Stratos sat idly by as Karina started to give a speech to him about things. First off, about how they should finish this together in one combination move sort of thing...which he was pretty sure he said something akin to that earlier. Then, there was the rubbing it in Glen and Beuce's faces, because fuck yeah they were going to finish first and they effectively only had two people fighting these heartless for the grand majority of the time. Then there was the constant mocking of his pitiful strength stat, which he just sort of took because it wasn't like he could deny that he was weak as balls. Then there was finally the idea for the combination attack in which he would use his two moves that had basically been used by him to destroy just about everything thus far, Zantetsuken and Trip Around the Sun, while she used stuff from her new found fist fighting prowess, and Trip Around the Sun. Stratos was pretty sure he, or at least something that influenced his thoughts, had already come up with this himself, but whatever. He would just go along with Karina's (totally original) plan on combination attacks. And so, he started to fly towards the heartless while Karina had run at it from the ground. While there wasn't much he could do from the air, he started letting loose every last ounce of MP he had in the form of fire and blizzard spells towards the heartless, while Karina had punched the thing in a massive string of unarmed combo attacks. It was then that the command was given to go and Stratos had decided to do a chant that he hadn't done since the Camelot boss fight. The one for his very own Trip Around the Sun. Stratos's chest glowed black and white and he promptly put his hand over it, almost grabbing the energy from it and pulling it out. Jumping into the air, he summoned his keyblade to his hand and started to slide his hand with the energy over his keyblade. "You who would desecrate the land untouched by darkness, with my advent, I, a keyblade wielder, lay waste with the Spellbinder, and expel thy vast defilement!" With that, he preformed the Zantetsuken strike with his black and white solar flared up keyblade and struck down at the same time as Karina had managed to use hers. The resulting hit was a beautiful cataclysmic explosion that had had black, white, and general fire colors all collapsing in on each each, with a single giant cut in space time visible in the epicenter of it all. When the flames had cleared, the heartless was no more. OOC: Spoiler: East Side Cleared Casualties: Behemoths: 5/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 20/20 Morning Star: 15/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 5/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 EVERYTHING IS DEAD! Taking a deep breath of relief, Stratos looked threw his hands into the air and said, "we did it!" As he pumped his fist into the air, the sudden realization that most of the other sides weren't even close to being done had set in on him. Now sighing in annoyance, Stratos knew that the duo/trio had to move out and assist the other people fighting. And so after taking a quick rest he said, "well, looks like while were speedy in our victory, other people were not so fast. So, I guess we've gotta go pick up their slack." He then gave a sly smile to Karina saying, "and we can totally rub it in how much better we were than them in this fight too." With that, Stratos, Karina, probably Aden, and Base in spirit alone, all went to go help out NORTH SIDE! After traveling x amount of distance, Stratos showed up on the scene where Kel and Beuce had been fighting the behemoth. Dropping in out of nowhere, he let loose a blizzard spell on the things horn and looked to them saying, "hey, did ya miss u- what the hell happened to your outfits?" OOC: EXP Writer: 652 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3360 Spoiler: North Side List Behemoths: 9/10 (Injured: 55/300) Red Nocturnes: CLEAR Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR Yellow Opera: CLEAR Green Requiem: CLEAR Shadow: CLEAR Soldier: CLEAR Large body: 15/20 Trick ghost: 30/30 Book master: CLEAR Surveillance robots: 30/35
Stratos had watched as Karina and Aden did their separate things. Aden seemed to stab the behemoth in its eyes, only proceeding to piss it off more than before, and then get flung around. After that, he seemed to be fine, though sort of had the wind knocked out of him, (albeit, he had new wind put around him as a result of this.) Thinking that probably hurt a decent bit, Stratos decided to cast cure on him to mend him up. It was then that he watched Karina preform her set of attacks, and it was something else. With her raw strength she was able to cause as much damage as he could in a multi layered combo, in a single punch. And with the full string of punches she had managed to do far more damage than he could. About ten bps worth more. However, the time for admiring Karina's strength was over and now the time for Stratos's counterattack had begun. As things were, they were saving all of their best moves for a grand finale. Which meant he had to save Zantetsuken, and be absolutely sure not to use it, and save trip around the sun. Those were his two finishing moves and he would be sure to use them at the end of this fight. Now then Stratos had begun his assault by getting on his keyglider and flying towards the large heartless in question. However, the being seemed to not want to allow him the opportunity to attack first. Firing off its purple sphere attack, the sphere split as Stratos dodged it, and he had to jump off his keyglider in order to avoid the second shot and jump over it. After avoiding the attack, he warped the keyglider underneath his feet, he boosted off towards the behemoth only for it to fire off a large black null sphere at him. Throwing his keygldier at it in similar strike-raid-esque fashion, Stratos managed to neutralize the attack, and waited for the shield to disappear off of Da'Ve. Once that had occurred, Stratos flew over to the behemoth and started to shoot a fire ball from his hand towards the creature. However, Da'Ve the Voidmoth had other ideas as it fired off this short range black pulse of energy at him, that knocked him back and slowed him down a tad. While Stratos was falling, he saw a purple fissure open up getting ready to explode, only for him to summon his keyglider back and boost away once more. Now with that done, as soon as Stratos flew back to the heartless it seemed to be completely uncaring of just what he was planning to do. In fact, it seemed to be charging up some sort of purple light from its horn and tusks. It then opened its mouth and seemed to be charging some sort of purple orb as well, only to then have the tusks and horn send energy to that ball. The voidmoth then fired off a giant laser beam that seemed to be anything but pleasant. Flying away from it, Stratos was able to see just what kind of hell this thing could wreak. The beam seemed to disentegrate everything in a general direction, and Stratos was glad he was not in that direction. After the attack missed, Stratos quickly flew back and started unloading on the behemoth by striking it with various keyblade attacks. Starting up with a regular air combo, he followed it up with a blizzard attack, firing off a chunk of ice to hit it with, the behemoth seemed to be going down on its last legs. It wouldn't be long now until they were finished with this thing entirely. OOC: EXP Writer: 622 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3300 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 20/20 Morning Star: 15/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 5/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Da've 54/300
Stratos and Karina were continuing their final battle against the heartless that was Da'Ve the Voidmoth. As Karina had went into her own combat attack, she was eventually intercepted by the amount of attacks that was sent from this odd behemoth. After having getting hit by its various purpley attacks, Stratos was ready to cast cure on her, only to see that Aden had cast cure on her. Well at least it was good to see the guy was actually consistently fighting now. However, she had said something to him earlier before attacking the heartless, something about how fighting this together meant him not moving at hyper speed and taking care of things himself. He hadn't the foggiest what she was talking about, after all ,Karina had killed the grand majority of the heartless herself, he just continually pissed most of them off. He walked over to her and extended his hand out to help her up whilst saying, "please, I wouldn't dream of finishing this all on my own. After all, we started this as a team and have fought thus far as a team. So that's exactly how we're going to end this behemoth." After helping Karina back up (or not depending on what she actually does,) Stratos felt weird. While he had already felt some weird surge of power from the unknown inverted reluctancy, this was much different. This didn't let him do more like that did, no. This made him feel like he could take more punishment and stay alive for longer. This new source of power seemed to be radiating from Karina, and this just made him more curious as to what this new found power of hers actually was. Regardless, Stratos's attention was now back on the behemoth. It was a being unlike all the others thus far. They had fought both heaven and hell, and so now it looked like they were fighting whatever void existed in between those two. Roaring, Da'Ve went to strike at them again. This time, however, it used a new attack that created a weird dark purple cosmicy circle around him. He could suddenly feel pain coursing through him and quickly rolled off the circle only to feel it subside. Okay, so that was different. He quickly cast cure on himself and Karina, just in case she was caught in that circle as well, and then proceeded to go attack the voidmoth in his own way. Flying towards it, Da'Ve fired off the purple energy ball attack from before, and knowing what came after, Stratos was able to avoid both it and the two that split from the original. The next attack from the creature was simply a giant black energy sphere it fired from its mouth again, Stratos flung his keyglider at the attack to intercept it, however it seemed that the residual energy from the attack formed a shield around Da'Ve. Trying to take it on again, Stratos warped in his keyglider underneath his feet, and fired a fire spell from it, having the attack be absorbed by the shield. He then fired off the thruster and shot forward at the thing, bringing his keyblade back to his hand and starting up his usual attack sequence against the voidmoth. He let out a three hit air combo, followed by him initiating Vorpal Blitz, and then following that up with another air combo. He then finished this sequence in a different way by shooting off a blizzard spell, having the ice chunk collide with the horn and doing a fair bit of damage. With his turn done, the trio that was now fighting their final enemy was just about halfway done with it. OOC: EXP Writer: 616 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3240 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 20/20 Morning Star: 15/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 5/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Da've 172/300
Stratos was in terrible shape at the moment. His muscles barely wanted to respond to him, and were kind of screaming him at the moment. He realized how dumb he had been to think that he could do that without some kind of repercussion, but even still he wasn't thinking it would be this bad. His breathing was happening far too quickly as well, and it sounded more like wheezing than anything else. It was then that Stratos started to feel the power of his three cures that he had used finally set in. His breathing was slowing down, his body was becoming less stressed and he could actually move again. So, Stratos had to then sit down for a second as all his bodily functions returned to normal once more. As soon as everything had hit the status quo within him once more, he was able to stand up and not be violently shaking on his feet. He then observed around, and noticed all the heartless that still needed to be killed. There were no more zip slashers, there few morning stars, and then there were a few lance soldiers around. The only thing left that was a high priority target was the behemoth, but that could wait until they all killed the rest of the heartless. It was then that something really weird happened. Karina came in to help destroy the remaining heartless. No that wasn't the weird part. The weird part was how she was dressed. Almost as if she now had less clothing on before, which was hard to do as both of their outfits had been getting absolutely destroyed this entire time from the fight. Not to mention she had some weird magitech gauntlet thing. Well, probably more hextech than anything else. And then, she went on a rampage against the heartless. He watched as she basically tore apart heartless after heartless with her bear, sort of, hands. Now this was quite the amazing site to see, especially the finale against the morning star, killing it with her own trip around the sun. It was then that she walked over to him and sassed him about a frying pan. While he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, the fact that she was sassing him actually registered in his head as a good thing. Why? Well if she was actually in the mood to be all cocky and sass him, that probably meant she was no loner in one of her manically depressed states. Regardless of all this, Stratos still needed to actually fight the heartless and put an end to them. With no lance soldiers being left, the only thing left for Stratos to actually kill was the morning stars. And what luck! He could kill them all at once. However, the morning stars also realized that and tried to attack him. With one trying to body press him, Stratos was able to guard against the attack, jump into the air, and then start spiking the morning star at the other morning stars. With that, they all died to their own fellow heartless's attack. Poetic justice an all. With that, only one heartless remained in the entire group. "Alright guys, this is it! The last behemoth and we've cleared this side! Let's go!" With that, Stratos hopped on his keyglider and fired himself off to the behemoth. The behemoth in question was black and had some sort of purple aura around it. Stratos then attack the thing with his keyglider strike raid-esque attack and summoned it back to his feet. Curious about what this heartless, Dave the Behemoth could do, he started flying around it. It was then that the behemoth fired a purple energy ball from its mouth at Stratos. Flying to the side to avoid it, Stratos dodged the attack, only to then get caught off guard as the ball split in two and fired off in separate directions. Stratos quickly guarded with his keyglider, but still got knocked through the air. He had then realized that he was not fighting Dave the Behemoth. He was fighting Da've the Voidmoth. OOC: EXP Writer: 690 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3180 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 20/20 Morning Star: 15/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 5/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Da've 290/300
Stratos was ready to take the Stalwart Blade out, and end the reign of the large heartless...minus the behemoth. That one would come later. As things stood, it would take nearly everything he had, but by gone it, he would take this heartless out. No real exposition this time, the Stalwart Blade just charged him. Starting the fight off, its blades glowed golden and it suddenly did its Zantetsuken like attack directed at Stratos. He quickly put up his guard to block against the attack, though was sent skidding back as the blades connected with his own. With the sheer force behind the attacks, Stratos was sent skidding backwards, only for the Stalwart blade to follow this up by jumping up into the air, bringing his blade down on Stratos's own keyblade. The attack then sent a shock through Stratos's arms once more, though he was able to continue to hold his ground. The Stalwart Blade then followed up this attack with something taken from out of a behemoth's book. It quickly kicked Stratos in the gut, knocking the wind out of him and sending him backward once more. It was then that the Stalwart Blade followed up charging its blades up once more and then flashed gold once more. Stratos quickly got his footing back, and then managed to dodge roll out of the way, avoiding the attack altogether this time, only for the Stalwart Blade to turn back to him, and seem ready to kill him once more. The being jumped into the air, and was trying to go for its jump strike again, though Stratos wasn't stunned this time, and could very much react. As such, he was able to dodge roll backwards, avoiding the blades altogether, and then had the ability to attack it once more. Bringing out his ice imbued blade, Stratos attacked with Vorpal Blitz, and was sure that he was going to deal some damage. However, when the attack was initiated, the Stalwart Blade brought out both of its blades and formed an x in front of itself. The blades then intercepted Stratos's attack, pushing him back, and was about to end the fight right then and there. The blades of the Stalwart Blade charged up, and it was about to attack him with its dash slash attack. It was then that Stratos realized what to do here. Slowing down time, cherry blossoms began to fall, and then Stratos had seen the vital point of the Stalwart Blade. However, it wasn't in any location he could strike from this position. And so he ended up just cutting through it anyway. He then wanted to cleave through the creature once more to kill it. As such, he physically removed the cool down, realizing how to after Karina had done so, and preformed Zantetsuken a second time in a row. An X formed across the Stalwart Blade. Two slashes had been made, one to move through, the other kill. And with it, the heartless was dead. However, that's when things went wrong. As soon as Stratos had killed the final of the zip slasher variant his breathing became strained and his muscles started to feel like they were in an inferno. He fell to the ground drenched in sweat, and basically wheezing. Using a command like Zantetsuken, one that was not only pushing Stratos's weak body already, and being one of the strongest commands in existence, twice in a row, seemed to really eat away at him. He figured that this is probably why cool downs existed to these commands, and had to act fast or else he'd just be a sitting duck. He managed to bring himself back to his feet, rather shakily though, and managed to cast cure on himself. And then again. And then again. His body was feeling slightly better after this, but he was still shaking at the moment. Meanwhile, the final behemoth got hit by a frying pan and took damage. OOC: EXP Writer: 650 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3120 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 18/20 Morning Star: 9/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 5/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Behemoth 294/300
Stratos had been in sheer disbelief as to what was happening here. He had to do a double take in order to be sure he wasn't dreaming or hallucinating. There was someone new in this fight here. Though saying new would be implying that they showed up out nowhere, which wasn't true in this case. This person here had been with both Karina and Stratos this entire time, and he had been doing...like nothing. And by nothing he didn't mean just standing there and doing nothing, no his very existence was in question at that point. That brand of doing nothing. Stratos was concerned at the start of the fight about the inactivity of the fellow two team mates, but now, he kind of agreed with Karina's internal monologue of him just sort of benefiting of all their, and more importantly, his work so far. The person in question was Aden, who started to help them and decided that when there was barely anything left would be a good time to fight. Whatever. Any sort of help was better than no help at this point, and Stratos was okay with Aden helping them. After all, he was a part of this team. Then there was Karina, who seemed to come in like a wrecking ball. Like, she had definitely gotten her second wind for this fight...for like the fifth time. She was all about the whole, beating things in with her raw physical strength. Unleashing commands too and fro, beating things in with her keyblade and such. Not to mention she managed to completely disregard cool downs and use a single command five times in a row. Granted, that was strike raid and it was one of the weakest commands in existence. But still, it was a rather impressive sight, and one he figured he should try and learn from. After all, he was on a grand quest to learn and master all commands there were. Granted commands didn't have levels in this, but they were still conceptually odd. Anyway, he watched as she managed to make quick work of just about most of the smaller heartless, coupled with Aden's efforts as well, and she finished off a good deal of them using her limit. Well, that was something to see. He hadn't actually bore witness to limits before, other than trip around the sun and Mad World, but they were something to behold. It looked just like a command, really, but it was something he couldn't really hope to understand. It was even more mysterious in terms of technique than what he had seen Beuce use earlier. Those, he could at least tell were commands, they just had some really weird and unorthodox way of happening. This was completely different, mostly due to it happening from the energy built within oneself. Stratos realized he had a move similar to Karina's, but he just couldn't access it for whatever reason. Anyway, after talking about that, he heard Karina talking about how even after losing to that angelic behemoth, she wouldn't lose anymore. Stratos just said, "don't worry about it. Now that we have Aden working here, our jobs we've been handling right now just got a whole lot easier. Plus, I've always got enough mp for cure backed up." After Stratos jokingly said that last line, he then went to fight against the Stalwart Blade. It had charged up its blades once more, and tried to attack him with its usual charge attack, allowing Stratos to simply block against the attack and unleash a flurry of nondescript but totally relentless attacks on it. OOC: EXP Writer: 605 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3060 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 18/20 Morning Star: 9/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 4/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Zip Slasher: 28/100
Stratos had continued his fight against the Stalwart Blade and the other heartless that were here. Cutting all exposition and getting right to the fighting. Here we start out with two morning stars (oooh, spooky scary,) and three lance soldiers all coming over to assist the Stalwart Blade. Wait a second. What. Why were all these heartless suddenly being attracted to this fight? Stratos was pretty sure he could take all of these heartless on at once, though, killing them was another matter entirely. In fact, Stratos probably only had the perfect amount to deal with the heartless before him, rather than actually hit the Stalwart blade at all. While the priority target was the Stalwart Blade, the other heartless were simply annoying and were only going to get in the way later anyway. Better to focus them down now rather than worry about them when he was fighting the Stalwart Blade...wait a second...that was now. The Stalwart Blade was already charging its blades up the preform its dash attack, and Stratos was already getting ready to defend against it. As the blades flashed their golden light, the heartless had dashed at him, in similar fashion to Zantetsuken really, though obviously much slower. As the blades were about to connect, Stratos was able to take the full force of the attack to his keyblade, and was pushed back, his feet sliding across the ground and leaving skid marks. The Stalwart Blade, however, wasn't knocked back by this block and continued its attack by raising one of its arm blades and bringing them down on Stratos. All the boy could do was stand there and guard once more. He winced when the two blades connected, as the strength behind the Stalwart Blade's attack was still able to send a shock through his keyblade. The Stalwart blade followed this up by spinning his body, blade arms extended, in an attempt to cleave Stratos in two. The boy was able to bring his keyblade back up once more, to defend his side. The blade arm connected with his keyblade, and with this attack being stronger than the last two, it was flat out able to knock him away. As Stratos went slightly airborne for a bit, he quickly cast fire above him, to create a propulsion that would spike him downward, allowing him to land safely and without to much damage. Next up were the lance soldiers who seemed to want a piece of the action as well. The first of the three that were attacking him seemed to try and bring him down by diving at him. Stratos was able to simply parry the attack away, only to see another of the three come at him just flailing the lance around like it was nothing more than a wooden club or something. Stratos was able to dodge roll away from that in time, only for a morning star to roll right into him, and knock him back. Stratos was able to get himself back up in time to intercept the next attack from the lance soldiers, just a standard lance dive. As he parried that away, he noticed that a morning star was already about to body press him and that there was nothing he could do to block it. Things were bad, as the enemies were putting relentless pressure on him, but Stratos was able to pull out a huge reversal here. With time coming to a stop around him, Stratos had took Iaido stance with cherry blossoms falling, and though the enemies were all spread out, he managed to locate all of their vital points, and while envisioning himself cutting those points, he preformed Zantetsuken. He had quickly disappeared and reappeared away from the Stalwart blade. All of the other heartless chasing him suddenly had a large cut open up across all of them, and then quickly exploded into black smoke. OOC: EXP Writer: 653 Words, 60 EXP Total: 3000 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 9/20 Morning Star: 7/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 4/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 5/7 2- Lance Soldier: 4/7 3- Lance Soldier: 5/7 Zip Slasher: 56/100
Stratos was now in his epic duel of sheer epicness against the stalwart blade before him. The being seemed to be the toughest of the the variants thus far, despite not doing anything different. Especially since it didn't even have a single spell. Regardless, this one was going to be like the first zip slasher duel, minus the armored knights. Except this time Stratos had far more strength to use than he had before. Well, not like actual strength, but more like some sort of increased endurance. It was almost as if there was some sort of inverted reluctancy going on. Something that made people more willing and more able to fight on for longer. Though, normally all magic had some sort of source, something that fueled their power. And it was usual one that had some sort of identifiable one at that, as everyone who used magic, even if subtly, casts it in a different way. The source has a sort of magical fingerprint so to speak. But this, if it were a spell, had no source. No identifiable being was casting any sort of magic, and the feeling itself didn't even feel like magic. While he was curious as to what was going on, he didn't really care enough to try and think any more on it, as there were heartless that needed slaying. While the Stalwart Blade was priority target number one, the smaller targets of the lance soldiers and morning stars were also a factor to take in to account. While Stratos had no doubt that individually, they would go down fairly quickly, together they could probably form a much bigger threat. That, and they could prove to buffer his advance on the other, which ultimately lead to the same conclusion, but would just make focusing down a single thing much more annoying. As the stalwart blade started to charge up its blade attack, Stratos got ready to defend, only to see that a morning star was trying to use roll out on him. When the heartless came rolling at him, Stratos could only dodge roll out of the way, and the moment he did, the stalwart blade had let loose its charge, dashing straight at Stratos. Stratos could only awkwardly bring up his keyblade to deflect only a portion of the attack, but the brunt of it had managed to connect with him, sending him flying across the room. It was a good thing he had had aero up, otherwise that might have hurt way more than it actually did. Stratos quickly cast cure on himself, to heal away said injury, only to see the morning star roll at him again. Stratos quickly put up his guard to block against the attack this time, rather than dodge, and as he did, the morning star got out of its ball form and leaped in the air. Stratos reacted to the magic green triangle, guarding against the skyward attack, and then reacted even more by jumping into the air and spiking the morning star at things. Two stray lance soldiers that were walking around were the first targets. Throwing the morning star at one of them, the first of the had exploded in black smoke. The second charged at Stratos with its lance, only for Stratos to spike it at the second one and kill that as well. With that, he threw the morning star at the stalwart blade, who simply slashed the morning star out of existence. It was then that the Stalwart blade jumped into the air, only Stratos to initiate vorpal blitz before the thing came close. The Stalwart Blade, who was preforming a jumping attack, was intercepted by the final hit of vorpal blitz, and was spiked down by the critical that it brought along with it. OOC: EXP Writer: 637 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2940 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 6/20 Morning Star: 5/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 4/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 5/7 2- Lance Soldier: 4/7 3- Lance Soldier: 5/7 Zip Slasher: 56/100
Stratos now had to keep going on his massive tear of all the heartless that were around, and needed to bring them all down with his raw demacian not demacian might. As things stood, there was a single zip slasher left, a single behemoth left, and a handful of two other types of heartless. Which could only mean, that things were working out perfectly fine here. The fight had been long and hard, yet they were finally coming to their ending point. While Stratos wanted to kill the behemoth, he knew it would be a bad idea to take it on by himself right this moment. No, he needed to have Karina's help to bring down such a beast. Not to mention it would be much better to end everything by killing the big guy last. True final enemy fashion and all. Then there was also the fact that the lance soldiers and morning star could get in their way in the middle of the fight. And that would be just plain annoying to have happen. So next up, Stratos had to figure out what to fight next, but before that, he needed to make sure his partner was fine. Sure she hadn't done much see he cast it on her the first time, but Karina still seemed a bit like she had some sort of injuries that needed casting away. So he simply let loose the green light from his keyblade that indicated cure being cast from it, and he did that a second time. Why? Because one could never be too careful when in the giant moshpit of heartless. Next he cast Aero on the both of them just to keep their defenses up for the moment. Again, couldn't be too careful. As Stratos was about to go looking for trouble, trouble came looking for him. This brand of trouble came in the form of a zip slasher variant, and looked primed and ready to kick some ass in. While a regular zip slasher was some sort of silvery blend of grays and the such, with sort of dull blue blades for arms. This one, however, looked much different. Even the other three variants so far, the ones that cast magic, all looked pretty similar in overall color scheme sans blades. This one, however, had bronze armor coating its body, decorated with red lines streaked across it. The blades, too, were something different. They were simply an orange yellow. The other thing about this variant was that it seemed to hold no sort of elemental affinity to it. No, instead it seemed like it was just raw physical might like the first one. Not to mention this one seemed...bigger. Like, size wise, it was much bigger than all of the other zip slashers thus far. While Stratos was analyzing its appearance, it was busy charging up an attack. It the light around it stopped gathering together, its blades flashed golden and the heartless charged the keyblade wielder. Acting fast, he brought up his keyblade to block against the slash. With the heartless knocked down, Stratos went in to unleash a ground combo on it. With the last hit of the combo hitting, he quickly chained in a vorpal blitz only for the heartless to stand back up at the end of the third hit. Once that was over and done with, Stratos then blocked against the oncoming attack, only to be pushed back by the raw physical might of the Stalwart Blade. Well this thing certainly packed a punch. Getting ready, Stratos swiftly dodge rolled past the heartless as it slashed at him once more, and then went back in to attack it. He repeated this process until his BP ran out. OOC: EXP Writer: 625 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2880 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 4/20 Morning Star: 4/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 4/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 5/7 2- Lance Soldier: 4/7 3- Lance Soldier: 5/7 Zip Slasher: 66/100
PSSSSSSSSSSSYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Stratos now had to go in and take care of these heartless once more with feeling. He had suddenly felt the adrenaline rush fuel through him again, almost as if it had never disappeared in the first place. Well that was interesting. Not to mention the chill ripper itself looked a little worse for wear. Man, had he been doing that much damage this entire time? Lord only knows what Karina was going to be like when she realized her destructive might was back as well. How did he know it was gone? Why because she was really sluggish at the moment. Regardless, Stratos was a man on a mission to kill this chill ripper and take down the second to last zip slasher. These guys were something else alright. Always guarding against attacks, blocking and stuff. There, immunity to magic bull shit. Then there was the fact that they were kind of strong, both in terms of raw vitality and endurance, and then in terms of actually fighting strength. The all seemed to have something to bring to the table when it came to that. The first one just being generally awesome, the second with its raw fire magic, the third one with its wind powers, and now this with its ice. Well he was going to end it right here, and right now. Before the two could get in to their epic confrontation it was then that a wayward morning star waddled its way over into the scene. It looked like it was ready to pick a fight with Stratos, and he knew just how he was going to end this fight. However, it'd have to be put on hold as the morning star continued to do something different. Rather than jump and try to body press him, this one curled up into a ball and started rolling at Stratos. He quickly dodge rolled away from the heartless, only to see a chunk of ice come flying right at him. Stratos quickly held up his keyblade to guard, only to see the attack belonging to the chill ripper. A wayward lance soldier than came diving at him, only for Stratos to quickly parry that attack away and strike the lance soldier back. It was then that the chill ripper had charged its charge attack, and with a trail of ice behind it, came sliding straight towards Stratos. Putting up his guard to block against the attack, he was pushed back, yet so was the chill ripper. While this would've been a golden opportunity, the morning star had already come back around to roll straight over Stratos. The young keyblade wielder dodge rolled out of the way, only to see that the chill ripper had finally gotten back up. Then it did something even wierder. Creating a large bow of ice, it fired what could only be described as an enchanted crystal arrow at him, which Stratos could only put his guard up against. While he block the brunt of the attack, he was left stunned there by the sheer force and chilling factor. He stood there as he saw the morning star finally jump into the air. It was only for a split second that the window opened up, but Stratos managed to unfreeze himself just in time to block against the attack of the morning star. He then started spiking it at the chill ripper only to have the chill ripper immediately cleave the heartless in two. However, Stratos was going to end this right here. Getting into his Iaido stance, Stratos was able to see the Vital Point, as he was now calling it, and immediately dashed forward at blindingly fast speeds. With Zantetsuken over with, Stratos had cut the vital point and the chill ripper was dead. OOC: EXP Writer: 633 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2820 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 4/20 Morning Star: 4/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 4/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 5/7 2- Lance Soldier: 4/7 3- Lance Soldier: 5/7
YOU WA SHOCK!
LOUD NOISES
Stratos was continuing his sort of oddball fight against the zip slasher and lance soldiers. The zip slasher, first and foremost, was one large threat as it had some sort of oddity to it. It was more lightly blue than the rest of the zip slashers. Furthermore, this one had more jagged blades, ones that seemed to be more lightish blue, a cyan color really, with the air around it being slightly visible. Not to mention that the entire area around it seemed to be more chilled and and if he were to get hit by one of those blades it'd like...rip through him. With that, Stratos decided to name this one a chill ripper. Okay, so Chill Ripper Zip Slasher that needed to be fought now. Stratos was starting to think that this one might actually have a weakness to fire, given that it was clearly ice element, but he wasn't going to risk it. After all, magic was a precious commodity and stuff. Well, not nearly as precious as it is in the game these things come from, but hey, still a finite resource being used here. As Stratos was about to go fight some more, his attention was drawn by like, someone going super saiyan for like a third time. Only it wasn't actually going ssj, no, it was instead, Beuce. He looked way different and he actually had a sword now. Well that looked weird. He seemed to be going on some sort of actual tear, ripping heartless apart with that blade of his and attacks that he couldn't even comprehend. Usually when Stratos saw a command he could understand it, and think to mimic in some way. It's what he did with Vorpal Blitz, copying it from Karina and even weird spells like summons, like Dumbo which he took from Beuce. But these were something that he couldn't even begin to comprehend. His attention was then turned back to the fight as Karina came back in and started tearing heartless apart herself. Stratos watched as she murdered the three lance soldier heartless and was somewhat in admiration of her strength. Sure, she was a manic depressive who seemed to have terrible mood swings, but when she was fighting, she had enough strength to really just depend on herself. Stratos didn't entirely have that luxury ever, and so he had to keep depending on people to do things for him. Even with as much work as he was putting in to this fight, he felt as though that he would've died a long time ago. Like he wouldn't be able to do even half the work he himself has put in here without her. And so he was pretty thankful to have her here in this fight with him. Regardless, it was his turn to bring on the pain against the chill ripper and lance soldiers, and so no heartless was going to be safe from his onslaught of attacks. Well, none of them were going to die, but none were going to be safe either. Lances soldiers started piling over at him, three coming to spear him in all at the same time. Dodge rolling to the side, he managed to evade the attacks and then quickly retaliated at all three of them with a vorpal blitz. While he had evenly distributed the damage between the three, it still knocked them away and the chill ripper was still left to get hit. So, Stratos came at the heartless with all of his might and started laying into it with ground combos in an attempt to weaken it. Afterwards, because she was still shaky from the last fight, he cast cure on Karina to help her get back on her feet again. OOC: EXP Writer: 627 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2760 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 4/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 3/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 5/7 2- Lance Soldier: 5/7 3- Lance Soldier: 5/7 Zip Slasher: 23/100
It was time to go and fight a bunch more heartless than before. That's right, he was now going to go on a tear and kill a whole bunch of heartless. Which heartless? Why, the lance knights of course. They had gone too not dead for too long. And Stratos was about to change that. Just look at those doofy little heartless. It was pretty lanky looking and seemed to be covered in some sort of bronze armor. Then there was the lance itself. That thing was just some giant black cone, with like a mouth on it. Heck, Stratos could even see some eyes on it. It was almost as if the lance itself was alive. Okay, so they didn't seem too hard to bring down, seeing as they couldn't even keep track of their own lance. Stratos watched as the goofy armored heartless continued chasing after their own lance which seemed to be just running away. Well, this was certainly going to be a weird fight. Nevertheless, he was going to have to deal with them the best to his ability, otherwise, he was going to probably get killed from his own overconfidence. And Stratos couldn't dare to be overconfident as he didn't have much to be over confident about. As Stratos was about to begin his own little onslaught on the heartless, he suddenly felt that the surge of energy he had, the adrenaline rush so to speak, had worn off. Well that was a little annoying. Now he couldn't kill twice the heartless that were here. So he'd just have to live with that, twas the price one paid when they played a game for about eight hours straight rather than posting. Anyway, the lance soldiers had decided that they wanted to take the initative and attack, and so Stratos could only go on the defensive from the get go. One lance soldier began the fight by charging at him with his lance, though looking like it was being dragged along by the weapon rather than actually attacking it with it. Stratos was able to dodge roll to the side, getting away from the attack, only for another lance soldier to start flailing about. With lance in hand, it looked like it was trying to slice Stratos up, rather than actually use the weapon as a lance. Parrying the blow away, by just striking at it with his own keyblade, Stratos could now go on the offensive. Quickly striking back at the heartless, he initiated a ground combo, and hit the single lance knight three times with it. After the third hit landed, he turned his body and a different lance soldier away with the combo finisher. After that, he had to think fast, as another lance knight dove at him. He quickly put up his keyblade to block the incoming strike, and after parrying it away, he was good to continue his fight. Attacking the next one a few more times with his regular combo, Stratos saw the distant threat approach him. It was another god damn zip slasher. While it did look different, Stratos wasn't really going to pay attention to it as it charge him, blade arms at the ready. It was then that Stratos had to start dodge rolling like a madman, as lance soldiers were flailing and diving at him from every which direction. After doing that, Stratos brought up his guard and stopped the blades from the zip slasher from connecting with him. He quickly struck back, hitting it with a full combo and slamming it away. He then proceeded to do a bunch more attacks and ended up beating the heartless back. This was going to be interesting. OOC: EXP Writer: 619 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2700 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 1/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 3/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: 1- Lance Soldier: 4/7 2- Lance Soldier: 5/7 3- Lance Soldier: 4/7 Zip Slasher: 70/100
Stratos and the dual blade's dual of fate was coming to a close. It had been put on its last legs from Stratos's last string of attacks, and it was clearly visible. The dual blade heartless seemed to be kneeling on the ground, using its blade arm to support itself as it seemingly caught its breath. As it finally managed to pick itself back up, it pointed its blade arm towards Stratos, signalling that this would indeed be the end for one of them. The question was, who?...The Dual Blade of course. Stratos wasn't going to die against this thing, it couldn't even do any actual damage, just pretend damage, like every other heartless here. Regardless, the two were going to end their duel in the most epic way possible. And not at all anti-climactic in the slightest. Why? Because Stratos didn't have his cg high enough to use trip around the sun. Not to mention he wasn't entirely sure if the limit would actually work on the heartless. This whole, is it magic or not thing was very ambiguous. Anyway, the dual blade decided that it had had enough of just waiting around, and decided to go in for its own attack. It started by casting the aero wind shield around itself, and then hopping at Stratos. Stratos responded to this by quickly putting up his keyblade and blocking the attack, parrying it away and getting ready to go in and strike it down. He swiftly brought his keyblade around to hit it in the side, though due to both the aero barrier and the heartless's swift reflexes, this was not meant to happen. Using one of its blade arms to parry away the strike, the heartless then went in to attack the boy by spinning around with its blade arms to slice him in half. Stratos was able to high jump over this, only to realize he had just repeated the same mistake from last time. The dual blade created the air cyclone above itself, catching Stratos in and flinging him out. As he went crashing into the ground, he hit it with less force than he was expecting, due to his own aero spell. He was then knocked to the side the aero wind ball burst on contact with him. As the boy tumbled across the ground, he knew just what was coming next, and summoned his keyglider from out under his feet. With it there, he moved as best he could in the air to have the board form a shield from the dual blade's follow up attack of dashing at Stratos. After getting knocked down by the attack, Stratos was about to wail on the dual blade, only to realize that there was a morning star trying to surprise crush him. Seeing the green triangle prompt, Stratos blocked the attack, jumped into the air, and then started spiking the heartless at the downed one. However, the dual blade was not out just yet, as it managed to guard the morning star's attack, only for Stratos to react again and throw the morning star again. This went on for a bit, until the dual blade finally sliced the morning star in half. However by this time, Aero had worn off, and so had a cool down. Stratos took his Iaido stance in mid air, and looked onward as he saw the vital point of the Dual Blade reveal itself. In a single instant, Stratos was behind the thing. A large cut formed on the dual blade, who promptly vanished after the attack. Well that was one thing down, now all he needed to do was bring down some more heartless. Looking forward, he saw a lance solider, the only heartless to not be attack yet, and killed it with fire. He then threw a book at another one and ended his turn there. OOC: EXP Writer: 648 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2640 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 1/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 3/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Lance Soldier: 6/7
So this zip slasher, which was now going to be designated as a dual blade, was a lot harder to take down then Stratos originally thought it was going to be like. With the thing's aero shield, it made any approach he had at taking it down fairly difficult. Being immune to magic, Stratos couldn't even improvise with that. Though he did wonder why something like fire strike would still be more effective than just a regular attack against it. After all, it was a blade coated in fire magic, so really it should have power comparable to just a regular attack. Anyway, the next big thing about this heartless, was that it also seemed to different kinds of wind magic. But he felt like that wind ball that went across the ground earlier was indeed an aero. So why did it look and act so differently? Was it some sort of design choice that nobody could really be bothered to keep consistent? Who knew. Regardless, Stratos needed to think of a way to deal damage to this thing without getting killed. Easier said than done really, but he would perservere through this hard time. The heartless, this time, came charging at Stratos while the young keyblade wielder awaited the attacks. The dual blade started by bringing its blade down upon Stratos, only for him to have to guard against and parry the blow away. Not finished with this set of attacks just yet, the dual blade then spun around and tried to cleave Stratos in two. He quickly responded to this by high jumping over the strike, only for the dual blade to finish the attack string up with one of those aero variants it had seemed to know. Creating a small twister of air above itself, the heartless then flung Stratos out of the air as the twister pushed outward. Landing to the ground in pain, Stratos was able to pick himself up in time in order to dodge the jump attack of the dual blade and avoid being impaled. Staggering backwards, Stratos got his keyblade up as the heartless was now charging up for a dash attack once more. With it, the wind channeled blades came straight towards Stratos as the dual blade traveled in a single straight line. Putting up his guard, Stratos managed to block and parry the attack completely. This then made it so that the heartless just fell back for some reason. So guarding against those knocked them off their balance, good to know. Stratos then rushed over to the dual blade and started attacking it with a regular four hit combo. As the fourth hit landed, the heartless was sent into the air, and Stratos was able to follow this attack string up. He jumped after the heartless, and started an air combo. As the third and final hit of that combo landed, the dual blade was sent hurtling more through the air, only for Stratos to then finish this off with a vorpal blitz. Unleashing three, ice imbued hits, against the thing, when the third hit connected with the dual blade, it was spiked downward, having been critically hit. When that was done with, Stratos quickly dodge rolled towards the dual blade and tried to unleash another combo on it. However, as he begun, the dual blade brought its arm blades up, and parried away his own attack, making Stratos unable to continue. The dual blade then saw the opportunity to strike against Stratos, slashing at his side, only for the keyblade wielder to parry the strike back and continue attacking once more, bringing the dual blade to its last legs. OOC: EXP Writer: 610 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2580 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Zip Slasher: 16/100
Stratos was now to fight in another one vs one duel of fate in epic proportions against Zip Slasher number three. Seeing as the first one was an honorable knight type person, and the second one had fiery blade arms, one could only imagine what this zip slasher would bring to the table in terms of uniqueness. As it stood, though, this one seemed no different from a regular zip slasher. Actually, now that he took a better look at it, this one had more a lightish blue armor, where the original zip slasher had some sort of silvery armor. Then there was the fact that its blades seemed slightly longer and that he could almost feel some sort of breeze emanating from it. Stratos wasn't entirely sure what to make of this, but he wasn't going to let it stop him. Drawing out his keyblade, he quickly went to go engage the double bladed heartless in some sort of sword on sword battle. However, before Stratos could even make the first strike, the thing seemed to cast some sort of wind magic from its blade. It then had an aero shield surrounding him, and now seemed even more willing to fight. It was then that Stratos remembered just what the problem with these things were. They were completely immune to magic, except wind for this one, but that seemed to be its natural affinity. So Stratos had to rely on his own strength and quick wit in order to bring this thing down. With the two charging forward, Stratos quickly put up his guard as the blade from the zip slasher came straight at him. Having parried the strike, Stratos went to counter the attack, only to feel his blade be pushed back by the wind wall. While he was able to land a strike through it, it ended up taking great effort and seemed even less effective than usual. Huh, so that's what it was like going against an Aero barrier. The zip slasher then jumped back, charging up a different wind magic in its blade. Slicing forward, out came a ball of wind that rode across the ground and tried to track Stratos down. The only thing the young keyblade wielder could think to do was guard, and so he did, though took a fair bit of the force behind the attack. The Zip Slasher than seemed to charge its blades with wind once more, whilst Stratos was recovering, and charged straight at him. Stratos reacted to this the only way he knew how to. And that was by stopping time with the cherry blossoms falling from the undisclosed location. Not really trying to use it for any other purpose than dodge, Stratos didn't take the time to analyze the attack this time, and instead just sliced straight through the zip slasher. However, he felt as though the attack did very little in terms of damage, and ultimately was pretty ineffectual. This was most likely due to the aero barrier messing with where the attack was auto aimed at, and thus, the damage was mitigated. Stratos then decided to cast up an aero barrier of his own, generating a wind wall around himself, and getting ready to take on the heartless once again. It quickly just ran at the boy, not viewing him as a threat in the slightest, and started to strike at him with just its regular blade attacks. Pulling up his keyblade, Stratos managed to block the attack and then continuously wailed on the zip slasher heartless at every given opportunity, thus dishing out a fair bit of damage to it, albeit, at the cost of a lot more effort than usual. OOC: EXP Writer: 618 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2520 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Zip Slasher: 50/100 [/spioiler]
Stratos was ready and willing to take this heartless down, and was going to do everything in his power to stop it from casting its barrage of light based magic. Now, while he had been saying this preemptively before, now was the time where could actually finish another behemoth off. Why? Because, Karina was back in the game and ready to do some masterful work in using all of her own skill commands. Still being aerial based, they managed to break down on the behemoth and deal a fair bit of damage to behemoth. In fact, due to Karina's barrage of skill commands, the behemoth seemed to be on its last legs. However, as she finished her combo, it seemed to end in quite a bang. As in, she herself got hit by a bang that sent her flying to the ground. While Stratos's first instinct was to cure her, he felt some sort of nagging presence saying that may she wanted to be unconscious in order to both build post fluff and give an excuse for not being in the action. However, Stratos was not going to stand idly by as one of his comrades was in pain. And so he did cast cure...at some ambiguous point in time. It may have been this very second or it may have been much later into the fight. All depended on when Karina wanted to wake up really. So here he was, getting ready to assault the heartless and end the fight against Michael, the archangel behemoth. Stratos jumped into the air, summoning his keyglider underneath his feet, and started to fly forward towards the heartless. The heartless quickly responded by creating a barrier around itself, and Stratos payed close attention to just what the barrier was this time. Seeing that it was the smooth one, he recognized it as the holy reflect from before, and knew not to use magic. The behemoth then let loose a wide variety of attacks directed at Stratos. First, it fired off a large mass of energy that had accumulated in its horn, sending lasers of holy magic raining down upon the area. Stratos quickly flew around and was dodging every which one, only for it to respond by firing the homing bolts of holy magic at him. Stratos wasn't going to wait this time, however, for them to coalesce and become something terrifying. No, this time he'd stop them before they became a threat. And so, he quickly threw his keyglider at any and all of the holy magic bolts, stopping them in their tracks and blowing them to bits. With that done, Stratos saw that the behemoth was now charging up some sort of attack again. Seeing the red line go through him again, Stratos quickly fired off as fast as he could, just barely dodging the hyper destruction laser. Stratos then observed that the reflect spell had ended, and that now was the time to end this in a single instant. Creating a mini sun in his hand, Stratos quickly flung the trip around the sun at the behemoth, exploding into a majestic burst of solary goodness. And with that, Michael the Archangel Behemoth was no more. Landing on the ground, Stratos then turned to see a wayward zip slasher come at him. These were frightening heartless alright, but nowhere near as much as the behemoths and definitely nowhere near as random as them. The zip slasher simply jumped at him, blade arms out and extended in an attempt to cleave Stratos in two.. Bringing up his guard, Stratos repelled the attack, and then followed that up with a slew of ground combos. OOC: EXP Writer: 612 Words, 60 EXP Total: 2460 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 4/5 Armored Knight: 55/55 Soldiers: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 3/15 Assault Riders: 15/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 50/50 Injuries: Zip Slasher: 84/100 [/spioiler]
