a unique, double-bladed dagger in her hand.
The ship girl had been a little too busy being mobbed by the remaining foot soldiers to see this look, but she was on the ball enough to spot the flash of light, especially as the other thugs pulled back. Still, the woman was too fast for her to go for a bite, and so she instead used Pustule Bomb once more, spraying toxic globules from her maw in Jane’s general direction.
Jr meanwhile had seen the look, and it had prompted a little
”Huh?” from the boy, but the half-seen sight of Jane racing towards his sister put it out of his mind as he started forming knives of his own using his ferromancy. He didn’t have time to use any before she was upon her however. Jane was just that fast.
Rather than stop short, Jane dodged into -and
through- the poison globs with perfect timing, leaving behind orange afterimages. Before laying a hand on Rika, though, she went after two of the remaining goons one after another. With practiced ease, she swept the leg, then sent her targets flying away with a kick. Though still alive, both were too sore to keep fighting. “Clear off!” she crowed as she cleaned up the battlefield. “They’re mine.” In moments, the dance floor was just about empty but for Jane and the Koopas, with groaning enforcers scattered around the perimeter. The last one, taken by surprise, could only yelp as Jane locked her legs around the hapless woman’s spherical helmet and tossed her away with a flip. Without missing a beat the rogue stood back up, then darted Rika’s way once more.
In response Jr hurled forth his built up stockpile of iron knives, the several dozen ferrous shards hailing onwards Jane, each one warped in a blue glow. Using Astrid’s power he had them home in on the target, and then used Undyne’s to have those that missed suddenly reverse direction and launched back the way they’d come, though angled down so that they’d hit the floor before they hit either him or Rika.
For her part, Rika counter charged Jane, horns down, while also preparing to summon her striker Maria in the way of her if/when she dodged out of the way.
The Beast could cover ground quickly, but it wasn’t quite fast enough. Just before she could gore Jane on her horns, the rogue slipped to the side, afterimages in her wake. From her perspective time seemed to slow, while to the others Jane appeared to accelerate. She became a bladed blur, delivering several lightning-quick slices like orange streaks. When she reappeared, it was on the opposite side of Rika from Junior, clinging to the beast’s crimson carapace. In that moment the kids’ focus on offense rather than teamwork came back to bite them, since while Rika was focused on summoning Maria, Junior’s homing knives blindsided her on their quest to reach Jane. The woman kicked off her target and flipped away as the dark knight’s blood-red twin-blade slashed at her, and by the time Jane landed, Rika had reverted to her human form in a burst of static.
With a smirk, Jane hooked her thumbs back through her buckles, with no sign of her knife. “Cassette tapes and summons, huh? Here’s a little tip, kiddos–borrowed strength won’t ever make up for not knowing how to fight.” As she spoke, her tail snaked around the handle of a fallen
shock rod dropped by one of the mooks. It buzzed threateningly, and after lifting it up, Jane darted forward once more.
She was right in a way in Rika’s case, as she had no idea how to fight the way she was right at that moment, namely with her bare fists. She did know how to move however, bullet jumping to the side before landing in a slide and grabbing a shock rod of her own, and then pivoting the slide on her heel, facing the foe and holding up her borrowed weapon defensively.
She was very right in Jr’s. The boy was all borrowed power, be it his papa’s, spirits or minions, but he still put it to work regardless, Magma Rushing back from her, leaving a mine in his wake, and then continuing to dash evasively, though no more mines were produced by the extra movements. While he did this, he started trying to form an iron staff while also commanding Mimi to
“shadow sneak her” prompting the mon’s shadow to stretch up and rise up behind the woman to strike her with spectral claws. Far easier said than done with how fast she was moving.
Warded off by the magma mine, Jane went after Rika, reaching her right after the abyssal assumed a defensive stance. As she zoomed in, Jane went low, pivoting as she slid so that she arrived in backward kneeling position. Faced with the xeno-basher’s prominent descent, Rika would naturally lift her own baton to block the overhead strike without much difficulty. Thanks to her tail’s relatively weak grip, the weapon bounced off Rika’s guard, tempting her to counterattack. But that moment of vulnerability -in fact, the whole attack- was nothing but a distraction. A split second later Jane’s boot shot beneath the abyssal’s raised guard into her upper stomach to knock the wind out of her lungs, followed by a pivoting hook kick from the other leg as the thiren supported her weight with her hands. If a blow like that to the side of the knee didn’t floor her, it would at least leave her off-balance.
That momentary entanglement gave Mimi enough time to strike. While rising Jane couldn’t spring away to dodge, but she’d heard Junior voice his command, so she knew to be on the lookout. In the corner of her eye she spotted the incoming sucker punch, and in the brief moment afforded to her she twisted around to lift one leg in defiance. The reason why quickly became clear as a hidden blade popped out of her boot, allowing her to intercept the Shadow Sneak with a well-timed perfect guard. A loud clang rang out as yellow sparks flew, and Jane slid backward as she regained her footing. “Hah.” She grinned at Junior as her tail smoothly passed the xeno-basher into her right hand. “Guess you want your turn.” The next second she was darting toward him, eager to see what he’d try.
Jr’s first move wasn’t to defend himself but to cast
”Afflatus Solace!” on Rika using the crude iron staff he’d produced, the boy overestimating the injuries his sister had received from the confrontation.
Rika’s call of
”I’m fine!” as she pushed herself up off of the floor came too late, and the call of
”Watch out!” came after Jr was already moving. the boy dashed back, leaving no magma mine behind this time due to the cool-down, then leapt up, gaining inhuman amounts of height in the process. A foot briefly touched the top of the wall around the school that his repeated fallbacks had pushed him up against, before he leapt off of this too, combining it with another dash to throw a mass of speed into his attempt to get over Jane and to land next to his sister.
To at least try and dissuade her from leaping up after him, he had Mimi nail an electroball down towards her at the same time as he hucked a fireball. Paltry attempts at hitting her, but a distraction was all he wanted.
As Junior took to the skies, Jane followed him into the air with an impressive spring, her target only narrowly avoiding an electric clobbering. She leaped off the wall of the schoolhouse a mere moment after Junior did, but she’d lost track of Mimi during the scuffle, so the surprise electroball forced her to relinquish her pursuit and focus on a parry. Arcs of lightning discharged in various directions from the impact as she dropped back to the ground, away from Junior’s fireball. This was working out well so far; with such a deep bag of tricks, the squirrely youngsters could convincingly avoid capture, and by alternating targets, Jane could avoid triggering an Assault anomaly. Still, she needed to maintain appearances. “You can run…” With the xeno-basher in one hand and a dagger inverted in the other, ready to parry, she approached once more. “But you can’t hide!”
”Stun blast” Jr told Rika as quietly as he could, prompting her to step in front of him and raise her own stun spear at the ready defensively, while he raised up his iron staff and began to channel a spell. The plan was simple. She’d hold Jane back from Jr as he cast, but also make sure the ‘thug’ was held to a range that’d mean she’d still be hit when he finished casting
”Holy!” and unleashed an aoe blast 8 yards in radius sphere around him that’d stun their foe for 4 seconds. That’d give them time to pin down the nimble foe.
And if that didn’t work, Mimi’s copycat follow up might. And that didn’t. Well. Stalling worked for them too.
Jane dropped as she slid to a stop, digging in her bladed heel to halt her momentum as she watched the kids with narrowed eyes. When Rika made no move to attack, and no immediate spell went off from Junior, the thiren realized that he must be charging. “Hm.” With no telling when his magic would activate, or what it would do, there was too much risk of getting hit somehow. She performed a backward handspring, then dashed away to put some distance between her and her foes.
“Jane!” Razor thundered, irate, when he saw his underling backpedal. “Enough playing around! Finish them!”
The next moment the Holy went off, bathing the area in blinding radiance. Even though she managed to avoid the stun, Jane had to shield her eyes from the miniature supernova, her teeth gritted. “Neat trick,” she drawled. When she lowered her arm, though, she quickly realized that the kid’s critter was about to pull off the same trick. “Tch.” She clicked her tongue and retreated, forced to cede control of the fight’s pace. The light went off a moment later, leaving the combatants at a standoff.
“That’s it!” Razor activated his helmet, which folded out into a dome shape over his head. As its lights blazed orange, he beat his chest, activating an electric current in his armor. “You’ve wasted enough time. I’ll finish this myself!”
”Oh oh” Jr entoned, while Rika pivoted to face the new foe. Between him and the nimble Jane things were looking bad, and Rika immediately thought that they needed an exit strategy. As she began to voice this concern however, it was drowned out by a far louder sound.
“FREEZE!”
An unknown woman’s voice, amplified by a megaphone, resounded through the area. Razor stopped in his tracks. Sharp and authoritative, the woman’s voice continued. “Hands in the air! You’re surrounded!”
At some point during the fight, the situation outside its bounds had changed. The gang members watching from vantage points were gone, and in their place were
Pubsec enforcers, their weapons trained on the hollow raiders. “WHAT!?” Razor looked around, bewildered, a
tall woman with a dark, voluminous ponytail and a
sleeveless, cat-eared shieldbearer stormed into the area, flanked by a large blue-and-orange
Sweeper support unit.
As officers closed in from all sides, the woman lifted her megaphone to her lips again, her other hand on a colorful sidearm. “I said, hands in the air! All of you, now!”
Improvised weapons clattered to the ground as the hollow raiders surrendered. For a few seconds Razor stood still, a white-knuckled grip tightening around the handle of his weapon, but after another moment he let go of his pillar. It slammed down, and the veil of electricity around him fizzled out as his helmet deactivated. “Damn you.”
“Hey now, no swearing in front of the kids~” Jane sauntered forward with a teasing smile, completely unbothered by all the cops. With her thumbs in her buckles and no sign of her weapons, she tickled the underside of Razor’s chin with the razor-sharp tip of her tail. “Don’t want them picking up any of your nasty habits.”
“Traitor,” the gang leader snarled, veins bulging on his forehead.
Jane smirked as she turned around. “Gotta say, I’ve had some tough cons over the years…but this wasn’t one of them.”
After waltzing over to join the Pubsec officers, Jane leaned on the shoulder of the young man with the shield, who tried to ignore her without blushing to mixed results. At the same time, the lady with the megaphone spoke up again. “You’re under arrest for theft, assault, battery, illegal hollow operations, possession of illegal weapons, and murder. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney.” She furrowed her brows at Junior and Rika. “And…that goes for you, two. Hands up.”
That caused Jr to drop the taunting L hand gesture Jr was holding to his forehead, while Rika to fumbled the piece of candy was about to pop into her mouth. They stood frozen for a moment, the gumball clacking to the floor filling their stunned silence, before both, in sync cried out the same bemused question:
”What?!”
Fetzen
Frettzo
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Lord Zee
Neziul
Ariamis
rush99999
Simply Not Real
Shadowheart
