Current
Now running: World of Light - Winterland Daybreak, the Sky Unfettered
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2 mos ago
Now running: World of Light: The Tale of the Dark Itself
5 mos ago
Forever and ever, amen
9 mos ago
Calling out from Scatman's world
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11 mos ago
Called into action - by threats that seem harmonized
Bio
Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.
Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.
Hello! I’m very new here. I’ve been looking around the site for a while, and this RP really caught my eye. It’s honestly exactly what I’m looking for: group setting, beautiful, great writing, interesting locations, deep lore, and video game-themed. I’d really like to join! Though it’s not unlikely that I’ll struggle at first to blend in with more experienced players, my first few posts might not be very long, and I may not be so sure of myself or what I’m doing just yet…
I’ve read through the entire OOC thread and a good chunk of character sheets. I’m not very far into the IC events yet and not at all caught up with what’s currently happening, but I’m super motivated to read through everything just so I can feel fully comfortable posting (even if it takes a week or two before I’m ready to officially jump in IC).
In the meantime, I’ve been quietly working away and have actually already prepared a character sheet (sorry! I may have gotten a bit ahead of myself…). I’ll leave it here so you can review it when you have the time. It was sooo fun coming up with abilities and skills for her. I honestly struggled a little to rein it in, but I feel like I trimmed it down to a good starting point. Please let me know if she’s doing too much! Super excited to level her up and expand her kit if I get the chance.
In particular, you may notice I left certain mechanical aspects a little vague – mostly around status effects, IC cast times, durations, and the like. Any help would be much appreciated if those things need to be more specific! I’m still figuring out what would be considered over- or under-tuned, so please feel free to guide me in balancing things however you think is fairest.
Thank you so much! Have a great day.
Hey there! First off, welcome to the forum in general, and welcome to the RP in particular. I'll gladly accept all your lavish praise for the World of Light, but there's no need to worry about fitting in, comparisons, or experience levels, we're all just here to have a good time and I think I speak for everyone in saying we'd be happy to have you! Kudos to you for doing your homework ahead of time, you've already pretty much gone above and beyond. It's great to see your motivation, and I'd be happy to extend you all the time and help you need to get situated and started.
Your character sheet is mostly good. A different flavor of support sniper than Sandalphon, definitely. I have no problem with your skills or abilities, I would encourage you to add more numerical details if you want, though you don't have to be too specific either. I do have a couple of small notes. One is that your starting level should be 5, the sum total of the number of starting Abilities and Skills.
The other note has to do with the 'In the Now' section. The whole 'starting cities' thing was more for new characters at the start of the RP. Right now, the PCs are divided into White Team (following the Midnight Walk on an expedition through the Frozen Highlands to Moon Mountain) and Gold Team (participating in tournaments in the fighting game inspired city Esaka). In order to link up with a group I would recommend some changes. You could keep Marie's situation at Meridi-at-han, but she would need to be in Esaka for a music festival or some such instead. Or, you could put her somewhere in our path in the Frozen Highlands.
Right now, the team is at Krat Zoo and will be for another 2-3 weeks. The next stop on the expedition, 2 weeks after we leave, is Orca Space Center. The Frozen Highlands may not work as well in terms of theming, but White Team would probably suit her better than Gold Team since she isn't a physical fighter. Of course, she doesn't need to participate in the tournaments to be part of Gold Team, but it is the main event we'll be focused on while there.
Regardless of what you decide, I'm eager to see what you can do, and to welcome you to this all-star roster!
As the unannounced Organization member probably should have expected, the Seekers had a lot of questions for him. Nadia wasn’t one them, though. Interrogating him was no concern of hers, especially since the delivery of his pizza heralded the imminent arrival of the other orders. To her delight, her roast duck happened to be one of the first meals brought over, so while the others grilled the man in black Nadia got busy chowing down on succulent, crispy waterfowl. True to its name, the dish was both wonderfully aromatic and fiercely spicy, not to mention deliciously fatty. In order to eat with gusto, Nadia found herself obliged to guzzle cola in equal measure, both to quench the flames and offset the savory, somewhat greasy mouthfeel. After gruel and trail mix aboard the Avenger this morning, and a healthy amount of exercise on the way to Esaka, the feral had known she’d be hungry, but not until the duck hit her tongue did Nadia realize how famished she really was.
Still, despite enjoying her food, the catgirl didn’t completely tone out the others’ conversation. Her allies questioned the Organization member and received their orders one by one, then digested whatever information he’d divulged as they ate their lunches. Roland got almost nothing out of the man, then settled for talking about himself instead. His mention of angel wings struck Nadia as a little tactless with Pit in their midst, and judging by the team captain’s reaction, he probably felt the same way.
Being a little behind, Harry asked what Organization XIII was, seemingly directed at her and Band. Busy with her food, she shrugged to tell him I don’t know, which honestly wasn’t far from the truth. She knew that the Organization existed, and that they seemed to be interested in helping the Seekers beat Galeem, but that was pretty much it. Band didn’t know much better than her, either, but at least he offered his fellow detective an answer. “From what I gather, a third party faction opposin’ Galeem, like us. Been around a lot longer than we have, though. Seems like they show up to steer us in the ‘right direction’, but whether that’s right for us or them, I can’t say.” Not the most glowing endorsement, but considering what he’d heard about some of the Organization members, his description was actually rather charitable.
While Harry ate and drank, Kim asked something else. “Nothing that you couldn’t look up yourself,” the stranger told him. “The Kings’ fighting styles are very heavily documented. You can find all sorts of videos, and even supposed counterplay, on the inter-knot. Be warned that knowing counterplay and putting it into practice are two very different things, however.”
Band kept up only the barest pretense of being interested in the meagre lunch he’d ordered as he listened to the questioning. Sakura managed to wheedle more from that man than Band would have expected, including his codename. Xilgrev, he mused. That scrambled-up hoo-ha ain’t like any name I ever heard. Ramaxi, Gneidxick, Hallextram. Do all these clowns have ‘x’ in their names, or what? Pit got some clarification about the circumstances in which the Four Kings would need to be beaten, while Zenkichi probed Xilgrev, trying to get under his skin only to wind up a lot more rattled than he was. Band couldn’t blame him for looking into the ten-year problem, since that was something hanging over everyone’s heads. If Band had a kid or two in that same boat, he’d probably be even more desperate.
When the questioning came to an end, Band mulled over what he’d wanted to ask. As Roland proved, Xilgrev could be quite tight-lipped unless someone appealed to his reason. He’d more or less already told the team that the Organization intended to help them defeat Galeem, which tracked with what Band knew of the Organization members in the Sandswept Sky and Deep Blue Sea. Unfortunately he’d been stuck in Edinburgh MagicaPolis while the Seekers conquered the Under and Dystopiascape, so his intel could easily be outdated, but the lack of outright hostility told him that his teammates were at least amenable to the idea of an alliance. All his thinking must have shown on his face, since after Xilgrev pushed out his chair and got to his feet, the darkness within his hood turned Band’s way. “You look like you have something to ask me.”
Band exhaled slowly. “Just one thing. You say y’all wanna help us beat Galeem. I believe that. But lemme ask you this. When we do whoop its ass, will that restore everythin’ to how it used to be?”
To the detective, a second of hesitation spoke volumes. Xilgrev knew the answer; he was just deciding how much of it to reveal. After a moment, he replied. “Not…automatically. That’s why we must take a passive role. Organization XIII is biding its time, so that when Galeem is finally gone, we can give this world the push it needs to get the ball rolling.”
Band snorted. “How vague.”
“Indeed.” Xilgrev waved wryly. “With that, I bid you farewell. Fight, win, and take every ounce of power you can get. You’ll need more power -much more- than you think.”
He turned to go. In the silence that followed, the slurping sound from Nadia’s straw revealed that her glass was now empty. “Uh, whoops,” she said unconvincingly, crossing her arms. “So…now that’s over with, and we’re all signed up, I guess we got the rest of the day to ourselves.” She grinned. “Could do with somethin’ sweet, though. Anyone got the ‘scoop’ on whether or not Esaka’s got ice cream shops?”
Band removed his hat and began fanning himself with it. “First order of business oughta be findin’ a place to stay,” he remarked. “I’m guessin’ we can’t crash at our dojos, after all.” Metal Revolution, of course, happened to be a lot less hospitable than the average dojo, but he couldn’t imagine any dojo offering lodging. “Plus, we got a lot to learn about Esaka and how things work around here. Might be worth it just casin’ the joint for a while. Y’know, gettin’ a feel for everything.” With enough experience, any cop worth his salt could tune into the very soul of a city, obtaining an almost preternatural awareness of how, when, and where things went down. Whether through the whispers in one’s ear or the shivers down one’s spine, a city could have an awful lot to say. Of course, that sort of understanding took years, and Band probably didn’t have a week. Still, having one eye open would be better than going in blind.
“Uhhh…” Nadia not-so-discreetly checked her magic wallet. “That reminds me. I ain’t exactly flush with cash right about now. Havin’ sushi every night in Mafia Town kinda ate into my savin’s.” She looked between Sakura and Terry. “Hey, I bet you guys know everythin’. How’s a girl make a quick buck around this town, huh? Are there, like…” She lowered her voice. “Underground fightin’ rings?”
A sigh issued from Band. He was not at all surprised. He couldn’t necessarily argue with her, though. In a city where everything revolved around fights, the Seekers’ options were limited on such short notice.
As it finally began to roll forward out of the Hall of Adventure, Sandalphon retired to the stagecoach for a few moments. She didn’t need to rest or anything since Geralt and Ganondorf did the bulk of the work when it came to pushing open the heavy metal door, but she did want to check on the stew pot, which seemed to have started bubbling shortly after the Seekers arrived at Krat Zoo. Sure enough, the pot appeared to be slowly filling, even though nobody had added any ingredients as far as she knew. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, the archangel chalked it up to some sort of magic, and estimated that it would be full by the time the team found a way out of the sprawling zoo complex, just in time for a midday meal.
Sandalphon remained in the stagecoach just long enough to exchange a few words with Ganondorf, whose newest quirk demanded that he replenish his biomass well ahead of lunchtime. Their brief discussion bore no fruit, so by the time the stagecoach reached the Endangered Species Zone, she was back outside in the wintry wind, her boots crunching the snow with each step. Just as planned, Roxas and Heismay had gone ahead to investigate the mysterious blaze in the Rainforest zone, and if its source proved to be half as ferocious as it sounded, even from this far away, Sandalphon suspected they’d need backup. Until then, though, the rest of the Seekers could contend with the carcasses roused and flushed out by the scouts’ sudden passage.
Though uniformly grisly, most of the mutants were of no consequence, since few of the area’s endangered species had been particularly large or dangerous creatures to begin with. The exception was the cassowary carcass, the flightless bird twisted into a vicious facsimile of its distant ancestors, the primeval raptor. Sandalphon lent a hand with that one, creating a blue tile she crouched over before setting her sights on the monster. Two well-placed shots were enough to put it down, though she took no pleasure in it. A fate like this struck her as especially terrible knowing that these beasts had been rare and precious in life. “What a waste,” the archangel murmured. With the carcasses taken care of, though, the Reindrix could be coaxed forward, and the stagecoach could inch further into the zoo.
At the same time, Geralt had devoted himself to studying one particular specimen. Even if the team hadn’t already seen a mangled giraffe corpse out by the main gates, the sight of one in good condition and barely bothered by its macabre surroundings would have invited suspicion. Sure enough, it wasn’t long after the Witcher entered the giraffe’s enclosure, and both disappeared from sight, that Sandalphon began hearing a series of warped, unnatural roars, accompanied by the telltale sounds of combat. She couldn’t climb the exhibit fence like Geralt did, but she could Vault over or warp inside if needed. Still, she decided to hang back and let the man do his job unless he called for her. The Seekers needed a leader, not a helicopter parent, and Sandalphon felt it necessary to demonstrate her faith in her team. When Geralt did contact her, she made the call without hesitation. Her comrades weren’t here to study whatever plague had befallen Krat Zoo, and it was all too easy to imagine the disaster that excessive scientific curiosity could invite. This place was too far gone for any cure; only scorched earth would set it to rights.
By the time the stagecoach fully rounded the Endangered Species bend and reached the boardwalk of the Rainforest Zone, the battle against the advanced elephant carcass had reached a fever pitch. The monster squaring off against Mokou, Roxas, and Heismay was a true abomination, even by Krat Zoo standards. It had been dangerously strong and durable before its nightmarish mutation, so the addition of almost a dozen assorted animal heads, all spewing freezing vapor, made it a foe to be reckoned with.
The same could be said of both the Seekers and their fiery new acquaintance, though, and the three were making progress. Heismay concentrated on keeping the nightmare’s attention, his longsaber gleaming in the overcast darkness as he slashed, dodged, and leaped. Outside of the occasional Mudo, the hermit was an obligate melee fighter, so he kept himself tantalizingly close to the monster’s snapping jaws while the others barraged it with elemental magic from a safer distance. It was a very risky business, since just one mistake could easily prove fatal, but the former Shadowguard knew what he was doing. “How simple!” he taunted as the horror’s crocodile jaws, twisted vertically, snapped shut mere inches from his red greaves. He delivered a quick slice to its jowls, his blade barely biting into the scales, then kicked off the monster’s snout. “Hyah! It’ll take more than that!”
He landed on the wooden railing of the boardwalk roundabout, staying only long enough to tense his legs and then spring again as the monster smashed through the fence. He narrowly somersaulted through a gap between Mokou’s pinions, noting that her fiery feathers were really starting to pollute the arena. This fight was too fast-paced to keep track of both the horror and whatever safe spots she left for him. After latching on to a dead tree for an instance, Heismay leaped away from an icy blast, only to clip a couple flying feathers. “Ack!” He extended his wings to catch himself as he fell, only barely managing to glide before he hit the ground. A quick pat-down assured him that his fur hadn’t caught fire, and the next second Heismay was off again before the carcass could catch up. Better to suffer the girl’s not-so-friendly-fire than a blow from that monster, he reasoned as the horror snapped at his heels.
His distraction gave Mokou the opportunity she needed. After diving in, the girl set off a tremendous point-blank blast that scattered sizzling, foul-smelling chunks in all directions and left a smoking crater on one side of her target’s upper body. “Can’t argue with results, I suppose,” Heismay muttered. Orange magic streaked across his body as he transformed, darkness roiling within the Thief’s palm as he prepared a follow-up. “Some darker arts!” His Mudo struck the carcass’s main head in its midst of its thrashing, knocking its bulk neck askew. Hoping to open the wound left by Mokou even further in hopes of severing the trunk completely, Heismay dashed in with the Thief’s curved greatsword at the ready. “How about this!?”
Too late, he realized that this area wasn’t the blind spot he thought it was. While Mokou’s detonation destroyed several of the horror’s heads, it had left others mangled, but still operable. As Heismay slid in for a huge slice, the head of a hyena split open to disgorge a freezing torrent. “Bah!” After disappearing for a moment in the blast, Heismay reverted to normal covered in frost, his movements slowed as the cold coursed through his bones. The next second, the monster’s neck swung back toward him. He was lucky to avoid its heads, but the sinuous bulk still batted him away. “Blast it!” Heismay slid into a snow drift at the base of the railing, where he languished for a moment, numb.
That misstep, however, gave Roxas the push he needed to pull out all the stops. A moment after the mutated colossus finally sagged to the ground, defeated and disintegrating, Heismay got to his feet, shivering but free from frost. “...Well done,” he managed after a moment, unconvincingly reassuring his ally. “I’ll be fine, but I would not decline some healing power, either.” Heismay rubbed his hands together, then tucked them into his armpits to try and warm them up faster. As Mokou approached, the hermit looked your way. “Greetings, miss. I hope you do not mind our interference. Your firepower is most impressive, and you no doubt had the beast in hand, but I could not allow myself to stand idly by.” He looked around, scanning the snowy gloom of the once-verdant Rainforest Zone for other dangers. “So, what brings you to this accursed menagerie? Its no place for children, no matter how powerful.”
Once Mokou set him straight, and informed him why she was here, Heismay held up his hands in sheepish placation. “Ah, forgive me. Where I’m from, elda are very rare, so I am a poor judge of age.” Of course, she probably wasn’t an elda, but hopefully she’d accept the excuse. He cleared his throat. “Ahem. As for your mission, I believe it’s one-third complete already. I was fortunate enough to find one viking, Erik, hiding in the Hall of Adventure.” After stepping forward, Heismay held his little hand up to shake. “If you’re amenable to joining forces, at least for the time being, we can continue the search and rescue together. My name is Heismay Noctule.” In a realm gripped by winter, Mokou’s firepower would be a welcome addition to the team, but she didn’t look hurt enough to be friend hearted yet. With any luck, the chance would come soon. At the clatter of hooves and creak of heavy wheels on wood, he glanced over toward the boardwalk to see the stagecoach approaching. “Ah, here they are now.”
With the advanced elephant carcass out of the way, and the zone’s mutant kangaroos cleared beforehand, the Seekers and their new acquaintance could continue. The staff center opened by Mokou could be seen and accessed by anyone else before they pressed on, as well. The Rainforest Zone harbored no other enemies of note, so only dreary, leafless trees and dead, frozen plants confronted the team as they moved. Though the winding, narrow boardwalk kept the stagecoach’s speed down, its pattern still distinguished it as the Midnight Walk, so Sandalphon judged that they were on the right track. Toward the end of the Rainforest Zone, they did run into another small problem at a fork in the boardwalk. On the right side was a dead end, another roundabout that surrounded the area’s largest tree. A few normal-looking birds still huddled on its branches, and a sign at the base of the tree read do not disturb the wildlife - no shouting or whistling. To the left, a bridge leading over a frozen river and out of the area had collapsed, but thanks to Sectonia and her crystals the problem was easily solved.
Up next was what seemed like the central location of Krat Zoo, a large food court themed after the nearby Safari Zone. In addition to a variety of food and drink stalls, as well as covered tables, it featured four small glass exhibits in the center, formerly the homes of tarantulas, scorpions, snakes, and turtles. Now, though, the whole food court lay in frightful disarray. No doubt something like the elephant carcass had rampaged through it. Sandalphon was tempted to request that the others loot the place, but she was skeptical of any food found therein being safe to consume, especially after the discovery of parasites. She did see something curious, though, and asked Edward to stop the stagecoach for a moment as it passed by. “Best to check to see if another viking is hiding here,” she told the team.
She herself did not search the buildings for any vikings, though. Against one of the reptile exhibits leaned the half-frozen corpse of a strange man, his pale, stony skin festooned with strange tubes and brass apparati. Her keen eyes spotted an odd canister half-hidden beneath his body, as if he’d died protecting it. Leaning on her gunstaff, Sandalphon stooped and retrieved it. “Some sort of storage device,” she murmured as she shook it, hearing something rattle around inside. A quick study of its workings led her to an intriguing conclusion. “Encrypted. Curious. I am tempted to puzzle out whatever secrets it might contain.” With one last look at the body and the food court, Sandalphon returned to the stagecoach and climbed inside. “It should not take me long to decipher it. Please notify me if anything requires my attention.”
Just beyond the food court lay the Safari Zone to the left and the Aquatic Center, but even a cursory examination was enough to reveal the problem that concerned both. At some point, the enormous tanks inside the aquarium had suffered enough damage that the thousands of gallons of water had broken through the glass, washed through the ruined building, and flooded the neighboring Safari Zone. After ascending a small, squat flight of stairs to the Safari center, the Seekers could step out the double doors and witness a large area with its entire central exhibit submerged. Now, the second-story wooden walkway was more like a boardwalk encircling a lake, and all the trees and towers meant for the primates that once inhabited this place protruded from the water. In order to make it to the zoo’s final area, where that huge greenhouse towered above the complex, the stagecoach and its Reindrix would need to circumnavigate that boardwalk.
Of course, that was easier said than done. A handful of mandrills remained, using the suspension bridges to run between the towers and pelt the Seekers with projectiles. If they triggered the gleaming Reindrix, the team would definitely have a problem on their hands. That wasn’t all, though.
After about thirty seconds, the water began to ripple, and a copse of trees in the water began to shake. Sandalphon, unbothered by the clank of projectiles against the stagecoach’s armor, immediately looked up from her cryptic vessel, then set it down and swept out of the vehicle. “Immense life signal detected,” she reported, her pupils in the shape of radar scanners. There wasn’t enough room for the coach to turn around. The only way was forward. “Get ready to move.”
The trees rose from the water, but the island beneath them wasn’t rock or dirt. It was scales–enormous, heavy, snow-white scales. The scales and ridges kept coming and coming, until a gargantuan, primeval head finally emerged from the water, the head of an unnaturally enormous albino alligator, with just two toes on his left front foot, and a snout wounded by some prior battle. His glassy, colorless eyes locked onto the Reindrix, and his jaws hung open, drool running out between his terrific fangs. A low, rumbling bellow issued from his starving belly, followed by a deafening, hollow roar. He flailed his muzzle and tail, destroying the primate towers and bridges in mere moments.
As shrapnel -and mandrill parts- flew everywhere, Heismay stood atop the stagecoach, his longsaber couched and his teeth gritted. “What in blazes is THAT!?”
Sandalphon vaulted onto the roof and landed beside him, her Hexagun in hand and her voice much more commanding than usual. “Edward, go!”
Thought it was nothing unusual for her, Nadia’s cheerful smile persisted long after she sat down for lunch along with the other Seekers of Gold Team. There was just something inherently absurd -and therefore amusing- about situations like this, when so many wildly different individuals, all tasked with the monumental duty of saving the worlds, came together for something as mundane as a meal. In a way, it was also a heartwarming relief, a reminder that there could still be ordinary moments of peace and joy along the perilous and uncertain journey they’d undertaken.
Well, as ordinary as they could be, with a bunch like this.
Prior to the arrival of the waitress for their entree orders, the primary topic was, naturally, the tournament signups. It wasn’t a big surprise to Nadia that most of the others eschewed the Mortal Kombat tournament, despite the fact that they did in fact risk their lives every day on this insane campaign anyway. So, it would be her and Pit against the world, eh? She gave the young-looking angel a teasing smile. “Well then, let’s hope we don’t meet in bracket, hm? If we’re Pit-ted against each other, it’d be purr-etty humiliatin’ for you~” It sounded like a couple of the others hadn’t actually signed up yet, which gave them about ten minutes to seal the deal before registration officially closed. At the very least, the presence of a couple official combots in Pao Pao Cafe gave the more indecisive heroes an exceptionally convenient way to tie up those loose ends. When Roland asked which tournament everyone signed up for, Nadia didn’t respond. Hadn’t he been listening to the linkpearl earlier…?
When the time came to order, Nadia had to make a decision quickly. As a fusion between Southeast Asian and South American cuisines, Pao Pao offered a great deal a variety within its fascinatingly specific niche, and with Terry’s offer to treat her she didn’t need to worry about the cost. She ultimately decided on the sublimely savory-looking Brazilian steak skewers, only to be thrown for a loop when Sakura ordered the same thing. Well, that just won’t do. The feral’s prideful individuality meant that she couldn’t possibly ride someone else’s coattails, no matter how appetizing the skewers looked. “Uhhhhh….” Her eyes darted across the menu once more. After a brief hesitation Nadia went with her first impulse. “I’ll have the ‘fragrant crispy duck’!”
Everyone else placed their orders in quick succession. Harry’s request threw the server for a loop for a moment; American cuisine wasn’t among this restaurant’s many offerings, after all. Luckily for him, the kids’ menu catered to such tastes, though Nadia couldn’t help but feel like the detective was missing out. “Aw, what’s the matter?” she poked fun at him. “Can’t handle a little spice?” It sounded like Harry had enough on his plate with his unique choice of dojo, though, so instead of pressing him further she left him to Sakura to deal with.
Not long after the waitress left with everyone’s orders, the appetizers began to arrive. Nadia watched as those who’d ordered before her got their snacks, trying to suppress her jealousy as she waited for her steamed buns to show up. Seeing -and smelling- such delicious food only reminded her just how paltry breakfast that morning had been aboard the Avenger. Hopefully they’d been able to source some better chow soon.
As the conversation continued, Nadia spotted the familiar shape of bamboo steamers in the corner of her eye, headed her way. She reached for her drink as her appetizer approached, so fixated on the food as she sipped through the straw that she paid no mind to the server until he set the stacked trays on the table and opened the lid, at which point a puff of steam drew her gaze upward–toward the black hood of a familiar uniform that veiled his face.
Wide-eyed with startlement, Nadia immediately ejected cola through her nose, a terribly unpleasant sensation that left her sputtering and watery-eyed. Only after a moment could she choke out a few half-formed words. “You…! You’re…!”
Band narrowed his eyes. “Organization XIII.”
“Get a hold of yourself,” the man told her sternly, his harsh and no-nonsense voice somewhat nasal. It was not the sophisticated, Hungarian woman’s voice she expected, so this must be a different Organization member, she reasoned. As she recovered, the man calmly looked around the table. “Hmph. Out of everyone Ramaxi described, only two of you I recognize, and even then, only just. You’ve been helping yourselves to the spirits of the departed, I see.”
After a moment, he adjusted his collar officiously. “Well, no matter. If you really are the ‘Seekers of Light’, then our interests are aligned. Luckily, it seems you’re already on the right track.” Selecting an empty seat, the Organization member joined the party without their consent. “There are no secret underground chambers or specially-locked temples in this city. The Guardian you’re seeking…has been staring you in the face since you arrived.”
He looked around as if to prove his point, though he didn’t point out any examples. This guy really knows how to chew the scenery, Nadia thought.
After a moment, he continued. “The Guardian waits for you at the end of the tournaments, along with the Four Heavenly Kings. Well…it’s more accurate to say that the Guardian is the Four Kings. One sovereign soul, split four ways. Only if all four are defeated can the Guardian spirit be claimed.” He leaned forward, his clasped hands on the table. “So I hope you’re ready. Once the Kings realize who you are, they’ll spare no expense to take you down. You’ll need every modicum of power you can get. Understood?”
Band kept quiet for a moment, mulling over the information. He hadn’t met any Organization XIII member before, but he’d heard of them. Nobody knew if they could be trusted. Even if some of them had helped the Seekers in the past, their first run-in with one had been a battle in some sort of extradimensional casino, according to Tora and Poppi. This man’s claim of a four-in-one Guardian seemed incredulous, but Band knew that sometimes, the truth could be stranger than fiction. If it was true that Esaka’s Guardian would survive if even one King remained standing, that was one hell of an insurance policy. “How do we know you’re tellin’ the truth?” he managed.
That seemed to annoy their new friend. “I have no need for petty deceptions. Disregard my advice if you wish; waste all the time and strength you like,” he told the Seekers coldly. “Maybe your successors will have more sense.”
Nadia wrinkled her nose, a wry smile on her face. This guy sure wasn’t doing a great job winning them over. Maybe he figured that if he had the truth on his side, he had no need for charisma. “Well, we were gonna take out the Kings anyway, so ‘fangs’ for nothin’,” she told him, showing him her teeth before popping a dumpling into her mouth.
“Hmph,” the Organization member grunted. At that moment a waitress began to arrive with the first few entrees, including a slice of pizza from the kids’ menu for the newcomer. He stared down at it for a moment. “All the restaurants in Esaka, and naturally, you ‘heroes’ chose one without Japanese cuisine.” After tucking a napkin into the collar of his black coat, he picked up a fork and knife and began to eat in a stiff, reserved manner.
Taken aback, Nadia just looked around at the others as if to ask what is happening right now? Fortunately, the arrival of her duck gave her something else to focus on. It did occur to her that ‘Ramaxi’ must be the name of the Organization lady who helped Blue Team back at that nightmarish island, though. Why couldn’t the team have her again instead of this weirdo, she wondered. This seemed like a good time to ask questions, but hopefully someone like Band would instead, since for once the feral couldn’t figure out what to say.
Of course, Band was taking his time putting his thoughts together. The stranger’s words made sense, and his fellow New Meridian was right in that they’d been planning to challenge the Four Kings anyway since that seemed to be how all four tournaments would end, but the alleged revelation of the Guardian’s nature made winning on all four fronts simultaneously that much more important. Theoretically they could try their luck again every week for the foreseeable future, but that would only give the Four Kings more time to take them out. Whether this Organization Member spoke the truth or not, the Seekers had a long road ahead of them. Best to enjoy a peaceful bite to eat while it lasted, Band supposed.
For a moment, Heismay was confused by Blazermate’s nonchalance when he confronted her with his discovery. When she directed his attention to an abomination that she coaxed into doing a macabre jig through her suffering shield’s screams, though, his bafflement quickly turned to horror that her giggles only exacerbated. For a moment he could only stare, his ruby-red eyes wide and his mouth agape, until he turned back toward Blazermate to look at her in a new light. “What dreadful, malign sorcery is this? Puppeting, and even…reconstituting the deceased.” Heismay shivered, and not just from the cold permeating the Hall of Adventure. “The dead should be allowed to rest in peace.” He glanced at Sandalphon, his gaze incredulous. “And this is the individual to whom we’re entrusting our health? I shudder to think of what she’d do to us with that same smile on that metal face of hers.”
Though Sandalphon hid it better, she didn’t like Blazermate’s flagrant lack of respect for the dead much either. As always, though, she chose the pragmatic approach. “Like it or not, her single-target healing output is beyond compare. With that in mind, such eccentricities are a necessary evil. Best to remain on good terms with her.”
Knowing that she was right, Heismay breathed in deep. “Understood.”
A moment later, Blazermate was gone anyway, taking a more direct route out of the building in order to see what she could do about the blocked door that obstructed the Seekers’ path. By now, only a few parts of the Hall of Adventure remained unexplored, but between Geralt and Edward’s retinue it wouldn’t be long before the heroes had the whole place cleared out. Sandalphon’s vigilant observation had identified no signs of contamination among either the Reindrix or her subordinates so far, so she remained somewhat optimistic about the carcasses not being infectious. Still, the less time spent here, the better.
One by one, the Seekers stowed the items they’d pillaged from the Hall of Adventure and its monstrous denizens in the stagecoach, including the dubious Ratshaker. After Sectonia deemed the ratshaker cursed, Heismay happily stuck it in the empty wooden cage hanging from the stagecoach’s rear, where the jolting and jostling of the wagon along the Midnight Walk would shake it enough to elicit amusing noises. Sandalphon took a greater interest in one of the items Sectonia saw no use for, a strange blue crystal that seemed to possess some sort of power. Sandalphon held it up and peered into its scintillating, luminous facets, trying to divine its purpose. “There’s something…almost spiritual about it,” she hypothesized after a few moments. Without any appraisal skills of her own, she couldn’t discern anything else. The archangel slipped it into her pocket, making a mental note to scrutinize it later.
Before long, Blazermate managed to unblock the door, and once the reunited Seekers pushed it open, they could proceed into the zoo. A manmade river exhibit blocked their way, but before she buzzed off to enrich herself Sectonia was kind enough to plonk down an enormous crystal in its middle to serve as a makeshift bridge. The Reindrix were not eager to cross it to the open area’s central plaza given the presence of frenzied mandrill carcasses in the cages there, so while Sectonia’s antlers strove to keep the mutants boxed in, Blazermate sent forth her corpse heap to crush them. It wasn’t that big or strong yet, but even after they broke free the mandrills couldn’t tear it apart effectively, so once the enemies were dispatched, it was a net positive for the fleshmob’s biomass.
Its accumulation led to one other problem that Sandalphon was quick to recognize and address, though. “Blazermate, I understand that agglomeration is useful, but the Reindrix abhor it.” The stagecoach’s draft animals refused to advance as long as the corpse pile was in front of them, struggling inside their harnesses as they tried to flee in different directions. “Please dispose of it or move it out of our way and take up a vanguard position, ASAP.”
To the left, the drained canal led to a waterfall frozen against a tall rock face. On its other side towered an enormous greenhouse, but with no paths leading that way, that seemed like an area for later.
Once the plaza was clear, the Seekers could slowly advance through. Up ahead, on the other side of an archway formed from natural-looking red rock, lay the Endangered Species Zone. This took the form of a large, clockwise bend, through which the Midnight Walk ran. On the outside of the bend, embedded in the rock wall, were a half-dozen smaller exhibits housing interesting critters like crested porcupines, cassowaries, red pandas, giant tortoises, and numbats. On the inside of the bend stood a larger, octagonal exhibit that connected to an inside shelter behind it. While most of the exhibits held only carcasses, this one actually contained what looked like a normal giraffe, still alive and kicking despite everything going on in the zoo–including the unruly carcasses around the Endangered Species Zone itself.
Before reaching the bend, though, the zoo’s loudspeakers buzzed to life. “My, my,” a haughty noblewoman’s voice resounded. “Welcome to Krat Zoo. To think that you all would enter this place while I, Markiona, Puppeteer of Death, am here. Have you no fear?” At that, though, the loudspeakers went quiet. Even if this mysterious Markiona could hear the newcomers, it seemed she wasn’t all that interested in conversation.
That wasn’t all that concerned the Seekers, though. Up ahead, past where the Endangered Species Zone fed into the Rainforest Zone, plumes of smoke indicated the presence of raging flames. Heismay hadn’t seen any smoke when the team first crested the hill that overlooked Krat Zoo, so whatever was causing the blaze must be new. His keen ears could also hear the echoes of a distant, awful chorus of animal cries, oddly and unsettlingly synchronized. Horrible noises were nothing new in Krat Zoo, yet this sounded even worse somehow. “I have a mind to investigate those flames,” he declared, eying the bend up ahead. “That area strikes me as a good spot for an ambush. If there is a trap, best to spring it early, then clear it out, hm?”
Though now forced to consider this newly-announced Markiona, Sandalphon understood and nodded at Heismay's proposal. "Confirmed. Stay alert for any sign of the possible mastermind as well."
Heismay then waved at Roxas. “Young man, care for another run?”
Roxas was, so the two got moving. They left the stagecoach and accompanying Seekers behind to dash through the Endangered Species Zone. Their passage drew the attention of the human carcasses in the area, but their reaction speed left them in the dust, and the distraction left them with their backs to the enemy team, easy pickings. These foes weren’t intelligent enough to set up any actual traps, but they had a habit of finding strange spots to lay in wait for prey to come near, so the scouts did rouse a couple unseen carcasses as they darted by. This included a mutant cassowary, its aberrant claws and beak deadlier than ever when accompanied by the bladelike bone protrusions of its featherless wings, and several tortoises, with bulky, blunt-tipped tentacles protruding from their shells. All the while the giraffe just watched, impassive, as if waiting for something.
When they entered the Rainforest Zone, Heismay and Roxas immediately found the smoldering, ashen remains of several partially-disintegrated kangaroos carcasses, one still whole enough to suggest a very recent demise. There were more outsiders in the zoo than Erik and Eryk, clearly. The two did not linger for long, though, since now they could not only hear the twisted, bestial chorus quite clearly, but see bursts of flame through the winter-stripped trees. With a combination of flowmotion and eugief agility, the two abandoned the Rainforest Zone Boardwalk (it being just wide enough to accommodate the stagecoach once it came this way) and hustled through the former primate habitat. A few seconds later, they reached the boardwalk roundabout and could witness the advanced elephant carcass in all its gruesome splendor. From its rotted head had sprung a massive, serpentine trunk of amalgamated flesh and animal heads, with hypothermic mist cascading down from each loathsome maw. Worst of all was the huge, malformed crocodile head that crowned this grotesque abomination, its grisly antlers not even a surprise at this point. Heismay recoiled; how could something like this possibly come to be!?
The sight of a girl with long white hair and fiery wings returned the hermit to his senses, though. Heismay watched her bombard the monster with burning plumes, to little individual effect. It wasn’t that they didn’t look weak, but that this beast seemed uncommonly sturdy, its inner cold quelling the flames that threatened to consume it. Maybe she didn’t need help, but Heismay wasn’t about to take that chance.
“O, power of kings!” He leaped into the air, glided toward the action, and assumed his Archetype form to land with a giant Dark Sword slash across the monstrosity’s side. “Take this!” He turned back and leaped away as the carcass craned its neck around, then blasted the spot with a frigid spray from its mouth. Heismay exhaled as he landed on a railing, his eyes narrowed. Against a foe this dangerous, hit-and-run tactics would be best; even if he didn’t do much damage, splitting this thing’s attention would be invaluable. “We’re here to help!” He called to Mokou, his reinforced longsaber in hand as he prepared to do his part.
Meanwhile, the Seekers’ stagecoach was carefully advancing toward the Endangered Species Zone. Sandalphon kept an eye on the from the hidden staff center discovered by Sectonia, was mildly surprised when someone other than Geralt emerged. After that darkly-dressed stranger hustled the opposite direction toward the zoo entrance, the Witcher returned with a great deal of loot. He only offered Sandalphon the darts to look at, though she could tell from the glow that shone through his sack that it must contain a wealth of ergo crystals. Unfortunately, conventional medicine was not the archangel’s specialty. “I cannot determine its intended use without documentation I’m afraid. Since it appears to be designed for use with a specific nonlethal firearm, there may be more clues if we can find that.” Turning away, she scanned the area again, looking for enemies or additional third parties in need of rescue. “My scans show no other life signs in the current area. There is a strange reading at the bottom of the basin, though.” While she couldn’t tell what it was, she detected something unusual at the center of the deepest, widest part of the river exhibit, right beneath the broken footbridge.
Ms. Fortune and Robo-fortune glared at one another, eyes blazing and teeth bared, the tension between them palpable as the other NMO fighters looked on. For a few seconds they seemed liable to throw themselves at one another once more, all notions of propriety gormlessly discarded in favor of a visceral, definitive showdown here and now. After a moment, though, Robo gestured with her head toward the dojo’s main room a few dozen feet away. “Shall we take this inside?”
Nadia eased up slightly, a smile on her face as she entertained the idea. “Sure. If we’re gonna do this, let’s do this right!”
Taking the lead, Robo stalked into the paper court, her head pivoting in its socket to keep her unblinking optics on her opponent no matter which way her body faced. Each metallic footfall hit the ground like the rod of a jackhammer, much heavier than Robo’s build would suggest. While Nadia’s stride looked far more relaxed and casual, she did not break eye contact with her adversary either, her expression playful and mocking the whole time. “A metal clone of Ms Fortune, huh?” Nadia rolled her eyes. “Guess that makes you an aluminum ‘foil’.”
Unflinching, Robo scorned her in a cold, dismissive tone. “You are old news, fleshling. I am the upgrade.”
“Upgrade? Ha! You really a-mews-me! While you’ve been sittin’ here, grindin’ your gears, I’ve been rackin’ up so much power it’d make your head spin. As a matter of fact, why don’t I do you a li’l favor…” CLANG! Nadia’s combat pack hit the ground, followed shortly by her bait launcher and Athame daggers. After her weapons clattered to the floor, the feral stretched her shoulders and arms, feeling limber. “Don’t need my new toys to strip your screws!”
As the two assumed opposing positions, Annie declared the terms of the fight. “This’ll be a standard one-on-one fight, no outside help allowed. First to two knockouts takes it.” She raised an eyebrow at Nadia. “Got it?”
“I’ve been around the block,” the feral assured her. “I know how this plays out!”
Annie crossed her arms. “You both ready then?”
“Affirmative,” Robo told her.
Nadia smirked. “A-fur-mative!”
After Annie nodded at Beowulf, the big man raised his arms. “Then, ladies and gentlemen it’s…SHOWTIME!”
As Nadia burst forward, Robo surprised her with a medium Theonite Beam. “Buster.” With her arms crossed, the pink laser blazed from her eyes with surprising speed and caught the feral in the shoulder. Taken aback for but a brief instant, Nadia rolled with the punches and spun along with her momentum, then charged on all fours. “Beam.” When Robo crouched down to fire off a lower-profile light beam, Nadia stopped short and blocked, then resumed her sprint the second Robo’s ray died down. With her opponent getting close, Robo jumped up to execute a x-swipe and throw down a four-pronged laser cutter,”Variable,” then canceled into a downward Theonite Beam from her mechanical heart. “Beeeam.”
Nadia sidestepped the former, then performed a Cat Slide to narrowly scrape past the latter. After sliding underneath her airborne foe, Nadia blasted out her legs in an explosive Fiber Upper. “Enough purr-jectiles!” She snapped up into the air to follow up with a handful of high-flying strikes, heightened and accelerated by her Elation blessings. “Eat this!” A moment later she finished with a flexible axe kick right to the schnoz. “I’ll foot the bill!”
The kick smacked Robo back down to the ground, but when Nadia descended for a plunging tail blade, her doppelganger teched backward and Nadia’s tail pierced nothing but the floor. “Quartz.” Robo dashed in to retaliate with a low-frequency knee blade, struck with an electrical current flowing between her hands, then brought one metal mitt down in an electric launcher. “Grounded.” Rather than follow up after the launcher, though, Robo took the moment while Nadia sailed through the air to pop out three headrones. “Launch, headrone. Heads, up. Form the head.”
By the time Nadia got to her feet, her foe had already issued the command. “Beep-beep-plarp!” All three headrones opened up to fire a volley of micro-missiles each. Knowing they’d lock her down long enough for Robo to mess her up, Nadia tried to outrun them, racing around the room as a barrage of explosions went off behind her.
Unfortunately, her predictable path allowed Robo to cut her off and knock her down with a Theonite Beam, and on waking up Nadia had no choice but to block the rest of the missiles. “Hell of a purr-cussion!” Nadia hissed through gritted teeth as the smoke cleared, her arms seared and smarting from the chip damage. “With all those rockets, you’re gonna give me thrust issues.” When she saw Robo launching more headrones, she quickly took off running, her anger speeding her steps. “Nyaat if I have anythin’ to say about it!”
With no other ideas, she closed the distance with Charge, becoming a bolt of lightning that blitzed straight through Robo-fortune. As sparks flew, Nadia rematerialized behind her foe and pivoted around with a double slash. The Battery hit hard, but did not allow her to follow up, so as Robo put up her defenses Nadia leaped into the air. She intentionally whiffed a light claw slash to bait out a high guard, then landed and lashed out with a low kick. “Shin-terdiction!” It worked like a charm, and as her foe fought to keep her balance Nadia continued with a pivoting kick, then seized her tail from the floor to carve across Robo’s chest with it in a reverse grip. After that a High Brow head smash launched Robo upward, and a quick air combo ensued. It ended with an upside-down, multi-hitting windmill kick that jailed Robo long enough for Nadia’s ears to plunge into the ground and restand her foe for a follow-up in the form of her level one Blockbuster, Fur-seker Purr-age. “Let’s cut to the chase! EE-YAH!”
“Pain.” The barrage of slashes ended with a hefty cross slash, and with that, Robo hit the ground. “Hurt,” she muttered mechanically.
When the machine failed to rise right away, Annie pointed toward Nadia, pleasantly surprised. “Round one, Ms Fortune.”
Nadia grinned as her opponent slowly picked herself up. “One down, one to go!” She pulled her head off, then tossed it up and down in her hand. “I guess the cooler head prevailed, eh? Now, let’s spice things up!”
She rolled her head like a bowling ball, only for her body to immediately get floored by a heavy Theonite Beam. Her head made a beeline for Robo, using her ears as little feet as she narrowly dodged laser after laser, then launched toward her for a big chomp. “Mrrow!” Her hardened teeth closed on Robo’s arm, digging in deeper as her foe nipped her again and again with a scissor pincher, until Robo gave up and blasted her with a point-blank eye laser. “MEOWCH!”
Her body ran in, but Robo was ready. She sizzled Nadia with a light laser, then immediately canceled into a Blockbuster of her own. As Robo knelt, her torso extended and her arms transformed. “Catastrophe Cannon…Alpha.” Huge pink beams surged across the room, seemingly consuming Nadia’s body for a moment as her head writhed, unable to assist.
“Eugh…” Nadia groaned as the light died down, her eyes bleary from the pain. “That must be…your cannon-ical form…” When she shook out the dizziness, she saw Robo scooting toward her head to finish what she started. “Ugh, nyaat good!” Her attempt to dodge failed as a Scroll Heel sliced her, the yellow razor blades raking her face. “Grrrah!” Before Robo could bring down an electric ground pound, a blast of blood from Nadia’s neck covered her optics, and the head scooted away into her smoking body’s waiting grasp. Her legs transformed with Fluffy Soft to close the distance, then launched a white tiger dropkick to cut into Robo’s defense. Unfortunately, that led her straight into her doppelganger’s disjointed Colimating Saw, and the trade of blows left Nadia on the floor once again, half-conscious while her foe managed to recover.
“Round two, Robo-fortune,” Annie declared.
“Good effort though, Fortune!” Beowulf cheered her on, pumping his fist.
Balling her own fists, Filia nodded. “Yeah, nice try! You can do it!”
“Indignant.” Robo-fortune glared at them. “Why?”
With an annoyed grunt, Nadia got to her feet. She wiped blood from her lip as her cuts closed themselves. “Alright, tin cans. No more kitten around!”
Round three began, as one might expect, with a barrage of fingertip-lasers from Robo-fortune. Nadia approached, dash-blocking appropriately, until Robo went for a heavy Theonite Beam from her heart. “Plutonic.” The feral bent over backward, narrowly avoiding the big pink ray, then hurled her hardened tail like a blade. Her foe blocked it, then grabbed it in both hands to try and break it in half, reasoning that the pain would stop Nadia in her tracks. Thinking quickly, Nadia let her tail go limp as she ran forward, rendering it break-proof. “Oh.” It took Robo only a second to realize this and return to her previous strategy, but by then Nadia had leaped into the air to soar over the next Theonite Beam, then spike her head down like a volleyball. It beaned her opponent on the metallic cranium, then landed behind her as Nadia touched down in front.
“Checkmate!” With Robo sandwiched, the game was on. Nadia and her head alternated attacks in a grueling, unpredictable beatdown, resetting the hapless robot over and over as she tried and failed to block the two-pronged assault. Even if she did guess the right direction to block, Nadia could grab and throw her, and when Robo found what seemed to be gaps in the feral’s pressure, they turned out to be devious traps as Robo’s challenge led to a merciless punish. After a few moments, Robo bet it all on another Blockbuster, counting on its armor to soak her foe’s hit and blow her away. Unfortunately for her, Nadia was in the bot’s head. She cut her offense short to block it out, and even as she took a lot of chip damage, her heart soared–she knew she’d won. “Baited! Nyahahaha!” When the beam died down, she had free reign to chain together an onslaught of claw slashes and kicks. The manic laughter from Wounds of Plenty fired off in the middle of it, adding insult (and even more injury) to injury, and after a few moments Nadia finished with another Fur-serker Purr-age to seal the deal. “Cat scratch fever!”
Robo-fortune wasn’t quite finished, but when she went for a desperate nail stab at Nadia’s throat, she leaned out of the way, sunk her teeth into her foe’s metal arm, then yanked the limb from its socket. “Rip-off!” Taking it by the hand, she whipped it around like a baseball bat into Robo’s head. Oil flew from the machine’s mouth as she hit the ground, down for the count. “And that’s that. No ifs, ands, or ro-buts!”
At that point, Annie scarcely needed to declare the winner. While Filia and Beowulf headed over to congratulate the catgirl, she merely offered a tired nod of newfound respect. “Not bad. Guess you do know how to do things New Meridian Style after all. Welcome to the NMO.”
Nadia beamed, though not in the way Robo-fortune had. “Sweet! Guess I’m off to sign up for the tournament, then!”
“Not wasting any time, huh?” Annie crossed her arms. “Which one you thinking?”
Nadia glanced over her shoulder at Robo-fortune, who had initiated self-repair protocols, then gestured for the other New Meridians to huddle together. “Listen up, ‘cause I got a plan…”
After her friends’ tryouts concluded, and she completed her own registration for the tournament of her choice, Sakura had a little time before the proposed Pao Pao Cafe meetup to simply wander Esaka and reacquaint herself with the city. The Low Tier didn’t exactly have streets, but it did have a lot of familiar sights and sounds, mixed in with new things that had emerged in the month or two she’d been gone. Some Low Tier inhabitants and Yokai recognized her despite her absence, some greeting her and exchanging pleasantries, though the bystanders never accumulated into the adoring mob Terry had encountered. After a bit, though, Sakura did get the feeling that someone was following her. When it persisted, she finally turned around, and spotted not just one someone, but two recognizable someones headed her way.
“Heeey!” A young Japanese woman with short brown hair hustled over to Sakura, an easy smile on her face as she called out with gusto. Like the more composed Montenegrin blonde that followed her at a measured pace, her expression austere, Asuka wore primarily white, albeit in the form of a smudged button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves instead of an expensive, pristine blouse with ruffles. “Sakura, right?” Asuka asked as she came to a stop a few feet away. “How’s it going? Do you remember me? Lili says we used to be friends, but…I have amnesia, so I don’t remember you. Uh, but I’m game to be friends again if you are!” With a spunky smile and closed eyes, Asuka crossed her arms.
As Lili approached, she adopted a less approachable pose, with one forearm resting on her midsection to support the elbow of the other forearm, which she held curled by her face as if checking her nails. “Miss Kasugano,” she began, sounding mildly, smugly amused like always. “When a little bird told me you’d finally returned, I simply had to fetch Asuka here and see for myself. You’re looking…well.” Her gaze was a little judgemental, but not unfriendly. “A pity it’s also true that you returned without your friend Miss Kanzuki. I was so looking forward to finally settling the matter of ‘best rivals’ with a friendly duel.”
The two pairs had, after all, shared what some might call a fated link. The duos, composed of a haughty, filthy-rich blonde aristocrat and a scrappier, friendlier brunette, had enough superficial similarities that both fighters and Yokai from Esaka often compared them. Some jokingly referred to them as ‘echo fighters’, others as the simpler and more derogatory term ‘clones’, all typically behind the young ladies’ backs. Asuka, Lili, Sakura, and Karin weren’t on bad terms, but if there was anything each pair of rivals could agree on, it was that they were the dominant duo. Unfortunately, both Asuka and Karin had disappeared a while back after significant tournament losses, leaving an odd couple in Esaka until Sakura left to seek out Ryu. Karin’s appearance in Limsa Lominscuttle Town, and Asuka’s much more recent reappearance with none of her previous Esaka memories, told Sakura everything she needed to know in order to recontextualize what had happened–a fate these two seemed blind to.
“Oh, well,” Lili sighed with a shrug. “I suppose it will have to wait until Miss Kanzuki returns as well. I had just managed to persuade Asuka to edify herself with a visit to Critical Art when the news of your return reached me. If you’ve a mind to join us, feel quite free.”
While not enthused by the prospect of visiting some stuffy old art museum, Asuka seemed much more amenable now that she had someone fun around. “So, where’ve you been?” she asked Sakura. “Got any good stories? Maybe you’ll jog my memories!”
In the course of silently observing his fellow detective’s tryout against Kyanta from beside the building’s front door, Big Band quickly came to a decision: that this wasn’t the gym for him. Though his mechanical body possessed great strength and fortitude, he knew he could be overwhelmed by quick, agile opponents, and if what he’d seen so far was anything to go by, he wouldn’t last one minute against these psychos. Their combos and attack patterns followed no logic that he could identify, defying both physics and common sense. While Zenkichi probably had enough magic tricks up his sleeve to pull off a win here, Band was a much more traditional fighter, and while on Kyanta’s turf he couldn’t rely on the Heavenly Principles to even things out. Better to find a dojo that catered to his strengths; if there was one upside to trawling Esaka’s Low Tier for diamonds in the rough, it was that there were plenty of options.
After wishing Zenkichi luck and bidding him farewell for now, Band set off for another pass around the bottommost district at his own pace. He stopped by a number of dojos in quick succession, spending up to five minutes at each, and what he saw didn’t exactly paint the brightest picture for him. As it turned out, the unregulated nonsense of Ultra Fight de Kyanta was more like the rule than the exception. Everywhere he looked he saw unreactable mixups, bizarre techniques, incongruent movements, infinite combos, and staggering imbalance even between members of the same dojo. The average low-tier fight looked more like a cracked-out frenzy than a proper sportsmanlike duel. No wonder the higher tiers turn up their noses at these guys, he mused, shaking his head. The more Band saw, the quicker he went, more and more anxious about the invisible timer that hung over his head, ticking down the seconds until noon. He hadn’t wanted to partake in a tournament at all, of course, but if they really did involve Esaka’s Guardian like the others expected, he couldn’t hang his teammates out to dry. Soon, less than an hour remained to both join a dojo and register.
At length, though, Band stumbled upon an unusual dojo even by Low Tier standards. This one featured a lot of heavy metal, with a futuristic aesthetic, but it seemed only half-built, with weeds growing up from the disturbed earth in its partially-developed plot. The front door was shut tight, but with nobody around to stop him, Band let himself inside. Within, he found a strange scene. A state-of-the-art, highly technological gym languished in an incomplete state, its metallic interior dusty and rusting. The biggest surprise to Band was the bodies, not of people, but of robots. A variety of sporting-looking, combat ready machines could be found around the place, intact but inert. Poring over the scene piece by piece, Band found a handful of documents, culminating in the discovery of a ledger clutched tight in one robot’s hand. With that, he began to put the bigger picture together.
According to the documents, ‘Metal Revolution’ had been the name of the dojo-to-be, the project. Deliberately and carefully modeled after certain higher-tier dojos with a mind to emulate the best parts of each, the dojo and its roster had shown a lot of promise. Highly publicized throughout the lower and middle tiers, it had received a lot of attention and investment, but not enough to satisfy its founder’s grand designs. With the finish line in sight, Metal Revolution exhausted the last of its funding and support, shutting down before its efforts ever came to fruition. Its colorful cast of fighters, enthusiastically registered along with the dojo in advance, went offline one by one. All had been robots styled after various sports or martial arts the world over, with names like Xuan Cuo, Catalina Gomez, Paulo Silva, Jamal Ritter, and Umi Ito, but like their dojo they’d been forgotten by Esaka and its fighters.
It was a sad story, but in the midst of his revelations, Band saw an opportunity. “Hmm…” he murmured, scratching his chin with a little mechanical pincer as he reviewed the roster. However preemptive and futile it had been in the end, Metal Revolution and all its robotic fighters had been registered with the tournament board. The Low Tier housed so many stagnant, half-dead dojos in various states of decomposition that he couldn’t help but wonder if Metal Revolution had ever actually been scrubbed from the records. With that in mind, Band paid his respects and vacated the premises, headed for the nearest registration booth.
Soon, the detective was looming in front of a yellow-and-white combot, its beady red eyes inquiring. “What is your name, which dojo do you represent, and which tournament would you like to enter?”
“Paulo Silva,” Band told the machine, his tone one of unflinching self-confidence. “Metal Revolution.” That left just one important question, and unfortunately he knew very little. He did know that King of Fighters used three-man teams, and he worked best in a team, but all three members probably had to be together to register. There was no time to try and find his fellow Seekers. “...World Warrior.”
Though the combot’s lack of face made it difficult to read, it didn’t seem to suspect anything. “Responses recorded. Eligibility check pending. You are free to go. Have an excellent day.”
Band let out the breath he’d been holding as he stepped away from the booth, walking past the line. Plenty of random low-tier fighters had left their registration until the last minute as well, but he didn’t feel any better about his gambit. Nothing to do now but wait and see, he thought. After getting some distance, he lifted a pincer to the linkpearl in his ear and radioed the others. “Just registered myself. Headin’ to Pao Pao now, over.”
“Hey, me too!” Nadia’s bright, cheerful voice piped up over the comm line. “I’ll be a minute gettin’ down from the Mid Tier though. The Pools are real purr-ty, by the way. Nobody’s up there fightin’ today, so if anyone feels like a nice dip after lunch, we can have ourselves a pool paw-ty!”
Band did not relish the thought of immersing his five thousand pounds of intricate instrumentation in the water, so he decided not to volunteer. Instead he made his way through the Low Tier to Gold Team’s designated rendezvous point, ready to meet back up with everyone else.
With the glow of red paper lanterns shining off the burnished whiskers and antlers of gilded Chinese dragons, and zesty music playing near its fully-loaded bar, Pao Pao had a nigh-irresistible party atmosphere. The decor of the place, from the red railings that ringed its second-story balcony to the elaborate antique wall panels on the first floor, not to mention those great serpentine statues, struck Nadia as oddly similar to the Dragon Empire styling of some restaurants in Little Innsmouth. It wasn’t quite the same, of course, but it still left her smiling from ear to ear the moment she entered. After showing herself to the back of the restaurant, she joined a number of other Seekers at a long table. The new guys Terry and Kim were both present, while Junior, Rika, Primrose, and Therion were notably absent; Nadia guessed they must be off doing their own thing.
The moment after Nadia seated herself by Big Band, the mii waitress appeared to take her drink and appetizer order, having already taken everyone else’s. “Cola and pork dumplings, please!” the feral chirped after a quick glance at the menu. After the waitress left, she looked around at the others and told them, apropos of nothing, “So, I signed up for Mortal Kombat…”
Band nearly choked on his sweet tea. “You did what?”
The feral shrugged. “Well, someone’s got to, right? Plus, it’s got the least entrants, so that means fewer fights. And if, God forbid, I somehow do lose, I can just play dead!” To prove her point, her head rolled off her shoulders and plopped into her hands with her tongue sticking out and her ears drooping. “See? I’ll just fall to pieces the second someone goes to fatalize me, and bam, dead,” she declared cheerfully, using the term she learned during her attempted registration.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, Band thought, but what he said was, “And what about the people you beat? You’re s’posed to kill them, too, ain’tcha?”
“Don’t care!” Nadia replied breezily. “What’re they gonna do, boo me? It’s not grounds for disqualification, I don’t think. Much as I’d love everyone cheerin’ my name, all that really matters is beatin’ the guardian.”
Soon after, the waitress returned with Nadia’s orders, then pulled out a notebook to take everyone’s entree orders. Between authentic Chinese cuisine and various South American dishes, from Brazilian to Chilean, there were a lot of tasty-sounding options. Once everyone had given their lunch orders, the conversation could continue.
Once the stagecoach came to a stop within the Hall of Adventure, Heismay wordlessly lent his blade to the efforts to secure the area. There were fewer carcasses in the immediate vicinity than one might expect, and mostly standard human ones at that, so with nearly a dozen Seekers it was no trouble to clear them out. Truth be told, Heismay was grateful. Though he’d fought without giving voice to his reservations, these monstrosities disturbed him greatly. The Humans that plagued his world were awful, certainly, but their horror came from an indescribably alien ‘otherness’ and ‘wrongness’. These carcasses were like nothing he’d ever seen, a repulsive and gruesome mockery of life itself, reeking of death and disease. He agreed with Sandalphon completely; the world would be better off with these things wiped out. The only problem was that he needed to help do it.
Edward and Geralt decided to stay with Sandalphon and protect the stagecoach, while a number of Seekers trooped toward the east wing, especially once the archangel’s report confirmed an avenue of egress on that side. Accordingly, Heismay turned his attention to the west wing. With the main doorway blocked, he jumped over the gap in the collapsed stairs on the western side, then proceeded through to the east wing’s second floor, where he paused on the threshold to scope it out. He spotted a half-dozen rectangular taxidermy displays along the walls, mostly themed around the wetlands. Flamingos, crocodile, hippopotamus, beavers, water buffalo, capybara…Heismay recognized few of those names, but even with the zoo in this condition, it was easy to get distracted admiring these animals.
He could see three human carcasses, a male one near the entrance and two female ones further away. The first one still wore the remnants of a showy yellow tweed suit. “Quite the dandy,” Heismay muttered. That carcass seemed busy pummeling the taxidermied remains of a beaver, mindlessly smashing the husk over and over, so Heismay snuck up on it with relative ease. With ample time to prepare, he transformed as he approached, then used Dark Sword from behind to hack the former gentleman in twain.
When Heismay changed back and turned to focus on the other two, however, he had a surprise waiting for him. Blazermate had flown in without any regard for stealth, then used that strange shield of hers to bite the two female carcasses once each, amidst their ineffective flailings. Having done the deed, the medabot flew away, and when the carcasses turned to face her they spotted Heismay instead.
“Damn it.” The eugief darted behind a display as the carcasses approached, snarling horribly. He looked around, identified a piece of broken glass, then picked it up and tossed it over the display. When it shattered, the carcasses turned to investigate the sound. Without delay, Heismay hopped up onto the display, then jumped toward the enemies. He spread his wings to close the distance by gliding silently, then drew his sword as he dropped to deliver a spine-severing slash to one target. As it fell, he pivoted and cut through the other’s leg, then repositioned himself in order to lop off its head as it toppled. It seemed dead, but the other one’s upper half was still functional. “Vile things.” Heismay tightened his grip on his longsaber, repositioned himself, then chopped off the carcasse’s arms. With no way to move or attack, it wouldn’t be much of a threat to anyone.
Heismay crossed through the second floor, pausing only to look at the taxidermied reptile. Compared to the others, even the more sizable hippopotamus, the croc seemed to have the most care and attention put into it. It was of no consequence, though, and the eugief proceeded down the stairs to the west wing’s first floor. A crude and highly damaged barricade had been erected at its base at some point, but Heismay had no trouble getting past it. Looking around, it seemed like a number of survivors had attempted to hole up here at some point, hoarding all the supplies they could. The wing looked like a junkyard of smashed boxed, broken suitcases, and trampled personal belongings, all the former property of families who’d traveled here to visit the zoo on holiday. He could see a few highly disfigured carcasses, and when one sensed him, it tore a bluish polyp off its body to hurl at him. “Not today.” Heismay jumped away from the globule of decay, then approached, methodically dashing and dodging projectiles until he could put the carcass out of its misery. A similar approach worked for the other ones, and after another minute the bottom floor was clear. Heismay wiped steaming teal fluids off his longsaber using a tattered frock. “Plague us no more.”
At his words, one large suitcase seemed to react, shaking suddenly. Muffled sounds emanated from within. Swallowing, Heismay narrowed his eyes and approached. He waited until the struggling died down, then carefully undid the latch, his blade at the ready.
The suitcase burst open, and from within tumbled a short man with a long, braided, orange beard, gasping for breath. As he panted, Heismay lowered his blade. “Ohh, thank ye for freein’ me,” the viking gasped, laying on the floor. He turned toward his rescuer, only to be taken aback. “Eh!? A bat-man?”
Heismay narrowed his eyes. “And what of it?”
Realizing his mistake, the viking held up his hands. “Nono, it’s great and all, I just…didn’t think you’d be a bat-man.” He cleared his throat. “I owe you one. The name’s Erik–Erik the Swift! What should I call ye?”
“I am Heismay Noctule,” the eugief told him, sheathing his blade. “What were you doing in a suitcase?”
“I climbed in tryin’ to hide from those wretched monsters, only to lock myself in,” Erik explained as he got up. “Wasn’t too bad, mind ye…kind of cozy, actually…but it was startin’ to get a bit stuffy.” He picked up and put on his one-horned helmet, then straightened it. “Ah, that’s better. It’s not just me though, see. My brothers, Baleog and Olaf, are around here somewhere. We got stuck here a few days ago. Found this strange doohickey and tried to call for help, but the monsters found us, and we got separated while runnin’.” Erik rubbed his head anxiously. “Any chance you can help me find ‘em? The three of us, we’re a package deal. Don’t know what I’d do without ‘em.”
Heismay nodded sympathetically. “I’ll inform my comrades. We can certainly keep an eye out. Meanwhile, you should stay with us, in our stagecoach. We…look out!”
Suddenly, Heismay dove into hiding behind a crate. Without question, Erik dove back into his suitcase with a yelp. The reason why was obvious: a horrific monstrosity had just reached the bottom of the stairs. It took a second for Heismay to even realize what he was looking at, but the realization was dreadful indeed; it was the corpses of the two carcasses he just dispatched, reanimated and fused together in hideous fashion. A single head lolled atop the mass as it crawled on three arms and one leg, the severed fourth limb dangling behind it like a tail as the rags of its dresses hung from its fused flesh. Heismay shivered, his breathing heightened. “I killed them…I killed them!” he hissed. None of the others had come back, so why now?
He steadied his breathing. How it came back was of no concern to him. Only eliminating it for good. As far as he could tell, the horror hadn’t detected him, and had in fact turned away to hobble back up the stairs. Time to make his move. Heismay leaped out from behind cover. “Thief!” Transforming, he launched a Mudo at the abomination, then charged after it with his curved greatsword raised. “HaaaaAH!” Though the monster had a second to prepare, it did not attempt to defend itself, so Heismay slashed away. After a moment its pieces fell to the floor, turning to ash as Heismay changed back. His chest heaved as he tried to shake off the chills running down his spine. “We’re clear,” he called back.
When he heard only rattling and muffled yells in reply, Heismay looked back to find that Erik had locked himself in that suitcase again. With a sigh, the eugief jogged back over to free him again.
Before moving on, they took a quick look around. There were still some usable items strewn around the former hideout.
Vivid Ergo Crystal A fragment of Ergo, a mysterious power stone that can be found in Krat. Ergo is both a power source and a currency in Krat. Ergo crystals are considered a precious material and good food for those who run on Ergo.
Fire Abrasive A special abrasive made by mixing fire metal powders. Temporarily imbues a weapon with Fire. Wise Stalkers are prepared to face any manner of variable that comes up in battle. Abrasives are another weapon that can turn the tide on the constantly shifting battlefield
Shot Put Some throwable weapons boast great destructive power on their own. When combined with brute strength, nothing more needs to be said. This heavy object can not only deal respectable physical blunt damage, but also break the stance of enemies in a staggerable state from a distance
Trephine Bur Inflicts 10% damage on the target and inverts all debuffs into buffs with a refreshed duration
Ratshaker The latest and greatest problem-solving product. The rat inside is completely inert and won’t do anything unless held around the midsection. Shaking the rat will cause it to make noise and fill the Ratshaker Meter, which appears at the center of one’s vision when shaking. Filling the Ratshaker Meter while pointing at stuff can cause things to happen around the user, though the more the rat is used, the more audible evil-sounding whispers become. The rat will also talk to the shaker more often, which only the shaker can hear, with a sardonic attitude, apparent full knowledge of the shaker’s past, and a desire to probe past traumas. The rat can be cracked like a glowstick, which will cause it to scream, after which it will emit light for a while. It can also be squeezed, which lowers the Ratshaker Meter and is the only way to stop the rat talking. The rat cannot be killed
Heismay saw the immediate value in the fire abrasive, the function of which he could intuit from its resemblance to a weapon grinder and fiery nature. The shot put looked destructive, but better used in the hands of someone of great physical strength, like Ace or Ganondorf. Since it was so heavy, Heismay gave it to Erik to carry. It was less clear how to use the crystal and bur, but maybe Sectonia could figure it out; she seemed magical enough. Most perplexing by far was the box labeled Ratshaker. When the eugief reluctantly opened it, he could only stare in confusion at the strange, unmoving rat in his hand. After a moment he reluctantly tried shaking it. “Aaaaaa, aaaaaa, aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaa,” it went, not so loudly that it startled Heismay, but still unpleasant, especially with the Ratshaker Meter that briefly seared itself into the middle of his vision.
“I don’t like this thing,” he decided. Maybe Sectonia could figure it out, too.
He and Erik carefully made their way back to the group. Ignorant of Blazermate’s abilities, Heismay proceeded to warn everyone about the phenomenon he’d observed once he introduced Erik. “Bad news, everyone. These horrors can reanimate even after they seem dead, and combine themselves into larger, even more horrible monsters. We must be extra vigilant.” Narrowing his eyes, he held up the rat. “And can someone take this? I get the feeling it might be useful, but ever since I tried shaking it, I’ve been hearing whispers…”
Alright, small update to the sheet to clarify the main thing points while also adding in the "In the Now" segment. Hopefully things are good and certainly excited to be around.
Name: Fujiwara no Mokou Origin: Touhou: Imperishable Night
Appearance:
Fujiwara no Mokou is a rather short woman with long white hair that goes all the way down to her ankles, along with bright red eyes. Her standard dress is a white shirt that has been discolored by her own fire along with a red hakama held up with suspenders, along with red shoes. Both her hair and hakama are adorned with paper talismans.
Personality: Due to her long lifespan, Mokou is effectively a loner, who generally chooses not to socialize with others if she can help it. However, this does not mean that she is cruel or mean, as she is very willing to help those who become lost, and those who get past her rough exterior find a blunt but lively soul hiding within.
This, however, does not extend to her rival Kaguya, who is still the subject of Mokou’s annoyances.
Background: Fujiwara no Mokou is often known as the immortal guardian and guide of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost and eternal rival to Kaguya Houraisan. Once a normal human, Mokou’s father became obsessed with earning Kaguya’s favor, resulting in them being humiliated by attempting to complete one of their impossible quests. As revenge, Mokou stole a Hourai Elixir from Kaguya’s family, resulting in her becoming immortal much like her rival.
For the next one thousand years, Mokou grappled with the blessing/curse of her newfound immortality, becoming ostracized by her fellow humans and living within the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, spending her time guiding those who become lost within, mastering sorceries, and regularly dueling with Kaguya, or surviving assassins sent by them. Despite the monotony, the ritual of her life had become something she was content with.
However, one day her normal life changed as Gensokyo was assaulted by a wave of light, and even the immortal Mokou was subsumed within her eternal forest.
In the Now: Due to her immortality and natural inclination to be alone, Mokou immediately found a ‘calling’ within Galem’s new world as a wanderer, exploring the world in search of a place to call home. While she has not yet found that place, she regularly takes up her old duties as a guide, often coming across lost travelers and guiding them to where they need to go, earning herself a significant reputation amongst certain groups.
In recent times, Mokou’s wanderings have led her to the Frozen Highlands… Or more specifically, ‘Krat Zoo’, answering a call for help from within.
Job: Guide for the Lost
Specialty: Mokou is a relentless fighter, combining martial arts and fire magic to create an endless array of attacks from both afar and up close, with her own glass cannon status offset by abusing her immortality to its absolute limit.
Inventory: Nothing of actual note.
Lv: 6 EXP: 0
Abilities: - Revival: Using the power of the Hourai Elixer, Mokou is capable of returning from death indefinitely. Whenever brought down to 0 health/defeated, Mokou will revive herself back to full health in a burst of flames, damaging anyone near her. This can be used up twice before Mokou is knocked unconscious by the pain of near death. - Phoenix Spell Cards: Mokou’s general focus in spells is her mastery over fire, which is best represented in her ability to launch waves of flame at her opponents in beautiful spectacles.
Skills: - Hourai Elixir: Due to drinking a forbidden elixir, Mokou is gifted with eternal youth, inability to suffer illness, and can regenerate from any amount of damage dealt to her, no matter how serious or impossible, so long as she is given time. Significant pain is still capable of stopping her, however. - Grazing: Thanks to her experience with Spell Card duels, Mokou is capable of ‘grazing’ projectiles, making her surprisingly difficult to hit at range if she actually bothers dodging. - Master of Sorceries: Honing her skills for a thousand years, Mokou is surprisingly adept at magic, capable of noting and even reverse engineering other spells with just a glance. However, she generally sticks with her fire sorcery unless she is forced otherwise, and she still needs to dedicate time (and levels) to truly figure out how to use a new magical system. - Immortal hobbies: Thanks to her long life, Mokou has dabbled in hundreds of small hobbies, and though she can hardly be called a master in all of them, she is certainly skilled at the ones she devoted time to, such as cooking.
Weaknesses: - Curse of the Phoenix: Mokou’s immortality is potent, but it holds the flaw that it does not prevent fatigue or pain. Despite this, Mokou actively chooses not to engage in any acts of self preservation, burning her own life force and body to power up her attacks. As such, Mokou actively takes damage from her own attacks throughout a fight. - Rival of Eternity: Mokou stands as the direct and sole rival to Kaguya Houraisan, and even the recreation and merging of worlds has not washed away their hatred of one another. Though they are incapable of truly killing one another, Mokou still finds herself subjected to Kaguya’s manipulations, from simple long distance pranks or assassins sent to harass her. - Spell Card Rules: Though no longer being tied to the rules inherent to Gensokyo, Mokou still subconsciously abides by them, resulting in her ranged spells having notable holes in their patterns for enemies to dodge into.
Approved, and welcome to the RP. You can put your sheet in the Characters tab. My updates are every Sunday evening, but you don't have to worry about getting one out this weekend if you already have plans. Would you like an invite to the Discord server?
Yeah, I'd certainly spend upgrades and stuff to actually use different spells. That case was more of a "if she spends time to look further into stuff she's seen she can replicated it pretty well". Essentially just an upgrade path, if that makes sense.
As for the revive part, it's more so me trying to work in both the fact that she can regenerate constantly and also balance the actual revives to not be a game winner. I'll reword it to make it sound better but the main goal is that the limitation is directly tied with Mokou's will to fight through the pain, though I suppose a better way to describe it would just be that Mokou can regenerate from any injury over time. She can be injured in battle and have it last but she'll just rapidly regenerate outside of battle. While the revives are just her deciding to forcefully incinerate her entire body in order to fight further.
Also having Mokou start in the Frozen Highlands sounds fine! Hermit answering the call of a lost soul.
I might have gotten hit by extreme focus despite my normal ADHD and worked on most of the sheet. Posting it now for feedback on stuff like the skills/powers while I work on the "In the Now" segment to figure out what, exactly, Mokou has been up to. Aside from probably being a hermit somewhere in a random forest.
Name: Fujiwara no Mokou Origin: Touhou: Imperishable Night
Appearance:
Fujiwara no Mokou is a rather short woman with long white hair that goes all the way down to her ankles, along with bright red eyes. Her standard dress is a white shirt that has been discolored by her own fire along with a red hakama held up with suspenders, along with red shoes. Both her hair and hakama are adorned with paper talismans.
Personality: Due to her long lifespan, Mokou is effectively a loner, who generally chooses not to socialize with others if she can help it. However, this does not mean that she is cruel or mean, as she is very willing to help those who become lost, and those who get past her rough exterior find a blunt but lively soul hiding within.
This, however, does not extend to her rival Kaguya, who is still the subject of Mokou’s annoyances.
Background: Fujiwara no Mokou is often known as the immortal guardian and guide of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost and eternal rival to Kaguya Houraisan. Once a normal human, Mokou’s father became obsessed with earning Kaguya’s favor, resulting in them being humiliated by attempting to complete one of their impossible quests. As revenge, Mokou stole a Hourai Elixir from Kaguya’s family, resulting in her becoming immortal much like her rival.
For the next one thousand years, Mokou grappled with the blessing/curse of her newfound immortality, becoming ostracized by her fellow humans and living within the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, spending her time guiding those who become lost within, mastering sorceries, and regularly dueling with Kaguya, or surviving assassins sent by them. Despite the monotony, the ritual of her life had become something she was content with.
However, one day her normal life changed as Gensokyo was assaulted by a wave of light, and even the immortal Mokou was subsumed within her eternal forest.
In the Now: (A synopsis of your character’s existence in the World of Light itself. For new characters, this is limited to the ‘new normal’ imprinted on you by Galeem, and your chosen starting location)
Job: Guide for the Lost
Specialty: Mokou is a relentless fighter, combining martial arts and fire magic to create an endless array of attacks from both afar and up close, with her own glass cannon status offset by abusing her immortality to its absolute limit. Inventory: Nothing of actual note.
Lv: 6 EXP: 0
Abilities: - Revival: Using the power of the Hourai Elixer, Mokou is capable of returning from death indefinitely. Whenever brought down to 0 health/defeated, Mokou will revive herself back to full health in a burst of flames, damaging anyone near her. This can be used up twice before Mokou is knocked unconscious by the pain of near death. - Phoenix Spell Cards: Mokou’s general focus in spells is her mastery over fire, which is best represented in her ability to launch waves of flame at her opponents in beautiful spectacles.
Skills: - Hourai Elixir: Due to drinking a forbidden elixir, Mokou is gifted with eternal youth, inability to suffer illness, and can regenerate from any amount of damage dealt to her, no matter how serious or impossible. - Grazing: Thanks to her experience with Spell Card duels, Mokou is capable of ‘grazing’ projectiles, making her surprisingly difficult to hit at range if she actually bothers dodging. - Master of Sorceries: Honing her skills for a thousand years, Mokou is surprisingly adept at magic, capable of noting and even reverse engineering other spells with just a glance. However, she generally sticks with her fire sorcery unless she is forced otherwise. - Immortal hobbies: Thanks to her long life, Mokou has dabbled in hundreds of small hobbies, and though she can hardly be called a master in all of them, she is certainly skilled at the ones she devoted time to, such as cooking.
Weaknesses: - Curse of the Phoenix: Mokou’s immortality is potent, but it holds the flaw that it does not prevent fatigue or pain. Despite this, Mokou actively chooses not to engage in any acts of self preservation, burning her own life force and body to power up her attacks. As such, Mokou actively takes damage from her own attacks throughout a fight. - Rival of Eternity: Mokou stands as the direct and sole rival to Kaguya Houraisan, and even the recreation and merging of worlds has not washed away their hatred of one another. Though they are incapable of truly killing one another, Mokou still finds herself subjected to Kaguya’s manipulations, from simple long distance pranks or assassins sent to harass her. - Spell Card Rules: Though no longer being tied to the rules inherent to Gensokyo, Mokou still subconsciously abides by them, resulting in her ranged spells having notable holes in their patterns for enemies to dodge into.
Thank you for your efforts, that's quite a good sheet. I also play a character who's supposedly immortal (Ms Fortune) but whose regenerative abilities slow down and eventually peter out if she's subjected to enough damage. However, having Mokou's revives be limited is a moot point if she can 'regenerate from any damage dealt to her', which would logically prevent her from ever having to revive. Unless I'm just misunderstanding and this 'regenerate from any damage dealt to her' clause refers to her phoenix revival? Additionally, it would be a bit unfair if she could copy any magic spells she sees for free, but I would be fine letting you spend level upgrades to learn magics displayed by other characters (of course, she'd still be able to freely use spells she picks up in the world, like Dark Souls pyromancies, once she obtains them).
Once we've sorted this out, the character seems good. I would want her to start on the White Team in the Frozen Highlands. We just reached an area called Krat Zoo, which has been overrun by mutant, aberrant animals known as carcasses. As for why, maybe she could be responding to a call for help from one of the Lost Vikings, all three of which are separated in Krat Zoo and need to be rescued/reunited.
Heyo! I'm... Not entirely a fresh, new face around here but I'm trying to get myself back into RPing in order to get back into the full swing of writing, and was wanting to see if folks were willing to accept another lad around here. Working on which character I'd like to bring in and mostly leaning towards Ragna the Bloodedge from Blazblue, or a Touhou gal like Sakuya. But mostly wanted to see if things were clear to apply before I locked in.
Hey there! We're always open and would be happy to have you, both of those character choices are good (Ragna would be great for the fighting game area that Gold Team is in, while Sakuya might be better for White Team's expedition). If you're sure that you can honor a commitment of ~30 minutes spent reading and an hour or two writing in order to post once a week, you're good to go.
While Nadia figured that there must logically be an official way to go up or down between the levels of the Tiered City, whether by elevator, train, or very long staircase, the fiercely independent feral saw no reason to abide by such pedestrian methods when she could blaze her own trail instead. And from where she now stood at the very edge of the Low Tier’s cramped slums, shading her eyes against the sun with one hand as she peered up the wall toward the next level, going her own way looked very doable indeed. After all, while the wall rose with clifflike perpendicularity to form a staunch, flat backdrop for the Low Tier, it didn’t confront her with an implacable sheer surface. Instead it appeared to be stone brick all the way up, with sufficient mortar seams and irregularities of depth that Nadia could identify a wealth of handholds and crevices where her claws could find purchase. It would be tough going, and dangerous if she lost her grip, but once the catgirl was set on something there wasn’t any room for second-guesses. With a grin of utterly self-sure determination, Nadia sharpened her claws and began to climb.
To her delight, the ascent proved neither too hard nor too easy, but an engaging challenge. While 2,700 Pounds of Justice worked against her, making each movement up the rock wall harder than it needed to be, her natural (and unnatural) abilities more than made up the difference. Being able to stretch out her limbs, dig her claws into stone, and push herself against the wall with a little directional bloodletting gave her every advantage. Nadia knew that she could airdash back onto the wall if she fell, too, but it never came to that. Instead she made steady progress, working up a light sweat as she scaled Esaka’s class divide. Finally, after only five minutes or so, she took a final leap of faith to latch onto the railing that crowned the wall with hyper-extended arms, then snap her muscle fibers together to send herself flying up and over into the second tier. “Aha!”
She took one look down while airborne and saw nothing but water. “Aha!?”
PLOOSH!
Nadia belly-flopped into the cold water, sputtering and flailing as she tried to find her footing, much to the amusement of a couple surprised onlookers. The cat burglar didn’t hate water by any means, but a dunk straight away was quite the shock. After surfacing, she swam over to the narrow walkway that ran along the outer wall and pulled herself out. When she spotted a few locals chuckling at or concerned for her, she couldn’t suppress a good-natured laugh herself. “Hey there folks~!” she greeted them as she got to her feet, waving. “It’s all good! All in a day’s work as Ms. Fortune, the scrappiest up-and-coming superstar in Esaka. I’ll be here all week, so if you’re a fan of plucky underdogs (or undercats, for that matter), I hope that little pratfall ‘wets’ your appetite!”
As she stepped back onto the water’s surface, her rigging unfurled to keep her afloat atop the water’s surface, and Nadia gave a theatrical flourish before bowing to impress the spectators. Sure, the feral might be in Esaka on business, but Nadia was someone who knew how to have fun -and make friends- no matter what she was doing. “Keep an eye out for tomorrow’s headline: ‘Ms. Fortune makes a splash!’ Tata for now!” With that, she skated away.
So this was the Pools, huh? The name really didn’t do it justice. The entire tier was essentially one giant, donut-shaped pool a good twenty feet deep, littered by all kinds of bridges, catwalks, viewing stands, water features, and especially arenas. Nadia could see battlegrounds of all shapes and sizes practically everywhere she looked, all islands unto themselves with the water around them serving as a natural out-of-bounds. Some floated on the water, whether little more than rafts or multi-floor ship decks, or actual functional boats. Other arenas were simple stone shapes either just above or high above the water’s surface, usually squares or circles, some with walls. A few looked like actual sports arenas, some rising very high indeed above the water.
There were very few people actually fighting here right now, so the entire tier was mostly empty except for a couple city denizens treating the proving grounds like an actual water park, which seemed pretty fair to Nadia. With the wind in her hair, the feral happily skated around the tier, seeing the sights. She ducked under arches and bridges, leaped over walkways, and zipped through fountains, speeding wherever her whimsy took her. It was great fun, but after a couple minutes the annoying, rational part of Nadia’s mind (small and feeble though it was) reminded her that she was on a tight time limit. After making a mental note to drown that part of her in booze at the first opportunity, she begrudgingly reined it in and set off for her destination. This time, she had seen the way up (a very large, open-air elevator) so she wound down by riding it to the Middle Tier rather than climbing.
For Nadia, who’d spent most of her life in one or another of New Meridian's poorer districts, the Middle Tier seemed glitzy and glamorous–even though for all intents and purposes, it appeared to be a pretty normal urban Japanese city. Rather than a labyrinth of alleyways like the Low Tier, it had its own streets, meticulously named and organized in a feat of civil engineering. These streets all took foot traffic only, of course, with no vehicles in sight. As she walked around the blocks, gawking like some tourist, Nadia spotted all kinds of shops with strange and amusing names that sounded like puns she wasn’t savvy enough to get yet. Bread and Butter made sense as a grocery store, but Hood Perfect was apparently an apparel shop, with all kinds of stylish streetwear on display. Nadia caught the tantalizing savory smell of pizza and meatballs wafting from a restaurant called Double Luigi, but she would have to come back later to hear what kind of music got played in nightclubs like Deadly Rave.
Nadia also found fewer dojos, and not just because of the Middle Tier’s smaller surface area. Even the smallest and shabbiest one was bigger and nicer than the best dojo the Low Tier could dredge up, each boasting multiple stories and solid construction. They sported titles like Them’s Fightin Herds, Under Night In-Birth, Killer Instinct, Soul Calibur, and Rivals of Aether. With how approachable most of the locals were, it didn’t take too long to track down the one Nadia was looking for. The moment she laid eyes on the NMO headquarters, she realized that she’d come to the right place. Though she wasn’t well-versed in art enough to assign it a name, she recognized the Art Deco architectural style at a glance. With pep in her step, Nadia pushed inside to the sound of a ringing bell.
Across the lobby, the main room of the dojo appeared to be a tall, two-story windowless gym with walls of what looked like loose leaf notebook paper. Its only features were a chalk blackboard, school desk, and accompanying chair, but it was occupied. Nadia spotted a teenage girl with dark, seemingly animate hair, doing some sort of drill under the instruction of a stern-looking, long-legged tutor, who held her pointer a little too much like one might a riding crop for comfort. Intrigued, Nadia let the front door swing closed and watched for a few moments, ears flicking, as the girl tried and failed to perform a long combo strong down, berated not just by the tutor but by a gruff male voice that emanating from an upside-down face back of her head. “Sheesh, I’m surprised teachers like that don’t go cross-eyed,” Nadia muttered to herself. “They just can’t control their pupils.”
“Hello?”
Nadia’s head twisted around to see a young, one-eyed girl and a burly, hairy guy in a wolf pelt descending the stairs to see who’d entered the dojo. The feral’s eyes went wide as she pointed a finger at the two of them, sputtering. “Wait! I know you! Both you guys! You’re..! You’re..! Uh!” She turned her attention from the tired-looking kid to the washed-up wrestler. “And you! You’re that…that guy!” Unable to recall their names, she clamped her hands to her head. “You’re on TV!”
“It’s, Beowulf!” the man supplied, shaking his head incredulously. “C’mon, really? I’m only the biggest, baddest wolf in the whole New Meridian wrestling scene!” He puffed out his chest, striking a pose that might have been iconic if he was really as famous as he thought he was.
Nadia winced slightly. “Y-yeah, of course! It’s just, I don’t watch TV much, and, uh…” She scratched her head. “That’s beside the point! I’m from New Meridian too. Little Innsmouth! And I really need to sign up with a dojo today, before-”
The girl gave her a dubious look. “Oh, is that so? Looking for a way in, are you?” She crossed her arms. “You wouldn't be the first.”
“I really AM from New Meridian!” Nadia insisted. “Ever hear of Ms Fortune, the infamous phantom thief and the incredible Fishbone gang?”
The girl’s face didn’t budge an inch. “No.”
As Nadia wilted, Beowulf shot her a look as if to say not a nice feeling, huh? “W-well, I mean, it’s not like thieves set out to become household names or anythin’...”
Luckily, Beowolf was a better sport than one would hope. “C’mon, Annie, give her a break. It’s not like people are chompin’ at the bit to join NMO anyhow. We haven’t had any new recruits in ages…we could get kicked down to the Low Tier any day now!”
“Annie, that’s it!” Nadia snapped her fingers. “Girl of the Stars! Right!?”
One glance from Annie shut Beowulf up. “Can it. She probably just heard about us and came to try our luck. Didn’t even know our names.” She rolled her eyes. “Couldn’t even be bothered to come up with one of her own, either.”
That puzzled Nadia. “Say what?”
“She’s saying you’re a faker,” a buzzy, artificial voice declared. Affronted, Nadia looked up just in time to see a familiar, albeit metallic, shape drop down. The floor shook when she landed, and when she stood up, Robo-fortune’s yellow eyes glared straight into Nadia’s soul. “So, this flea-ridden meatbag thinks she can cramp my style?”
Nadia bristled, grinning dangerously. “If anything, you’re the fake catgirl around here. Comparing yourself to me? Ha! In your dreams, tin cans! In all my ears, I’ve never metal-loser like you before!”
“Hey, let’s settle down, okay?” Beowulf held up his hands, his voice gruff. “No need to be rude, Robo!” He paused, squinting at the two. “Huh. They are kinda similar, though…”
Robo-fortune ignored him, instead shooting lasers from her eyes to perform a blazing sweep. Nadia detached at the thighs, her upper body popping up to slash at Robo’s head with sharpened claws. Instead Robo’s head shot off like a missile, and after Nadia reunited, she dashed backward to evade its explosive divebomb. Both then charged forward in an electric clash, sparks flying as the two cats met tail-to-tail.
“Copy-cat!” Nadia hissed.
“Obsolete,” Robo-fortune replied.
As they jumped spart, Annie raised an eyebrow. “I see what you mean. Hm…fine.” She looked between the two Fortunes. “Ms. Fortune, was it? I can see you’re a feral, and not anyone can namedrop Little Innsmouth. If you’ve got what it takes to beat your evil clone, you can stay. ‘Kay?”
“Got it!” Nadia grinned. “Don’t worry, circuitty! Once we’re done, I’ll scrape what’s left of you into the robot-tom tier!”
Robo-fortune squared up. “This is an inefficient use of cat.”
Even with the full team present and accounted for, travel through the reavers’ woods would have been stressful. Unnatural greenish lights shone from twisted trees in the distance, and hateful shapes of melded flesh and bone skulked in the shadows, their baleful eyes aglow and ever watchful. The trees that flanked the Midnight Walk were thick, at times bending over the road itself to create a rustling, whistling tunnel of bristling needles and boughs. Once most of White Team’s members broke off from the path to pursue various side objectives, though, the trip became downright terrifying. Ace, Geralt, Edward, Roxas, and Heismay split off to capture the much-needed Reindrix that promised to increase the team’s travel speed, while the restless Celica and Kit joined Ramattra to look further into the eerie sawmill to investigate Heismay’s claim of monstrous hoarders, intending to catch up with the rest once they finished.
That left Sandalphon alone inside the stagecoach, with no guarantee of safety but for the presence of Blazermate, Ganondorf, and Sectonia. When a pinecone fell from a stooped conifer and bounced off the coach’s roof, the once-unflappable archangel jumped. Though she didn’t dare to stick her head out of the vehicle, Sandalphon found herself unable to concentrate on her work, instead preoccupied with the conjurations of her fretful imagination. It was not a pleasant journey.
Eventually, the powderkeg of tension finally blew up. With most of the Seekers gone, several squads of reavers laying in wait burst from the haunted forest in a cacophony of frenzied, inhuman screams. Their arrows, axes, and bludgeons pummeled stagecoach and golem alike, and though they suffered damage, the coach’s armor held firm. Then, with Sandalphon and Blazermate on hand to support them, Ganondorf and Sectonia managed to turn the tables on the attackers, felling enough that the remainder withdrew.
At length, however, the oppressive woodland finally began to thin. The return of the capture team provided enough manpower to ward off further assault, and when the stagecoach reached a clearing protected by natural ridges of rock, White Team stopped to substitute the Reindrix for Edward’s golems. It took almost half hour to get them properly hitched, but mercifully no monsters attacked them, despite the steady and ominous increase of furtive movements and staring eyes in the darkness. During this time Ramattra returned alone, separated from the other new recruits in the lumber mill Soon after the Reindrix were installed, it became apparent that the team couldn’t afford to wait for Kit and Celica any longer. Hopefully the two would know better than to brave this forest alone, and instead retrace their steps to Snowdin.
The Reindrix were every bit as capable draft animals as their appearance suggested. While wrangling them took a little getting used to, the difference in speed with them versus the golems could not be overstated. With little purchase against the buffeting wind atop the slick stagecoach, Heismay was forced to relinquish his perch and hang instead from the forward overhang, where he served as a second pair of eyes for the coach’s driver and helped to oversee the pals at work. Moving quite quickly now, White Team proceeded along the Midnight Walk as it wound around wooded hills and rocky ridges. After an extended uphill section, the snowy trail suddenly veered right around a corner and down a steep hillside, winding back and forth like a snake. That gave the Seekers ample time to see what lay ahead of them: a sprawling and elaborate complex of both semi-natural areas and large, majestic structures in the stunning Belle Époque architectural style. Slowly, inevitably, the Midnight Walk led them down the frosty hill, past a frozen river, and to the tall, wrought-iron front gates of Krat Zoo.
The Tale of Colonel Little
From the outset, unfortunately, everyone could readily see that all was not well with Krat Zoo. Even before reaching the gates, the team’s outriders would be plagued by small packs of strange wolves with oddly elongated jaws and a variety of horrible growths and protrusions, their bloodthirsty aggressions marked by frightfully unnatural behaviors. When the stagecoach slowed down at the gates, Sandalphon stepped out to survey the situation herself. “It seems that the Midnight Walk leads through this place,” she concluded. “Let’s proceed with caution. Given the aberrant fauna we’ve already encountered, I advise that we travel ahead of the stagecoach and clear the way for it. Let us be quick, thorough, and above all, wary.”
The archangel’s precautions proved well warranted. Between the gates and the main building lay the zoo plaza, littered with an abundance of corpses both human and animal, including the tragic cadaver of a once-amazing adult giraffe. Alongside various oxidized bronze animal statues, at least half a dozen cage wagons were scattered around the plaza, two of them overturned, and within struggled unidentifiable masses of berserk, animalistic fury. When the Seekers got near, the prisoners began to break free. They turned out to be mutated mandrills, the apes’ muscular bodies twisted by some sort of biological corruption that animated them well past the point of expiration. These carcasses attacked not just with savage strength, but the cunning to backpedal when needed and throw debris from afar.
Once the team made contact with the enemy, Sandalphon put her new hexagun to the test. Guided by her expert hand, the magic rifle fired off pinpoint-accurate arcane rays that pierced her targets, and while the mandrill carcasses weren’t grouped up enough to cause collateral damage, they still packed a punch. Sandalphon quickly found that while shooting vitals did work, these horrors could suffer a lot more punishment than normal animals. “While I have no proof of any infectious pathogen at work, I advise everyone to avoid being bitten at all costs,” she called to the group.
“Noted,” Heismay grunted. As his allies attended to the mandrills, he’d attempted to skirt around the conflict in order to try and flank the monster from behind, only to run into two wolf carcasses. Relatively weak but very quick, and prone to circling around, the wolves attacked in a staggered manner, each lunging for Heismay just long enough after the other did that he couldn’t capitalize on one without risking a chomp from the second. “Hmph! Damnable things!” he hissed, leaping up onto the statue of a zebra. With a snarl he jumped down, his full weight driving his new longsaber into one wolf’s back. He then backflipped sideways, wrenching the blade out in an upward arc that severed the monster’s spine and cut it in half. The other carcass sprang over the remains of the first, its jaws snapping shut mere inches from Heismay’s wing as he jumped away. “Thief!” As the wolf approached, he transformed and blasted it in the face with dark magic, and its headless corpse slumped down. Only then did the eugief notice that the front half of the first wolf’s corpse was still coming toward him, which he put a stop to with a shiver.
A moment later, a huge, wretched polar bear carcass burst through the building’s main door. The hulking thing charged across the plaza, straight toward the caravan. Heismay cast Mudo after Mudo, to no avail. “Incoming!” he yelled.
Sandalphon breathed in sharply, then opened fire. Without bothering to aim precisely, she squeezed the hexagun’s trigger as fast as possible, only ensuring that she hit the huge carcass somewhere. Each shot was a roll of the dice, and after a half-dozen shots, her number came up. The seventh ray transmogrified the incoming bear in a burst of white feathers, leaving a bulbous white chicken in its place. Her eyes lingered on the now harmless beast a moment longer before she relaxed. “Target neutralized.” Whether or not anyone smushed the chicken was up to them.
After dealing with the rest of the mandrills, the Seekers entered the Hall of Adventure, as indicated by the damaged banner that hung over the immense woolly mammoth display inside. At least four stories high including the vaulted ceilings, and with sizable east and west wings, the Hall of Adventure was the biggest building in the zoo, but it had seen better days. Only carcasses walked its halls now, ignorant of the elaborate taxidermy displays arranged in every room with corresponding educational plaques. The Midnight Walk led around the mammoth and toward a set of huge, heavy metal doors that sat opposite the front door, but these durable doors proved to be locked, blocking the Seekers’ journey.
Sandalphon’s scan of the doors’ structural integrity turned up bad news. “It will take some time to break through,” Sandalphon judged, brushing the door with her hand. “It may be faster to find another exit from the Hall of Adventure and open the door from the other side. As for the zoo itself…it is clearly a dangerous blight on the Frozen Highlands. I recommend that we exterminate every monster we come across. We can also use this opportunity to search for useful items.”
As for what each Seeker should do, she left that to her teammates’ discretion. They could stay with the stagecoach to defend it or break through the door, as arduous and tedious as that would be, or explore the Hall of Adventure in search of loot or another way out.
Before everyone could start running around in different directions looking for dojos, with Nadia at the front of the pack, Terry jumped in with some advice, as well as a request. Apparently the ten minutes he’d been with the Seekers and a little hearsay were enough to convince him to throw that flashy hat of his into the ring with them, and if that was what he wanted, far be it from the feral to stop him. “Sure! I mean, I purr-sonally don’t mind you joinin’ up at least. Bet Pit won’t either, he seems like a more-the-merrier kinda guy, but he’d be the one I ask I s’pose.” Her tail flicked back and forth as she thought about his other suggestion with his arms crossed. “Ahh…yeah, I’m with Zenkichi. Not hungry right now, and I’d better get the dojo thing sorted out before I slack off, ‘cause I take relaxin’ seriously.”
“In the end, it doesn’t really matter who we sign up with,” Band reminded everyone. “As long as we sign up with someone so we can join the tournaments. We’re not here to learn, after all.” Still, he had to admit that some options seemed better than others, even going off the names alone. At least the Seekers were spoiled for choice, with more random dojos laid out in practically every direction they looked. Then again, Band wasn’t sure he even wanted to enter. Unless he found proof that it would take tournament participation to reach the Forbidden Kingdom’s guardian, his time would be better spent elsewhere. His gaze settled on Terry. “Why don’t we drop by Pao Pao at lunchtime, after everyone’s got their sign-ups squared away?”
That seemed like a good idea to Nadia, but it would be up to the others to decide. That just left the matter of dojo registration, and just as the feral was about to dash off, a certain someone discreetly emerged from the background and sauntered up to the Seekers. “Oh, there you are!” Nadia greeted Roland, glad to have at least one teammate back from wherever he’d disappeared to. “Where’ve you been?”
The Fixer explained what he’d found about the city, including an up-to-date list of every dojo in the city, separated by tier. “Oh, nice. You’re on a roll…and!” Nadia jogged over to skim it for herself alongside the others, forced by the lack of information to make inferences based on the name of each dojo alone. Hellish Quart…Death Cargo…Catfight…Girl Fight? Some of them sounded highly suspect, more like adult media than legitimate martial arts organizations. More out of curiosity than anything else, Nadia looked up at the mid-tier and high-tier dojos, only to do a double take at an entry in the mid-tier section. “Hang on a sec. NMO? As in New Meridian Order?” While never able to attend one of their wrestling matches in person, the feral loved watching them on the little TV set in Yu-Wan’s restaurant. If a fighting organization from her world really existed in Esaka, maybe she didn’t need to bother with any low-tier dojos after all.
“Mid-tier, huh?” She glanced up past the dingy rooftops, beyond the Pools toward the much nicer-looking cityscape about halfway to the top. “I’ve gotta see this!” She dashed over to Big Band and tugged at his coat. “Hey, you comin’? If it’s really the NMO, maybe the two of us could join in!”
Band looked doubtful. Even if it really was the NMO he’d heard of, what business did a cyborg detective and a thieving alley cat have with wrestling? Still, he didn’t want to rain on Nadia’s parade too badly, and he did want to see Esaka’s Middle Tier for himself. For now, he turned his attention toward Zenkichi. “You go ahead, Fortune. It’s a long way up, so I’ll catch ya later.”
As Nadia scampered off, Band plodded over to his fellow detective a moment after Zenkichi made his request to Azuma. Upon hearing the proposal, the investigator seemed to light up. “Oh, well, that’d be just swell! We’re open, of course. Frankly, most low-tier dojos are. Always desperate for new talent that might bring ‘em some attention and help lift ‘em out of obscurity. ‘Course, some are so desperate to show off their strength that they end up scarin’ new folks away. And some like being small, maybe imagining that it makes them some underrated, exclusive elite, but that’s not us. We’re pretty casual here at the Kyanta dojo, so…yeah! We’d be happy to have you.” He rubbed his snout. “Actually…it’s been so long I forgot how registration works. A tryout might be good though, yeah. Once the others see what you’re made of, everything’ll come up roses, I’m sure. This way!”
Azuma turned to lead Zenkichi toward his own dojo, but Band called out to him. “Just a second, if ya don’t mind.” Nodding, Azuma stopped and turned back to hear him out. The detective gave him a grateful nod. “I wanted to ask, bein’ a visitor here and all. What exactly is it that makes dojos high-tier, or low-tier? Is it just how strong and rich they are?”
“Hmm…no, not quite,” Azuma replied, crossing his arms thoughtfully. “In fact, in some ways it’s the other way ‘round. Dojos get rich because their high tier. Most folks here in Esaka would say the deciding factor is just one thing: skill. It’s not that low-tier fighters are weak, see. Quite the opposite, in fact! Many low-tier fighters are incredibly strong. But there’s one thing you’ve got to understand, a sort of tenet we all live by. A fight’s only as good as its rules.”
Azuma paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Put another way, what makes fights worth watching? Worth betting on? Why, being fair, of course. That’s not to say all fighters ought to be evenly matched, heavens no. But having rules for what you can and can’t do, and how things work, is vitally important. That’s what the Heavenly Principles are for: to keep things relatively balanced.” He shrugged. “Of course, not everyone agrees what’s fair and what isn’t. Plenty of people scorn the Heavenly Principles, which I bet you heard for yourselves if you really met seething yokai.”
He put his hands in his pockets and continued. “In low-tier dojos, see, there’s rarely any rules. Anything goes. It can be fun, but for serious competition? Hah. Laughable. The high-tier dojos have the most established rulesets that everyone accepts and goes by, which is why they’re used for the tournaments. They offer the most interesting fights and fighters. In the end, it’s all up to the whims of the yokai. As for the Heavenly Principles…nobody really knows.”
Instead of answers, Band found himself left with only more questions. “Huh,” he mused. “And these rules…what happens if you break ‘em?”
“Well…the answer’s not so simple,” Azuma replied, frowning. “The rules aren’t just civil laws. In the tournaments, they’re reality itself. If you are fool enough to run afoul of the Principles or the Four Kings, though, you’ll get banned at best.” He left the worst case scenario up to the Seekers’ imagination.
“I see.” It sounded to Band like Esaka was inhabited by some sort of entity that could bend the laws of reality, and he did not like that some bit. Surely the Heavenly Principles couldn’t be the Guardian that Gold Team was seeking? Band wanted to know more, but he knew he’d need to be very careful when it came to messing with godlike beings like that. Just what had the Seekers gotten themselves into…?
With no more questions to answer for now at least, Azuma led Zenkichi away to find the Ultra Fight de Kyanta dojo. It turned out to be a pretty nondescript building, at least from the outside. On the inside it looked more like a gym than a traditional dojo, with its main room a big, empty box with the blue walls, floors and ceiling criss-crossed by lavender lines to make a grid. Aside from a storage room for things like training equipment, and a small office, the structure seemed pretty much empty. Today, only four fighters were around, all practicing in some form or another. First and foremost was Kyanta themself, a yellow pomeranian with a white headband. They appeared to be training Anna, a green -skinned girl with a snake tongue, while the resident judo practitioner (and racoon) Chihiro offered unsolicited advice from where he sat. Finally, the pig-man Spike sat opposite Chihiro, playing battle music with his guitar.
At the arrival of Azuma, Zenkichi, and Big Band, Kyanta looked over at the three detectives, curious. Anna promptly did a dive kick, then poked Kyanta five times in the shin as they floated in midair. She then unleashed a super that consisted of swinging one arm upward, accompanied by mouth sounds, and poked her opponent five more times before finishing the combo with a slide. It was like no style of fighting Band had ever seen, and between its bizarre looks and sounds, he found himself at an utter loss for words. After a few seconds of laying on the ground, defeated, Kyanta came to and slowly picked themselves up. “Azuma,” they barked. “Long time, no see.”
The investigator nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a while.”
“What brings you here?” Kyanta crossed their arms.
Azuma stepped aside to gesture toward Zenkichi. “This fine fellow wants to apply to your dojo in order to join a tournament. He’s fresh from a brawl with seething yokai, so he knows his way around a fight. What do you think?”
All four of the Kyanta members seemed surprised at the prospect of a new recruit, although Kyanta tried to play it cool. “Oh? Well then. If you’ve come here, you must have good taste. I commend your spirit. I won’t ask too much; if you can defeat any one of us in a one-on-one, I’d say you’ve earned the right to represent us.” They crossed their arms as Anna, Chihiro, and Spike came over to stand alongside them. “Your move, mister.”
Throughout the first leg of the Seekers’ journey along the Midnight Walk, Sandalphon mostly sat by herself inside the great metal stagecoach, compiling environmental data. This wagon featured no windows, which while useful in case of attack, proved inconvenient to her for now since she couldn’t see outside to get a feel for the terrain and inhabitants of the new region. That left relying on her teammates who chose to forge ahead, whose points of view she could see through her network connection, albeit from a limited isometric view. Though it seemed unlikely that they’d run into any real trouble so soon after leaving Snowdin, one could never be too sure, so she silently spectated via a half-dozen light screens at once both to watch for danger and to gradually assemble a map. Only if absolutely necessary would the archangel chime in with her observations or advice, since she wanted to demonstrate her trust in her team and not micromanage if she could help it. Some of them did encounter enemies out in the wilds, but they were nothing that the Seekers couldn’t handle. As a result, despite all her mental stimulation, Sandalphon’s ride was a fairly peaceful one. Except, of course, when the stagecoach hit a bump in the road.
One matter did arise that she needed to pay some attention to, not long after Edward dealt with the looming threat of a blustering Ty-foo in his typical pragmatic manner. His recon drones reported a snowfield up ahead, surrounded by dense coniferous forest, where the hidden roads presented a degree of ambiguity. Sandalphon considered requesting that somebody dig or melt some snow above the Midnight Walk and the branching paths to see which matched her current road’s material composition, but that would be tedious work without guarantee of result, since the paths around here could all easily be made the same way. The deciding factor was Edward’s report of Urriki marauders lurking around the northern road. If it was just a ratfolk ambush, Sandalphon assumed her team could handle it, but his mention of a wooden bridge over frigid water gave her pause. Forged of black steel and as big as a house, the stagecoach was monstrously heavy, to say nothing of the golems and extra baggage. Even if the vermin hadn’t tampered with the bridge in some way in order to waylay travelers, it could very well collapse beneath the Seekers as they went across, and a disaster like that might well be unsalvageable. With that in mind, White Team’s leader made her decision.
“We’ll proceed along the western route,” Sandalphon announced to the team. After that, she restricted her comm line to Edward alone. “Thank you for your reconnaissance work. As expected of a veteran commander, your skills and insight are an invaluable asset to the team.”
To the west of the crossroads clearing, the land began to get wilder. Fresh snow fell from the heavens onto the boughs of pine trees that seemed to grow taller and taller as the Seekers advanced, their lower limbs increasingly gnarled and tangled. Where there had before been little pockets of civilization like the fishing village with its smoothie shop, there were now only small, empty ruins, ravaged by the elements and time. Icy crags shot up like giant castle walls, dividing up sections of wooded countryside, and above everything towered gigantic stone swords hundreds of feet high, as if planted throughout the landscape by primeval behemoths.
Only one notable building could be found in this wintry wilderness: an abandoned lumber mill that straddled the Midnight Walk, its central second story overhang just high enough that the huge stagecoach could rumble beneath it with just ten inches of clearance. Nearby rested a broad-shouldered, bearded old brute by the name of Warden Rust, one hand resting on the long handle of his heavy mace as he sat by a crackling campfire. Heismay, obliged to abandon his rooftop post and walk beside the wagon, shuffled over to pay the big man a visit. “Good morning, sir. May we pass through your mill?”
“Go right ahead my friends, it ain’t mine after all,” the warrior told him affably, waving a dismissive hand toward the derelict building. “Keep an eye out, though. I’ve seen my fair share of places like this, and when good folks move out, bad things tend to move in.”
Heismay nodded gravely as he looked around, noting the inordinate number of crows that seemed to gather about the place, their beady black eyes watching in ominous silence. “That I can certainly believe. Farewell, sir. Stay warm and safe out there.”
Rust chuckled wryly, aware of just how likely that would be. “You too, buddy. You too.”
As the stagecoach squeezed through the lumber mill, Heismay -at home in the darkness and old, abandoned places- decided to prowl around a little, abetted by Sandalphon’s supervision. He poked through the disused rooms, finding only broken-down machines and piles of old junk, meticulously but inexplicably arranged. Seeing nothing useful, he kept moving. The place was dreadfully quiet aside from the creaking of wood planks and the whistle of the wind through the timbers, until his big ears caught the sound of a shrill, pained moaning. Assuming it to be an injured animal, he delved deeper to investigate. After slipping through a gap in a barricaded door, he peered around a large room overgrown with roots and filled with clutter. Everywhere he looked he saw knick-knacks, trinkets, busted-up furniture, bones, and wire. A lit lantern lay at the foot of a table, and as he stared at it Heismay realized that the vocalizations had stopped.
Now he could hear only a ragged, agonized breathing, and the clank of metal instruments against one another, growing louder and closer. Quietly, he ducked behind a box, and the next moment the creature came into view. Hulking, misshapen, and hobbling on two prosthetic legs, it was no animal–but it couldn’t be human, either. Not while making sounds like those. As he hid, Heismay’s eyes drifted to a small wooden totem hanging from a peg nearby. It seemed interesting, so for the sake of not returning empty-handed, the eugief held his breath as he reached out to take it. Taking it pulled the poorly-set peg out of its socket, and the little piece of wood tumbled to the floor with a light clack. With a squawk, Scrapbeak turned toward the source of the noise with its axe raised, but by then Heismay was already gone.
A few moments later, Heismay caught up to the stagecoach as it exited the lumber mill, the totem tied to his belt. Ahead, the wilderness continued, dark and dangerous. Fewer Urriki could be found here, but in their place were barbaric reavers, each warrior masked by living bone. More aggressive and powerful, the reavers stalked the woods in cohesive units, ready and willing to put their savage strength and cunning to the test against anyone they found. However, more fantastical creatures could also be found in these forests, including the Reindrix the Seekers needed. Now, the beast tamers among them could go out and do their job, ever watchful of the twisted shapes that darted among the trees.
Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.
Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Current GM of World of Light. When it comes to writing, there's nothing I love more than imagination, engagement, and commitment. I'm always open to talk, suggestion, criticism, and collaboration. While I try to be as obliging, helpful, and courteous as possible, I have very little sympathy for ghosts, and anyone who'd like to string me along. Straightforwardness is all I ask for.<br><br>Looking for more personal details? I'm just some dude from the American south; software development is my job but games, writing, and trying to help others enjoy life are my passions. Been RPing for over a decade, starting waaaay back with humble beginnings on the Spore forum, so I know a thing or two, though I won't pretend to be an expert. If you're down for some fun, let's make something spectacular together.</div>
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