Lucia had looked onward as some pretentious dude had flown down from the sky, proclaiming himself to be some sort of husbando playa man with all of the waifus across his harem. But seriously the dude was some sort of creepy, some sort of ugly, and just some sort of weird in general. She could only nod in response to the fashion pointers that Hasu had pointed out to the man, Wenlock, and was a bit on the shocked side when his face had gone deathly serious. It seemed to be an even harsher face than the one he had used against the king and queen earlier. It was at this point that the Wenlock dude seemed to completely lose his temper and turn everyone, but them, into stone. Almost like he was some sort of warl- oh, now his name made sense. Almost hilarious in hindsight. It was at this point that the group started to get pretty confrontational with him, and while she definitely wanted to bash in this pasty face hetero-chromatic ****** taco's...face...in, she knew that they had absolutely no way to fight him if he was allowed to do anything to them. However, he wasn't able to do anything to them as some horses with wings came out of fucking nowhere to save the day and offer them a way out of there. Lucia was thankful that they were there to get them out of this situation, however she saw that a few other people were still ready and willing to start a fight right here and now. "Gu-guys! We gotta get out of here now! I mean, a chance like this isn't going to present itself again and we have absolutely no plan on dealing with being turned to stone almost instantly and you can't really do much day saving when we're all statues, so because you aren't backing down I'm sort of sorry about having to do this." As Lucia finished her statement, she ran towards Thomas from behind, quickly spun around so that her front was facing his, and then brought her arm hard and fast towards his waist. From this position she pushed forward, hoisting him over her shoulder and started fireman carrying him straight towards a matching purple Pegasus. As soon as he was deposited onto the horse, it flew after Annika's pegasus. With the look of death in her eyes, Lucia said, "now all of you better get your asses on these flying ponies or so help me I'll drag each and everyone of you out of here." After Lucia was sure that everyone had gotten onboard she too flew after Annika as well.
Stratos had continually repelled the attacks of the heartless. Deciding to not really use any commands or anything of the like so as to gather his mp back, he decided to resort to just basic attacking. Having used faith and fire and the like consecutively was draining on his ability to cast magic, and right now he was essentially just running on empty, so he needed to do something about that issue. A torndao step flung itself at him, just one solitary one this time, and Stratos was able to hold up his keyblade and repel the strike with ease. He then followed this repelling action up with a combo strike from his keyblade. After knocking the heartless away, and crocodile heartless took its place and tried to take a bite out of Stratos this time, quite in the same manner that scruff mcgruff would take a bite out of crime. However, Stratos was able to react to this quickly enough and dodge rolled out of the way of the attack, following up with a swing from his keyblade. The heartless seemed to be light on its feet as well, as it had completely dodged out of the way of his strike. The two had entered a bit of a stalemate, as Stratos swung at the creature, only for it to side step, and it to bite at him, only for the young keyblade wielder to dodge roll out of the way. The heartless then brought its tail around for a large sweeping attack, only for Stratos to use his keyblade to guard against the attack and push it back. Creating a small window of opportunity to attack, Stratos then went back into a combo strike, which consisted of him hitting the heartless three times, and right before the finisher, he had stopped all action. The crocodile took a bit of time to recuperate, but having not gone into the finisher, Stratos was already ready to go into another combo assault on the creature. He hit the being once, twice, thrice, and then paused again. He was able to use this method of stopping a combo short in order to fully and completely lock down this heartless's actions and keep beating down on him until the lizard like heartless had finally taken enough and exploded into darkness. Feeling satisfied with the work he had just done, Stratos was now back at full MP and ready to take on the world. However, he was taken slightly off guard as the tornado step he had fought earlier, but not killed, spun towards him in an attempt to take him down. Stratos wouldn't have been able to react fast enough, but thankfully he didn't have to. As Base had appeared and managed to take down the sneaking heartless for him, Stratos gave him a thumbs up. "Yeah, there certainly is a lot of them, and I have no idea where the piece we're searching for is either." As a hearpo had flung itself at them, Stratos launched out two fires at it, causing it to dissipate. He then noticed that Base seemed to be a little worse for wear, almost as if he had been nearly crushed to death, and just waved his keyblade, casting a cure spell over him. It was then that Stratos saw more of the reptilian heartless encroaching upon their position and noticed that their eyes were glowing. Wait, that could only mean- the inner monologue was cut short by the heartless firing laser beams out of their eyes. While they had landed on various different things...the lasers seemed to do absolutely nothing at all. Well that was...nice? Regardless, Stratos just destroyed the horde of heartless with another faith command, before seeking out new targets. 628 Words, 30 EXP Total EXP: 180 EXP Total Munny: 180 Munny Break Even Point: 10/34 10/12
Stratos was now looking around, every which way in order to see just what all of the heartless here were going to do. The Hearpos were continuing their off beat jiving and were mimicking the other dancing creature's scared out of their wits antics of running away from the lizard like heartless. The tornado steps were becoming more and more of a nuisance, as they were now cutting Stratos off from dealing with the other heartless. The spinning heartless had just sort of started appearing en masse, now attacking him five at a time as opposed to two. Dodge rolling out of the way of the first of the spinning tackles, Stratos quickly got up and guarded against the second oncoming one that was going after him. He then followed this up by high jumping over the third one that flung itself at him, though this was a huge mistake. He was immediately knocked out of the air as the fourth one had spun straight into him and collided with him. Flying through the air, he hit the ground and sort of tumbled a bit before the fifth and final one managed to spin across the ground and knocked straight into him, launching him further away from the scene. Despite all five having done something, they moved asynchronously and so the first three obviously had enough time to rev up another attack. Getting back on his feet, Stratos saw three of the heartless charging him at once, and so he decided to block by doing something a tad bit differently. Glowing with light once more, Stratos flicked the keyblade forward in front of him and let loose a stream of light. The four pillars of faith had appeared before him once more, and so using them as a pseudo guard, he simply placed the pillars so that they would intercept the tornado steps. As the heartless collided with the pillars, the pillars had exploded on contact and seamlessly vaporized the heartless that had attempted to strike at him. With one pillar remaining to use, Stratos simply launched it at one of the other tornado steps and had gotten rid of it quite effectively. The last one took the opportunity of presented by Stratos attacking, to fling itself forward at him. Stratos brought up his keyblade and blocked the strike from the heartless, knocking it back. With his ice imbued he keyblade, he then followed up his guard with the three hit strike Vorpal Bltiz. With those pesky creatures dealt with, the young keyblade wielder then turned his attention to a different area. Seeing that the Hearpos and the lizard like heartless were capitalizing in on his distracted time, Stratos quickly called down a cascading flurry of cherry blossom petals that flowed in the wind, ven as time had seemingly come to a standstill. Within a single instant, and a single calm breath, Stratos had managed to cross the large distance that separated him and the heartless, and cleave through time and space alongside that travel. A large cut mark had appeared across all of the heartless, but only the lizards seemed to go down in that single strike. The Hearpo was still moving along its own rhythm and not really caring about the keyblade wielder whatsoever. And so, to deal with this, Stratos ran after the creature with keyblade in hand and struck at it a few times.Doing seemingly nothing, he continued to beat on the heartless until finally he realized his basic attacks weren't strong enough to deal with the Hearpos tough skin. However, it did give him enough mp that he was just able to launch a fire at it, kill it, and call it a done deal. 621 Words, 30 EXP Total EXP: 150 EXP Total Munny: 150 Munny Break Even Point: 9/34 8/12
My Condolences Zephyr Jackie and Blanc Charlotte Rinox Stratos Lucien looked onward as everyone had decided on their worlds that they were going to. The first thing that was good was that no one needed to go through a second run down as everyone had managed to get their asses back here in time. The other good thing was that they were going to be able to get the show on the road now. Everything seemed to be running swimmingly, and just as last time, there was a few of the worlds that just seemed to get completely neglected whilst others were piling to full capacity with people. The only bad thing he could think of was what the recent defection they had had. Aside from just general information gathering, the fact that those two hadn't come back yet and that they both had really shaky resolves to this cause in the first place told Lucien all he needed to know that they flip flopped. If push came to shove, Stratos would be literally no problem at all. There wasn't anything that kid could do to him. Beuce, on the other hand...well that was a different story. He was a bit of a show boat, but a fight against him would be slightly problematic, though not outside of Lucien's realm of victory. Nevertheless, he had to go decide on where to go, and the over abundance of the people who were connected to the tool that was Dane was slightly pissing him off. Walking over to Gwen and Hunter he patted them both on the back and said, "Olympus Coliseum, eh? Well. sounds interesting. All I got to say about it is, have fun you two love birds." With a shit eating grin on his face he pointed to Hunter saying, "be sure to be as egotistical as possible to completely woo her and you," he pointed to Gwen, "keep up that all tsun no dere act you got going for you." His face then went to one of sympathy as he looked at Zephyr and said,"godspeed Hyde. That's all I can offer you. Later." He waved to the group before putting his hands in his pockets and walking off. Lucien was now in the Great Forest alongside everyone else and said,"well then, Spoopy, Chalk, Runner Up for Best Mother of the Year, Runner Up's Kid, Poorly Guarded, Mr. Halloween Town and 4th Place for Most Egotistical, what say we get the lead out of all of our asses and get a move on here. We gout ourselves a cave to find, and an ancient forest to search through." With that done, Lucien started walking ahead, to wherever the plot took him. Jackie was thoroughly pumped for this next set of worlds. Why? Because it just meant that this quest was far from over. And long quests usually had awesome rewards at the end of them. Granted, she had no idea what to expect from any of them. There was the coliseum which sounded pretty awesome, but if it was just going to be raw arena battles, then there wasn't much fun there. Then there was the Site dess Closh, and that just sounded weird and not fun in general. Then there was the great forest. Boring. Now the Land of Dragons. That was a name. Why? Because dragons were awwweeesome. Jackie turned towards Blanc, who had been taking a brief nap that lasted throughout the entirety of the explanation, and said, "Blanc, let us begin our expedition to the Land of Dragons. Onward hooooo!" She pointed in just the general opposite direction that she was facing, pointing to nothing in particular. Blanc simply nodded and said, "okay." Picking himself up, he let out a bit of a yawn, and then walked with Jackie to the rest of the group that had decided to go off to what was clearly the best world. Before leaving, Jackie saw that there was someone completely unfamiliar with white hair who was in the Great Forest group walking off. Wait a second. She wasn't here earlier. And she didn't introduce herself earlier. That bitch! Jackie was going to have to beat her name right out of her when next they met for not following standard questing rules and making sure everyone in the party knew your name. Her brief period of rage was subsided as Blanc opened one of his space tears and with a noise of cheer Jackie hopped through the dimensional rift to find herself in the new world. Turning to the rest of their party, once they arrived, Jackie said, "alright Free and Lecks let's begin our operation!" Having completely forgotten their names, she pointed again, just away from the direction she was facing and at nothing in particular. After hearing the worlds be announced, Charlotte had looked around to see what everyone else was doing. She wasn't entirely too sure about...well most of the group, though the red-black haired boy and girl along with the man with the strange arm seemed to be trustworthy enough for her not to suspect them of doing any foul play during their mission. However, there were others that would not go unnoticed in this situation. The darkness that radiated from the man with the scythe had a particular sort of malice to it, and the white haired girl didn't seem to be much better in that regard. While she felt like he had to be dealt with, now did not seem like the time. Not to mention there was still the man with white hair going to Cite Des Cloches alongside a man who seemed to be draped in it. She hadn't seen him before, and his sudden arrival seemed suspicious, though no one else seemed to pay any mind to him yet. Just making sure, she decided that she would head off to the City of Bells alongside those people. Walking over to them, she said, "so, shall we embark then?" Rinox had walked in through the front entrance of the library and had a look of, clearly fake, surprise on his face. "Oh my, how careless of me to have missed everyone departing off." He looked at the remaining people and said, "though I think I was able to hear what the situation was like from out there." Continuing to walk over to the group that was Hunter, Gwen and Zephyr he said, "allow me to make up for my carelessness by granting you all passage to your next world." Opening up a dark corridor to Olympus Coliseum, he started to walk through it before saying, "well met again keyblade wielder." As the boy had stepped into the throne room, in his long elaborate assistance to Beuce's needlessly large arrival, Stratos had an odd feeling come over him. As he stood there, looking at the goddess, he couldn't help that despite being in front of probably the most important and powerful person in the universe, she didn't really give off much of an impression like that to him. Not to mention she seemed to act like a tired from work mother to Beuce than some almighty deity. But as she handed out the stacks of paper to them, Stratos took them and walked to the room where they were supposed to sort these papers out. Staring at the filing cabinet, Stratos turned to Beuce and said, "so....how do you file?"
"Get your ass back here thief!" A man had called out, yelling through the bustling crowd. Here, within the city of Corvus, a small band of guardsman had started a chase on someone. A young female, average height and weight, short blue hair and unreasonably large hat. She had been seen carting off a sack from a local store, with really only a shopkeeper yelling and pointing at a crowd of people to implicate her specifically. Nevertheless, based on her actions, she was indeed the culprit and even if she wasn't, they could still pass her off as one. As she continued to run through the street, none of the passerbys really taking action as they were trying to take in the confusion of the scene first, she started to run backwards. Saluting to her pursuers she said, "sorry boys, no can do. Gotta steal to eat, gotta eat to live an all that jazz. You know how it is." She then turned back around and darted into a nearby alleyway. The guardsmen continued after her, only to hear a large banging noise accompanied by the sound of stone crumbling. They briefly stopped as this sound occurred once again, though they quickly got over it and continued their chase through the city. When they entered the alleyway, they saw a different site then what was normally two solid walls accompanied by a dead end. There in one of the walls, was a large gaping hole with, what appeared to be recent, rubble surrounding it. Shocked at the site, they looked at it and saw another such hole at the end of the building. The guardsmen quickly decided to keep going through the holes in pursuit of their culprit. As they cleared the building, out from a darkened corner a short chuckle could be heard as the thief had exited out of the first hole the guards walked through. "Works every time." Jackson Alba triumphantly walked through the streets of the "City of the Nobles" with a bit of a swagger in her step, she pulled an apple out of her sack and took a bite into it. After having secured her daily scurvy prevention food, she decided to just sort of wander around and see if anything else of interest was going down. Despite being the city of nobles, it was hardly a safe place for a person to live. For the poor that meandered about, jail was their only escape. For the roaming thieves, prison was the end of the line. For the monetarily well off...well, when the end of the line wasn't in sight for the aforementioned lot, they had to learn to be more "charitable" with the wealth and goods they carried about. She had continued to walk around the area until suddenly she someone who seemed to be hitting the poop deck of fatigue...she looked really tired. Casually sauntering herself over there, she sat beside the girl and said, "hey there Red, rocking that fatigued look as usual." She took a bite of her apple, while reaching through her sack of many fruit, taking out an orange. Extending it out to the girl, she offered, "want one?" After the answer she said, "so what's it like today. You on or off duty right now? I interrupting your work?"
It was at this point in time that the fighting had seemed to slightly stagnate and taper out to a bit of a more tedious search and destroy, rather than an actual brawl. The only heartless that really made their appearance apparent was that or the tornado steps. Each time one of them was felled, a few more would come to take its place and just sort of scamper about, getting ready to spin out of control and try to assault Stratos more than they were the non-heartless version of the Hearpos. He was able to deal with this pretty easily, as they only really came at him two at a time, and only a simple dodge roll and guard were needed in order to deflect the strikes of these heartless. Following it up with just his standard combos, and not using a command so as to get the most MP out of the heartless, the Tornado Steps would be easily felled and overall they had minimal effect on the outcome. It was the Hearpos and the Poison Plants that were the problem. While the Tornado Steps were extremely apparent about where they were, the plants were completely stationary so he actually had to look for them, and the Hearpos took to the blending aspect. Stratos was constantly on the look out for just where the heartless would appear, and once he found them he would be able to cleave through them with relative ease. However, one Hearpo saw fit to try and attack him rather than the other swamp dancing creatures. As he saw the hearpo do a leap and try to swallow him, Stratos swung his keyblade to the side, radiating with light while doing so. Four columns of light shot out from the ground and impaled the hearpo with pure unadulterated light. The heartless was quite easily destroyed as it had just took equivalent force to zantetsuken, only with magic. And Stratos was decent with magic. As he continued to scout out the heartless around the coliseum, he saw that something new was starting to come out of the walls of the building. From what it appeared, they seemed to be some sort of lizard type species. They were giving an evil grin with their teeth showing, that seemed to terrifying a good deal of the dancing creatures, unlike everything else that seemed to be here. It was at that point that Stratos noticed something odd about them. The creatures, while he had scene pictures of creatures like these in stories, usually were green in scale coloration. However, these ones seemed to take on a more dark color scheme. One with a jet black topside and a dark purple underside with the heartless emblem emblazoned across their chest. Stratos just looked at the creatures that seemed to start scampering towards the large mammals and realized that they had to protect them from this new threat as well. As such, he let cherry blossoms fall from the sky and readied himself to strike out at these reptilian heartless. He started to squat as he brought his keyblade down to his side. It was at this point that his eyes were closed, and he had dashed forward faster than completely perceivable by the human eye, cutting straight through the heartless. The lizard like heartless that had been running towards the dancing creatures, had stopped dead in their tracks. There was a large slash mark that was overlapping all of them, and they had simply exploded into a black smoke of darkness. With that, the new threat had been dealt with, though more were starting to take their place as well. 611 Words, 30 EXP Total EXP: 120 EXP Total Munny: 120 Munny Break Even Point: 8/34 7/12
The heartless seemed to be a tad bit on the annoying side. The tornado steps were now moving and grooving to the same sort of beat that the heartless swamp monsters were dancing around to. That and the poison plant heartless seemed to be jiving to the improper tune as well. Thinking more on it, coming up with round about ways to describe the heartless rather than coming up with a name for them was starting to get a bit annoying. He looked at their features that distinguished them more so from the rest of the heartless, and saw few apparent features. One was there overall large and bulky appearance. The other was that it had a large gaping maw, lined with like four killer fangs rather than teeth, that could snap tree trunks with relative ease...probably. Sadly there were no trees around for him to go and test this theory on, however he was sure that the point still held true. Pondering on this for a few moments longer, he figured the name Hearpo would work out. He had no idea why, but he decided that these dancing scourges of the rain forest should just be called Hearpos. Beginning his fight against the Hearpos, he watched out for them as they had started to encroach upon their not heartless kind. For whatever reason, the dancing animals seemed to pay no mind to them whatsoever, and kept moving almost as if the beat of the music that was in the background was dictating their every move. It was probably better that way, as having a large swarm of creatures as big and deadly as them flipping out would probably not be a good thing to deal with. Regardless, he prepped up a zantetsuken, and blink slashed straight to the Hearpo, creating a line across the heartless, until it finally exploded into a large cloud of black smoke. He then saw the torando steps flinging themselves, moving in three at once from different angles. Pointing his keyblade into the air, he fired a bolt of energy into the air, which then responded to him in the form of lightning bolts raining from the sky. The lightning bolts managed to strike all of the heartless, with two of them getting hit by enough of the bolts to be destroyed and sent back to darkness. He then brought his keyblade back down to guard against the third one and managed to push it away from himself. He then followed this up with a three hit combo from his keyblade, followed up with the finisher being interrupted by the ice imbued strike that was vorpal blitz. With that, he encroaching tornado steps had been easily dealt with. He then looked to see that the poison plants were now preparing their attacks, and so he just sort of bolt off towards the plants. There were a good deal of them, and Stratos wasn't sure if he would be able to deal with all of them in time. He lacked Zantetsuken at the moment, and thunder didn't seem like it would be particularly effective in this scenario. And so, Stratos spun his keyblade around and started to shimmer with light all around him. Four white pillars of pure light erected forth and started spinning around him. The pillars then seemed to lock on to the heartless and flew forward, colliding with the poison plants. The pillars then exploded into a large glow of light, seemingly vaporizing everything enveloped in it. Well, that was quite the command. He wondered why he hadn't used faith prior to this, but then shrugged it off as just general forgetfulness. 610 Words, 30 EXP Total EXP: 90 EXP Total Munny: 90 Munny Break Even Point: 7/34 6/12
While Charlotte had made the plan to simply search around the beach in order to keep themselves in easy view for their flying comrade and probably be a good start on the civilization, Dale had decided to completely ignore this and blindly charge into the forest. Charlotte had realized then when she thought that Gaius and Dale were similar, apparently their ego stroking tendencies were not the only thing that they had in common. As she walked alongside everyone in the forest, she was being ever vigilant to her surroundings to see if there was any sort of sign of civilization that could be nearby, though she then looked to Dale and started to wonder what made him have such a high ego as a leader. After all, in addition to putting themselves in the place that they would most likely get lost in and the place where Calxyin would be the least likely to spot them he wasn't even paying attention to his surroundings...just...an ice sculpture. While she continued to be vigilant and ponder on this, her question was answered when there was suddenly a large gate that impeded the groups progress. As she walked forward, when Dale had told them to gather, she simply whispered, "this boy has the devil's luck."
Stratos had continued his hungry hungry hippo hunt. It started to appear that the hippo he had fought had managed to blend back into the ground, with the darkness provided by the night sky and just standing in darkened areas with the rest of them in order to conveniently blend in with the scenery. Stratos continued to look onward for any sort of dissonance in this dance that was going on, until he finally saw the one he had hit prior started encroaching upon the others. Running towards it, he started to imbue his keyblade with a frigid charge that gave it a it a light blow glow over top of it. Once he had made it to the heartless, he jumped in the air and unleashed a three hit combo strike with the keyblade. Upon the third hit, it felt as though it had done a crazy amount more of damage, and the foul heartless impostor seemed to hit the ground hard. As it connected with the ground, creating a resounding thud, it soon after exploded into a large cloud of dark smoke and was vanquished from this world. Well that was one more of these nasty creatures down, only...an indeterminate amount of them left to go. Stratos then looked around to see what his fellow keyblade wielding comrades had been up to. Karina seemed to immediately get to action, being able to notice the trend between reals and fakes. After she had managed to take down two of the heartless, fairly effortlessly at that, Glen then proceeded to step into the fight. He...might have noticed the trend as well? Stratos wasn't entirely sure as he didn't seem too look for anything of note at all, and instead just sort of blindly jumped into the fight and happened to start beating the ever loving shit out of one of the dancing mammals of raw terror and destruction. As he looked at the scene of carnage that took place between Glen and the, thankfully heartless, beast Stratos started to think of something. The heartless had fled to this location and yet the only heartless they were seeing here was of the strange dancing swamp creature variety. As he was thinking on where the other heartless were, it was at this point that plants and tornado steps had come in through portals of darkness in order to assist their gaping maw heartless teammates. Groaning a bit at the sight, Stratos readied his keyblade and decided to get ready to fight the heartless as normal. With the new heartless that showed up, he had realized it would be more difficult to actually take them on, as he was still recovering from the large amount of mana expenditure he had gone through earlier in the world. With only striking at the heartless a few times and his overall lack of mp haste that spell binder had given him, he was basically stuck to his barely reliable physical attacks. Nevertheless, he still had a point of mp to spare, and so when a terror of the african jungle heartless tried to jump him and swallow him whole, he called down a thunder spell, and lightning struck the large creature. With it dissipating into darkness, Stratos then took a guard stance as one of the tornado steps charged at him with vicious spinning force. Blocking the strike, he quickly countered with a basic combo strike, knocking the heartless away before seeing a second one spinning at him. Unable to guard in time, he was smacked in the side by it, but managed to hold his ground as he let loose another vorpal blitz against the attacker and managed to fell it immediately as it was still airborne. Now all that was left to deal with was...everything else. 636 Words, 30 EXP Total EXP: 60 EXP Total Munny: 60 Munny Break Even Point: 6/34 5/12
As the girl picked herself up, she looked slightly perplexed for a second. She had felt as though Ra was imitating her every move and mimicking her every word. She was even under the impression that his thought process had gone exactly the same. This was certainly odd development and though she was wary of what this development would be indicative of, she brushed it off for the moment. She was then even more perplexed as Calxiyn's already interesting weapon suddenly turned into a vehicle and flew off into the distance. She blinked a few times before turning back to the rest of the people with a puzzled look on her face. "Did anyone else know it could do that?" She then suddenly worried for the fate of the girl, as a boat docking had managed to sprain her ankle. Lord only knows what landing with that vehicle would do to her. She then looked back to everyone else and said, "I suppose we should start our own search at this moment. Let us stick to the shore so that we're easy to spot when our aerodynamic friend makes her return. Any objections?" Lucia was interested when the girl responded with the single word answer of "nothing." Rarely ever did nothing mean nothing. Even more so when it came to sarcastic females. Tsk. Women am I right? Regardless, she then continued on with what she was saying and Lucia shrugged saying, "nah you're not really bothering anyone." She then pointed at the boy next to her and said, "me and Caleb here were just talking about the mission and our thoughts on it, that's all really."
As the heartless had been dealt with in the Glen, everything seemed to be all hunky doory. That was, until they started to charge forward through the rest of the world and continue their assault elsewhere. Man that was annoying. Mickey then directed them elsewhere, telling them that the next piece for them to find was likely with the rest of the heartless. Well it was like killing two birds with one stone in this case. With all that said and done, the group started to go on their way leaving behind the Glen, but not Glen himself, as they went onward towards the next mission area. He had to run a bit in order to keep up with everyone, as everyone, especially Kaida was so much faster than him. Like damn son, the girl could pass for an olympic track runner, whatever the adjective "olympic" meant. Continuing onward, they had eventually come to the next mission area, that being a large coliseum. Looking around at the scenery, he caught his breath and then gave out an impressed sounding whistle, slowly losing his breath he just caught. Sure it was just a large building, but the size and and actual architectural vibe he got from it made it seem pretty impressive. It was then that some birds had just sort of galloped out, eating grapes and doing dances, until the next kind of animals had come out to take their place. What this animal was could only be described as horror incarnate. They were large, pudgy animals that had tough looking, wrinkly, brown skin. This was skin that looked like it would take a rocket launcher in order for them to even take a bit of damage...whatever that was. The monstrous creatures were garbed in frilly pink ring doughnut shaped rings of death...and dance. Which was just what these gigantically mawed and barely toothed creatures of the swampy void did. Prancing about, they were frolicking every which way, strutting their stuff and doing the fancy foot work. They even managed to spin so much that they contorted their bodies into themselves before spinning back out. That was just kind of weird. It was at this point that Stratos noticed the sudden shift in background music, that had been different since he actually got to the large building, and saw these demon beasts were grooving in tune to the rhythm of this jam. However, he then noticed Kaida had launched herself at one of them and started striking at one of them were her keyblade. Wondering why she was doing this, once defeated the creature had exploded into darkness and Stratos realized why she did that. Giving a thumbs to her, he said, "good observation there Kaida." He looked, trying to see if there was any more of these creatures that were heartless in disguise. As it were, he found the dissonance to the harmony of their dance, and saw one of these creatures dancing off tempo, and it had a darker color scheme to it altogether. The heartless then jumped into the air, expanding its jaw to irregular, even off of these things standards, size. Knowing that he couldn't quite bolt there like Kaida could, he let the cherry blossoms fall around him, until he had managed to Zantetsuken towards the heartless. Knowing that he couldn't slice through it in one shot, he stopped short, and used the momentum generated to ram straight into the heartless. The colliding in the air, Stratos had managed to knock it away from its prey, with Stratos himself landing on hard on the ground. When he picked himself up, he had lost track of the heartless he was fighting, and started to go observe some more. This was going to be quite the dance in the dark. 635 Words, 30 EXP Total: 30 EXP Total Munny: 30 Munny Break Even Point: 5/34 2/12
Lucia pondered on Caleb's response for a bit, thinking about how to leave it to just the princess. It wasn't like they were actively going out of there way to teach her magic and interfere with her parent's wishe- okay, they weren't. Their really respect stressing group leader, however, seemed to think it was a good idea. Nevertheless, she was still conveying her will onto them about what she wanted. "I don't think we're really influencing her decision that much. That being said, being free and learning magic doesn't seem like something she truly wants. Still, I think we should help her out if at all possible, but I'm not really sure what the logistics behind directly disobeying your clientele is." Tapping her foot and thinking harder on this, she eventually let out a groan, falling onto her back onto the snow saying, "it's no use. I can't think of a good answer for this problem." It was then that one of the other thus far silent guild members walked over to her and said hello. Sitting upright she gave a slight wave saying, "yo. What's up?"
Charlotte had started to listen to all of the responses that her teammates had to offer about their plan of action. They all more or less seemed to agree on the same general concept of their plan, and she nodded saying, "aye," in response to what Ra had to say about them overcoming the mission. However, this could only be followed up with a sigh as she looked to both of the two. Gaius asking who was better or worse in this situation was essentially a moot point. They were equally terrible and they needed to come to at least some sort of understanding or else the tension between the both of them would only manage to harm the mission in general. Truth be told, Charlotte had felt that the two of them were exactly the same, the only difference between the two was in how they stroked their ego. Dale's response was a less than favorable one as well, but there was not much that could be done about it at this point. When Calxiyn had fallen off the boat after they landed, this team only seemed to be falling apart faster than *insert witty metaphor here*. After her leg was healed she extended out her hand to the girl and said, "do you need help getting up?" It was then that she turned towards Ander and said, "we have no idea what that light is actually indicative of, and recklessly charging into their would not be the wisest course of action. We should stick to the original plan and look for the civilization Bobo had come from. Any objections?"
After his little outburst, it seemed that Seafoam had managed to stop trying to nonsensically kill her brother and left, letting peace reign in the room once again. This was something that he could appreciate, though this was merely temporary as some mad with light newcomer had stormed in and asked him about his method of not staying dead. While the answer was probably way more complex, and honestly there was probably no existing way to fully explain it, the simple answer of "respawning" was suffice enough. He then decided that he would just stop hearing everything around him, in order to keep himself from probably throwing more books at people, and thus the entire room was dead silent to him. Perfect. As he continued to read about the easy way to just have money given to you for killing named people, (though, in Hunter's case he would be next to worthless,) he suddenly resumed hearing as he slammed the book shut."Alright, awesome. Just give me a few seconds here people."He walked outside of the room and started to hunt down people who were now at the castle. First seeing Dane and co he stood there for a bit, not all that surprised that she had finally jumped from the station straight on board to the crazy train, he simply said to them, "yo, you can continue," he made a gesture directed towards them,"whatever this is later. Get your asses into the library with everyone else to hear our next objective, or forever live in ignorance."After that was over and done with, he walked towards an opening in the castle and yelled, "Red hair! White hair! Get in hear now for the next world set and for some oh so important legend telling!" After he had told everyone who wasn't in the room to get in, he walked over to a bookshelf and took a book out, flipping through the pages, before stopping on a page. He looked to everyone and said,"alrighty let's get this show on the road. Now that we're all here, buckle up and get ready for a long ass explanation that I'm sure will rivet you. If you see anyone not here that missed this big song and dance, you can explain it because I sure as hell am not doing this more than once." He took in a deep breath and looked at the pages before allegedly reading off of them. "My friend, do you trust her still? When she abandons you and I? All she will bring is a somber morrow Hiding the secrets the hero will know My friend, your hero Is the bringer of life, destroyer of the goddess Even if the morrow is barren of promises Nothing shall forestall my return" With that, he closed the picture book on a group of adventurers killing brooms, and looked to the group to provide his grandiose explanation on just what this quote meant."Alright, so as we can dissect from this passage the second and third lines are what's really going to bring us to where we want to go. So, it talks about "her" abandoning someone and leaving nothing but sadness when she does. Now, there's one place that I can think of that fits the bill for this perfectly. That is a place known as The Great Forest. What happened there was a mother to a deer died, it was all very sad and depressing and only really seemed to drag down the mood of the entire world with it. So I can think of no place better to search than there."This was a lie. He continued to walk alongside the bookcase before pulling out a french dictionary."The next place that lines up with this is the city of gypsies and physically deformed people who are supposed to ring bells or something. And you know what, this piece of the legend rings quite a few bells. Now then, this world in question is none other than La Cite des Cloches."As he said this he made sure that it was said in the most pretentious french accent one could make. Throwing that book away, he then pulled out a guidebook to rock 'em sock 'em robots."Now the next few lines of this verse make reference to heroes and how they are notably destroyers of a goddess. Now, while I know it goes with the female version, bare with me and lets just make this unisex. Now, there is one area that is legendary for creating heroes, and one such hero even took on some blue flaming haired god of the underworld and put the stomp on him. That place is an area known as Olympus Colosseum." A place that was surprisingly larger than just a Colosseum. That box could hardly even qualify as a Colosseum as well. Throwing away the book, he then finally pulled out the final book, one on Feng Shui."Another area that has a legendary hero comes from it also fits the bill. While this land has this famous hero, she only was able to ascend to this status due to a long standing lie that allowed her to get to where she was. A place that you could say was, barren of promises. This area is known as none other than, The Land of Dragons."Dragons were also usually associated with heroes, so it seemed like a good place to check as well. Putting the book away, he then reached into the bookshelf and pulled out a star chart. Opening it up, he spread it across the broken table and continued his explanation."Alright, so here is the map of the universe so you know just where exactly you need to be going. Now you'll notice immediately that we are actually searching through one universe rather than three. Ya know, help narrow down the search. You'll also notice that this entire thing is completely pointless because I think none of you have ever actually know where in the fuck you actually were in the universe so...just split into groups and go on your merry way." And with that, the next mission set was open. tldr; Great Forest, Cite des Cloches, Olympus Colosseum and Land of Dragons.
Spoiler: LvD2 Abridged >Confession Stratos looked at Beuce shyly, then quickly averted his gaze. There was something that he needed to get off his chest, and now that they were alone, now was the perfect time to tell him. But Beuce had always been a good friend to him, and if he told him, then things good change forever. He wasn't sure if he could tell him or not. No, he had to or else there would always be this terrible secret and tension between them. Looking back to him, he stammered, "Be-Beuce. I-I have something important to tell you." He was shaking from nerves, but after a deep breath had finally calmed himself down. "You see, for the longest time this has been on my mind, but I just couldn't find the words for it. But I'll just go for it. Beuce! I've always liked DMC Devil May Cry over the original Devil May Cry series...and I think Nero is a pretty shit character." There. He had finally said it. Stratos thought about what Beuce had said for a moment. The two options seemed to be equally viable, after all. On the one hand, he had come back from his behemoth slaying activities to put an end to this whole goddess thing...but he wasn't entirely invested in it, as the only reason he was doing it was solely based on a rumor, and rumors about oppressive deities were always there. Even when the god was a giant floating heart shaped stone in the sky, there were crazy rumors about it doing a bad job at maintaining the universe and was even said to have nearly blown it all up. Some people were certainly creative when it came to what they blamed and the stories they made up. >Let's go to Riel to help the goddess +5 Paragade "I say we go to wherever the goddess is and help her out. After all, I'm not really feeling the whole, save the universe from corrupt goddess vibe from this goddess. I mean, for the most part everyone we were currently with didn't seem to care at all." He then thought about it for a bit longer and said, "not to mention that guy I was fighting and the dude with the Scythe hardly seem like paragons of justice to want to save a universe."
After Lucia had asked her other guildmates for ideas she froze in place with mouth agape towards Hasu's response once more. Man, he was really on the ball with this whole "you're royalty it's your destiny" sort of thing. Not mention their seemed to be a bit of passion behind the annoyance in his voice, almost as if he had known first hand about everything he had been saying. However, after Hasu had said his piece, Annika seemed to come to an understanding with the things he was saying...maybe. Lucia wasn't entirely sure. It was at that point that Johanna said something that made her really question what they were actually supposed to be doing here. After all, she wasn't entirely sure how the whole, do the exact opposite thing your employers would want, thing would work out. Actually, she could only see it working out poorly. Regardless, the rest of the group didn't seem didn't seem to mind the whole ice skating party thing or what have you, and so they left. Things felt slightly awkward when they had come out to the ice skating party, as the whole party seemed to come to a standstill with her presence. After a bit of waiting around, the party seemed to resume as normal, though, and everyone seemed to be doing there own thing at this point. Lucia herself, had no idea how to skate at all, and so she just sort of hung back. She looked towards Caleb and said, "so there Mr. Silent and Stoic, what's your take on all of this? I mean, you haven't really said much since getting here." After Charlotte had asked her questions to Dale, Therity had spoken up about why they shouldn't care about any of the reasons behind Dale's motives, and keep all the things about it in the past. Charlotte turned towards her and said, "I think you misunderstand the point Ra and I were making with our inquiries. It wasn't so much in accusation of Dale, but rather to find out if he knew anything more about the mission we were taking. You can't deny that the more we know the better off we'll be." It was then that Gaius spoke up, and she couldn't help but sigh. While he did have his points, his arrogant way of speaking was some to be improved upon. Dale then gave the entire explanation that they were looking for, and while she couldn't say that she was completely satisfied with the answers, she accepted then and decided that asking any more from Dale would prove fruitless. She turned to Ander and said, "these two hardly seem like they are fighting anymore, though bashing each others egos against each other might be a more appropriate term for this." Turning to Veilen she said, "we should probably discuss our plan of action first. From the captain we know that there is at least some form of civilization on this island, so I would believe a good first course of action would be to locate them and see if we can learn anything more about the curse from them upon arrival. Any more ideas?"
As the King and Queen spoke their piece about their daughter's situation, Lucia was actually starting to get legitimately annoyed. She could understand concerned parenting. but this seemed to be a bit more extreme than just that. Slightly ticked off at the royalty she walked to the princess's room alongside everyone else and wondered just what was so dangerous about the girl leaving the castle. The ice skating didn't seem to be the problem so much as it was leaving in general, and the parents seemed to be actively trying to dissuade her from ever leaving the castle, or even her room, in general. Them being evasive to the questions they had asked and suggestions in general didn't make them seem any less suspicious, or like the bad guys in this situation. Once they got there, the door seemed to be closed and Hasu went over to knock on it and get the girl out. Then Zwei knocked on the door. And then Thomas knocked on the door. "Guys," she called out, "I don't think we need three people banging on a depressed girl's door at once. Or flirting for that matter," she shook her head at Thomas, "that's just called being desperate." Though, as luck would have it, Annika did end up opening the door to them and brought them inside her room...which had it's own fireplace. Man, royalty sure had all kinds of neat things. As Annika asked them about what she would need in order to be more free like them, Lucia shrugged and gave the nonchalant response of, "parents who didn't act shady for one thing." She then kept thinking about this for a bit, and then wondered what the answer she could give was. She then looked at the rest of the group and asked, "what ideas do you guys have?"
After having defeat that red haired spear woman Erza, Zephine and co had managed to secure the orb off of her person. Wait...why would the orb that controlled the fate of the entire world be on- eh, no use really thinking about it at the moment. After that was all said and done with, that pink haired dude seemed to drive over to them and Star saw fit to let them keep the orb under their care and let them guard it. She didn't really know how this whole, world orb thing worked, but there was probably some reason they couldn't just take it back with them to keep it under their transdimensional police force care. Ah well. After the Fairy Tail group members drove off into the distance, Zephine just said, "wouldn't it be funny if we just gave the orb to the people trying to destroy the world." With that done, the group had made it back to their base of operations, and Zephine looked around. Not noticing anyone else, she bounded forward a bit, gave a one hundred eighty degree spin, and gave a large thumbs up to the group. "Way to go guys. We made it back before the other group did. That means we are the superior team of the two, so hip hip hurrah!" With the last word, she pumped her fist into the air and said, "so, now how should we spend our down time? Hmm." She then proceeded to pace around the area, while pondering for an answer, though not coming up with an immediate one.
As he stood there looking at the man, Stratos was awaiting his response ever on guard for his refusal. When he made the dagger dissipate into darkness and made his escape through some dark portal type thing. With the fight ending Stratos let out a sigh of relief as the wind barrier around him seemed to calm down and recede back to the surrounding calm air. Casting a light cure spell on himself, his arm seemed to be more or less better and still fully functional. While the room had cleared out and he was able to ease up, he remembered that the guy in red who was also against them was still here. He looked towards him and called out, "yo! We're done here so you don't have to really worry about us anymore. After all our main objective was to save Glen- er I guess, Gexln from his own hot headedness and I guess," he turned to Beuce and said, "mission accomplished?" He shrugged, turning back to the man in red, when he said, "so yeah, carry on with your business as usual." Stratos then looked back at his ethereal armed friend and asked, "so what do we do now? I mean, I remember seeing basically all of these guys back at Disney Castle, and I doubt it will hardly fly if we go back to rendezvous with them if they already got back their first."
As the man responded to her question, Charlotte felt slightly dissatisfied with the answer. Being a previous resident of the island, he had to at least no what the status of it was prior to leaving. Nevertheless, he had apparently wanted no more of this discussion, and as such, simply left the group to their own devices. It was at that point that Calxiyn had pointed out a clear split in the sky. Charlotte looked at the clear, almost literal, night and day contrast of light between both skies, and had come to the conclusion that it too, was a part of the curse that had been going on around the island. As she continued to think on this, she heard Ander ask about "magic people" being on the island and answered him by saying, "well, I don't really see why there wouldn't. People able to use magic aren't entirely uncommon, and exist in most regions of the world, but the fact that this is more of a remote island might lead to them not having any. Nevertheless, I do not see what difference it would make to our mission." It was then that she noticed Ra walking over to Dale and begin to talk about the mission in general. She nodded in agreement about his point to find out more about the curse, as aside from the appearance change of the captain's arm, they knew next nothing about what it had done, what it was capable of, and just what it was in general. It was at that point that Ra had continued to question Dale on just what the reason behind this simple go in, break curse, get out mission was an S-Class one. After he had finished Charlotte added in, "and to what reason do you feel the need to complete this mission yourself. You yourself had just reprimanded both Gaius and Ra for doing something illegal, and though while not on the same scale, going on an S-Class mission with a handful of new members and yourself hardly seems within the boundaries of the guild's rules. So, what purpose did you have to so secretly take on this mission an enlist our help for it?"
