Ancestral Farmstead
Level 5 Tora - (30/50) EXP and
Level 4 Poppi - (28/40) EXP
Location: the Land of Adventure
Word Count: 1260
Beneath the wheeling vault of heaven, a primeval terror gripped the assembled warriors. It threatened to petrify them, like the calcified husks now serving as mere vessels to the uncanny crystal, but they found the strength to move. The fear chilling their bones became electricity filling their veins, galvanizing them into action, and one after another the heroes leaped into the fight. At their backs, Mimikyu emulated the haunting cry of the Thing from the Stars, spurring them on even further. In defiance the Centurion filled the air with his voice, steeling his allies' courage, before charging.
When the farmhands closed in to attack him they were met with Agoston's fury and a fusillade of Linkle's arrows. Bolt, bomb, and blow alike pummeled them, but the radiance-filled husks proved as tough as the fossils they resembled. They fell back when assailed, with a couple unlucky ones falling to their foes' attacks, but those that still stood took a Rest from Labor to mend their damage while their untouched allies continued to hound the heroes. Meanwhile, those that did collapse started to crumple in on themselves, like turtles melting into their shells, and from the gray mounts larger crystal
spires jutted upward. Once grown they started to pulse, the rhythm of each irregular but intensifying as the seconds passed.
Leaving both these crystalline aberrations and momentarily dealt-with farmhands in their wake, Agoston and Linkle fought their way to the Thing from the Stars while Kamek enacted his gambit. A cluster of bombs fell around the alien malignity, and after taking aim with his new weapon, Bowser Jr. unleashed a familiar ghostly clown head to seek the Thing and detonate, blowing up the bombs in the process. A bone-rattling series of explosions shook it, but when the smoke and fire subsided, the nightmarish thing remained upright. Linkle took the opportunity to pepper its repulsive hide with bolts, only letting off when the Centurion drew near enough to dare to take a swing at its lidless, leering face.
Its mouth yawned open, the color of madness within. A Transfixing Shard of crystal surged outward to strike Agoston, the range making evasion nigh-impossible. Its slackening touch sapped the strength from his muscles, decreasing speed and damage, but the next moment the crystal went soft and translucent, becoming a viscous, clear liquid that dripped into the ground. A moment later, Peach arrived,
boomshot in hand. She took aim, albeit a bit hastily thanks to her nerves, and let loose a thunderous shotgun blast across the Thing's body.
The heroes' explosive attacks clearly did a number on the thing. Bleeding and mangled, it looked almost half-gone already. Yet, with wretched eyes seemingly unfazed, the Thing proceeded to start the next round of combat. It spread wide its horrid limbs as the color of madness surged, dancing lightning-like across its body. With incredible speed and precision the lightning arced across all nearby combatants, tickling them with an incoherent terror before it leaped upward to Return to the Stars. Something fell from its body, turning into another crystalline aberration, and something about the Thing changed. Its odious bulk hardened, a gleam like the twinkle of far-off suns in its very flesh.
Grounded heroes take 15 stress damage. Airborne heroes take 25
Behind the embattled heroes, Tora and Poppi fought through their leftovers to join them in their fight against the Thing from the Stars. Using his partner's mech arms, Tora beat back the farmhands with punch after fiery punch. They swung their farming implements again and again, a few of the nasty blows getting past the Nopon's guard. “Masterpon!” Poppi alerted him, using her ether to shield against what would have otherwise been a heavy blow to the head. “Too many mooks, we wasting time!” She glanced, eyes wide, as their comrades took a jolt of otherworldly electricity. “Friends need us!”
Tora cracked a farmhand in the knee, bending it sideways, but the monster still swung its shovel. He thrust his gauntlets out to block, the tool shattering against them, and Tora pushed the grumbling husk away. “Am trying!” Turning halfway, he opened one arm to unleash a salvo of mini-missiles into the crowd. They did some damage all around, but most notably destroyed one of the crystalline aberrations. Thinking nothing of it, Tora turned to disengage and join the others, only for another aberration right next to him to blow up. The force hit him first, bowling him over, and after followed a vile, hollow keening. “Guh! Meeeeh!” he cried, clamping his wings over his ears. “Color in eyes! Hurts bad! Burns!” Panicking, Poppi picked him up and set him on his feet, half-watching the farmhands the whole time.
Tora takes 25 stress damage.
After another moment Tora shook and cleared his head, bleary but still capable. He hurried to join his allies, rushing with Poppi to the front of the group to defend them. As if on cue, the Thing from the Stars lurched forward, a hideous tubular length extending from
its maw to latch on to Tora like a colossal leech. It bulled straight through his guard and sank blighted teeth into his head, both poisoning the Nopon and jolting his confidence.
Tora takes 15 stress damage.
Mercifully, the remaining farmhands did not pursue the heroes and join the fight. The nearby crystalline aberration, however, started to pulse.
At the same time, the other half of the heroic retinue engaged the more worldly, yet no less menacing foe. After warning his comrades, the Ace Cadet forged toward the Brachydios, only to be waylaid by a few farmhands. He struck at them with both shield and sword, defending against their attempts to crush his bones with swung farming tools, and after a moment managed to push them off. Geralt joined him the next moment, passing off a grapeshot bomb before calling Bowser. The King of Koopas obliged, running at the Brachydios as he grew in size. While it had hesitated for a moment, unsure of the greater danger, the blue-scaled monster finally identified it as Bowser and tensed its muscles to attack.
Bowser propelled himself into the air for a colossal drop attack, a crushing weight strong enough to decimate entire buildings, but the Brachydios was no fool. An apex predator driven by primal cunning and killer instincts, it knew when to attack and when to evade. It halted its charge short and leaped out of the way of the Bowser Bomb, allowing the oversized turtle to sink himself a few feet in the soft, tainted soil instead. A wave of fire spread out in all directions, totally catching the Brachydios by surprise but doing almost no damage to it, while Bowser's allies would need to contend with it themselves. Snarling, the beast pulled its arms through its mouth, activating the slime with its saliva. Then it closed in.
Using its arms like slime-covered boxing gloves, it swung from the right at the enlarged Bowser's head. A hook from the left, brutally powerful, followed suit, and the Brachydios ended by bashing its own head into that of his nemesis. Using such an easily-telegraphed, high-recovery assault was proving to be a grave error—not just for the saurian pummeling, but what came after. The slime left over from the monster's strikes started to change color, turning from bright green to snot yellow. After finishing, the Brachydios stepped back to a neutral distance to ready itself for the next exchange. Geralt, the Cadet, and Euden, having not attacked it so far or gotten too close, were not yet targets.
Nero glanced back at Blazermate, her request for help with the parasites stopping him on his way to the RCPD's front door. At the survivors' urging V had already gone inside, leaving the devil hunter overextended, which Nero didn't look too pleased about. “Look, they're just going to keep coming, and you can find more zombies. Just get in here!” If they weren't already mopping up and on their way, Ratchet, Daxter, and Gene couldn't say they didn't get the memo now. After beckoning one more time, Nero turned and hustled in. A few moments later the police station's doors were closed, barred, and deadbolted. A final volley of shots from the windows sent the remaining Lost and Flood on their way, leaving the heroes a moment of peace.
It wasn't a full ten seconds before the newcomers, surrounded on all sides by new faces, found themselves greeted by an imposing
man with broad shoulders and gray hair. As he saw them, his stern, battle-ready expression turned into one of gruff appreciation. “Ah. Came as quick as I could when I heard there were more survivors, and here you are. Is that everyone?”
The thin, red-eyed swordsman who'd come to assist in the fight against the Riots spoke up. “No, there were more. Two men and a bear with a bird on his back.”
At the mention of an animal duo, the resident anthropomorphic fox batted an eye. “Oh, that's gotta be Banjo and Kazooie. We met recently. Good to see a familiar face, eh?” He drew curious looks from both Nero and V, and took them as a prompt for more explanation. “I'm Fox. Fox McCloud? Maybe they mentioned me? Eh, probably not. Did you see where they went, uh...?” His mouth hung open for a moment, the name of his fellow survivor evidently escaping him.
“Louis,” the swordsman filled him in. “And yes, they went up to the roof. Didn't get a good chance to see what was up there, but there was more fighting.”
The realization brought an aghast look from the shotgun-wielding man. “What?! And you're jus' lettin' 'em fight up there? We oughta back 'em up!” Without further ado, Ghalt took off at a run for the nearest staircase.
For a moment it looked like the old policeman was going to stop him, but he just shrugged. “Already sent someone, but the more the merrier, huh?” He crossed his arms and sized up the newcomers. “Well, I'm Max Howard. Most people here call me Captain. Welcome to our little prolonging-the-inevitable operation.” He gave a dry chuckle that hung in the air like a stormcloud. In the silence that followed, the general mood became easy to glean: spirits were not high. From the designated fighters like Leon and Fox to the civilians like the suited
man hunkered along the edges of the central hallway, nobody looked anything but bleak and despondent save those trying to put on a brave face.
Looking around as if he could find an answer on the wall somewhere, Nero put up his hands in bemusement after a moment. “So, are you gonna tell us what's been going on?”
Max nodded, his expression grave. “We've been holed up here for a long time. Several times a day we're attacked in waves, trapping us inside. At first it was just normal zombies, but now there's all sorts of monsters. Even worse is this darkness.” He gestured out the window at the oppressive black, far heavier and inkier than any yet encountered by the heroes—and puzzlingly absent when they came. Max continued. “More survivors arrive from time to time, and a couple try to get away, but we can't get out. There's no chance of getting everyone out alive. Our supplies are low, and any onslaught could be our last.” Another laugh. “Heh, that's about the shape of it. Not great, but we're holding on.”
For a few moments now, V had been staring out into the pitch dark. The gears in his mysterious head were turning, ruminating on something within the night. At length, he remarked, “...Those shadows are indeed not natural. They're here because of something. Something lingering, malignant.” Leaning on his cane, he turned to look the police captain in the face. “There's something out there.”
Max looked nonplussed. “Er...yeah, there's a whole lot of somethings out there.”
The misunderstanding evoked a tortured looked from V. “I do not mean the waste and the demons. I refer to something...different.” He scraped his cane on the floor, and from beneath him Shadow bubbled into being. Some of those around him tensed or jumped at the demon's appearance, but the big cat ignored them. With flattened ears, it glanced in the direction of a radio on the reception desk. Walking toward it, V declared, “This station...is being haunted.”
Though their charge made for a dazzling display, the angels clearly underestimated their opposition. Barely had they begun their attack before a new arrival popped onto the roof, staff in hand, and after a few words started to charge a spell. That left the others to deal with the assault on their own, but they proved more than capable. Donnie deftly avoided their formation by taking to the air, engaging one Acceptance personally in a wild struggle for dominance that ended with a shot to the angel's vitals and the martial artist on the ground. If not for his quick reflexes he would have been skewered then and there, but Donnie managed to intercept the Acceptance's lance, trip it up, and then impale it with its own weapon.
Ms Fortune, having been harrying the other angels with the fire support of both Jak's eco and Kazooie's eggs, spotted the Black Mage's spell reaching a fever pitch and rushed to dive backward. The next second a swath of lightning electrocuted the Catchet and remaining Acceptance, rattling their facades and sending up smoke from twisted crimson flesh. Before the flier could recover, its departed ally's lance clipped a wing, tearing out a few golden feathers and seizing its attention. Turning to face its attacker, the Catchet received a full-force Rising Sun Kick that blackened its eyes and stirred its wrath. From its undercarriage its drill popped out to gore Donnie straight through the middle, but the monk swerved to evade the whirling lance as he landed strike after strike, culminating in a punch that sent the Catchet spiraling into the emergency beacon. It reeled for a moment longer before dissolving into light, leaving the beacon to spin crazily.
The last Acceptance turned on Ms Fortune. It charged forward, thrusting its lance at her face only for the Feral to smile wickedly. “I'm one step a
head!” Her head popped right off, flapping her ears to soar over the lance, and fell on the Acceptance's own chest-face. Taken by surprise, it could only bellow as she started biting it. “Omnomnomnomnom!” Her body, not one to be outdone, dove and slid beneath. She detached her forearms and legs, using the muscle fibers to wrap up the angel's legs and tie them together. After dropping to the ground, she spotted what she was up to, and her eyes lit up with mischief. “A
purrfect plaything!” She commanded her blood vessels to burst, and her body flew apart, its pieces zipping around like bloody rockets. Their attached fibers pulled the angel's legs out from under it, making it fall. The Acceptance groaned while Fortune laughed. “Remember, remember...” Retracting their fibers, her parts converged on the angel's chest-face along with her head. “The fifth of DISMEMBER!” Slamming together, she recombined in a burst of high-pressure blood, blowing the angel's torso clean off.
Standing up, Ms. Fortune stretched herself. “Now that was fun!” she smiled at the newcomers. “You bunch can help
meowt anytime!” At that moment, a
punk-rocker with an axe barged through the door, almost tripping over Black Mage.
The other woman, the one also wielding an axe, looked downright furious. “Really?
That's when reinforcements appear? I swear, I'm gonna...”
“Hey, hey,” the new arrival said, holding up his hands placatingly. “Save it for the boss. Let's get inside before more show up.” Opening the door, he ushered everyone in.
The air following V's pronouncement grew silent, and -unless it was just the imagination- chilly. Nobody knew quite what to say, so V sighed and turned on the radio. The moment the sound came on, a man could be heard speaking in a serious, pleading voice.
”All of you please listen...when you've done unkind things to others...either to family or friends...when you badly hurt those who are kind to you...when you commit crimes and cause others disturbances...the karma will be facing you when you pass away...once the karma is done with you you'll be reborn as a ghost...drawn and wandered to all the places where you once sinned...list in the eternal limbo...”
“All of you may be aware of the screams which can be heard in the distance at nightfall...the sound made by a creature with a mouth as small as a pinhole...unable to feast...unable to gulp...it wanders around aimlessly and hungrily...full of pain as if it's being tortured...the moral here is to not cause anybody pain or hardship...because that is where you'll end up...once the wheel of karma has turned...what you do comes back to bite you...what goes around...comes around...”After this the audio looped, and after a moment's stunned silence, a dozen voices erupted into speech at once. The hubbub persisted for a few moments, Max trying to shout over the din to restore order, before Nero drew the Blue Rose and fired upward. His revolver's
boom shut everyone up in an instant, drawing all eyes to him, and he addressed V. “So what, you're a ghost whisperer now? Huh, like demons weren't enough. Well, what do we do?”
The mysterious one shook his head. “I know not. I have had no dealings with ghosts...I can merely sense dark energy. If you want to know more, I suggest looking around. Whatever it is haunting this place must have left a mark.”
Max cut in with a more practical consideration. “Sounds fun, but we've got people sick, wounded. If you want to help, you should be looking for secret passages. There's rumors that this place has some kind of hidden exit but we haven't found anything, so be my guest.” People, recovering from the intrigue of new arrivals and the mention of ghosts, were starting to disperse. From the direction of the stairs, Ghalt and Eddie Riggs could be seen approaching along with the heroes that attended to the roof fight. What the new arrivals would do next remained up in the air, but whether it be for traces of a ghost or secret passageways, there seemed to be a search in store for anyone with a mind to help the survivors of the RCPD.
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