Stratos was now skating around the entire arena that was the Hall of Records, zig zagging every which way on his keyglider. Why zig zaggs? Why it was because that way he could cause the heartless to have more confusion in their pursuit, and it would definitely slow them down, allowing Karina to quickly catch up and attack the heartless once more. This plan was still a terrible one, and one that he was surprised had lasted this long, given the fact that there was a single heartless within this entire group that seemed to have absolutely no presence whatsoever. It never chased after him. He never saw it before it was too late. Sure he had the ability to react, but, the heartless, it was always there. If it wanted to, it could probably be a pro basketball player. And then, it would be able to go and play in a long ass tournament, and then that tournament would go to a final game. And then, it would last for eight god damn months only for it to score pass the ball to its best friend and polar opposite of the team, Tiger the Hopsmoth, and finally end it. Wait where the hell did that rant come from? Point was, as long as Derpy the Derpmoth was around, no matter what Stratos did, no matter how he moved, and no matter where he went, that behemoth would kick him straight back into the action once more. As such, he was constantly vigilant, wishing he had some sort of eagle or hawk eye power in order to detect the heartless enemy, however no such power existed for him. To further cement this, he suddenly saw a shadow be cast upon himself. Well ****, this was definitely not good. Looking behind him, he then realized where the shadow was coming from. Due to the behemoth not being behind him, he quickly swerved his keyglider around and fired up the thrusters, boosting away from the kick that belonged to aforementioned behemoth. Since it wasn't behind him, he knew it was above him, and looked up as it seemed to fall to the ground, albeit, looking as if the body wasn't any making sort of natural movement. He then started to wonder how the hell behemoth was able to get the drop on him if it never moved, and since he was moving at a pretty fast rate, how it still managed to stay above him. Sensible thinking aside, he started to turn the keyglider around, and shot forward towards the opponent that was Derpy the Derpmoth. Starting up the assault, he quickly used the strike raid-esque attack of his to hit the horn of the behemoth, only to quickly warp it back to his hand in blade form, and then quickly locked onto its horn with a spell. With his keyblade tip igniting, he pointed it at the horn of the heartless and fired off a fire spell. With it, the ball homed into the horn and hit it dead on. Once the explosion had faded from the attack, Stratos followed up with a vorpal blitz that basically pulled his body unnaturally fast to hitting the horn, and then finishing it off with a three hit combo of his. Once that was over and done with, he quickly switched over to getting back on his keyglider and flying as far away as possible on it, in as short amount of time as possible. As soon as he had done that, he quickly went to hunt down more heartless to aggro, and flew over to two lone armored knights. He quickly hit them with a strike raid-esque attack, and then flew off to parts unknown...or basically the TARDIS sized library. OOC: EXP Writer: 628 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1200 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 43/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Derpy the Derpmoth 165/300 1-Armored Knight 1/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 4/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 3/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 8-Armored Knight 4/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 1-Assault Rider 14/15 2-Assault Rider 12/15
Stratos had managed to get far away from the heartless that were mobbing on him. Sure, it wasn't too difficult given the speed of his essentially rocket speed flying board, but still, the more distance between them and him, the more breathing room he was allowed. Especially given his mortal enemy of a heartless who was around at this point. Stratos had no idea what Derpy the Derpmoth's deal was. Sure, behemoths seemed to love to kick him, but that was literally the only thing this heartless seemed able to do to him. In fact, that seemed to be only the motion it was capable of at all. He couldn't recall a single time when kicking wasn't what it did, and he couldn't recall a single moment where the heartless had moved from point A to point B in a visible manner- speak of the devil. The behemoth heartless in question had appeared out of seemingly nowhere, to the right of Stratos. However, he saw what was coming and was able to respond properly to it. Quickly turning, he had managed to swivel his board around so that he would be able to dodge any incoming attack with ease. As the thruster ignited and was about to shoot forward, something really weird happened. That same, creepy and possibly demonic, purple light that had encased the entirety of the hall of records thus far started to shimmer around him once more. As this happened, he stopped. Just literally stopped. As if he were frozen in time and couldn't respond to anything whatsoever. When the light faded from him, he was suddenly sent hurtling across the room and felt a strong impact hit him directly. He had no idea what the hell had happened, but he was starting to assume this purple light was not exactly the friendliest of things. As he was sailing through the air, uncontrollably, he saw Derpy the Derpmoth appear once more. As it was rearing back its leg, it was about to go in for the killer kick once more, only for Stratos to actually try and react this time. Stabilizing his keyglider, he quickly towards the behemoth, and passed by it, causing the kick to miss. As he was passing, he summoned the keyblade back to his hands and triggered Vorpal Blitz. Due to the nature of commands, the attack forced his body out of any momentum it may have had, and instead caused him to preform a combo of attacks against the behemoth. With that done, he let loose another air combo, in which he ended on Derpy's back, allowing him to follow up with one of his four hit ground combos; Feeling as though he'd done enough for now, he quickly got back onto his keyglider and flew off of Derpy before it could magic him off its back again. Having done that, he then was able to go back on the hunt for more things to piss off. And so with that mindset intact, he saw some assault riders and armored knights that still weren't trying to murder him. Deciding that there was a good need for a change with that, he flew in and preformed his strike raid-esque attack on one of the assault riders. With that, he then crashed into two of the armored knights and had them start chasing him around as well. Realizing the situation he was in now, he quickly cast cure on himself in order to recover from the random ass hit from the behemoth. Flying away from the scene, Stratos quickly turned back, just to see the large horde of armored knights and assault riders chasing behind him, and questioned some of his life decisions. OOC: EXP Writer: 619 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1170 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 43/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Derpy the Derpmoth 180/300 1-Armored Knight 1/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 4/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 3/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 1-Assault Rider 14/15 2-Assault Rider 12/15
Stratos had started keygliding away at full speed, only for the inevitable to happen once more. Derpy the Derpmoth had appeared before him once more, out of nowhere, and proceeded to kick at him. So, he quickly reared up his keyglider, using it to block against any and all attacks that would come towards him. Once the foot made contact, he was sent flying away, uncontrollably sailing through the air. However, once this was done with, Stratos regained control only for Derpy the Derpmoth to appear before him once more and kick at him again. Rather than block against this, Stratos was able to use the booster on his keyglider to boost away from the attack, and managed to completely avoid the attack rather than just absorb it. So, he then used his similar strike raid-esque attack, throwing his keyglider straight at the horn. After it made contact, he quickly summoned it back to his hands in blade form and had cherry blossoms fall from the sky. In that moment, he had a clear lock on the horn, and zipped straight to it. Having hit Derpy the Derpmoth with his Zantetsuken, he was now on its back once more. Knowing what this behemoth was capable of, he quickly pulled out his keyglider and flew off of the behemoth, dodging whatever sort of movement magic this thing was capable of. Having done just that, he was now completely safe and airborne, only to see the behemoth basically appear in front of him again. Generating ice on his hands, Stratos had quickly cast Blizzard on the things horn, firing a chunk of ice at the behemoth and landing a direct hit on it. However, the behemoth, Derpy the Derpmoth, then let out another kick that Stratos had no defense against. However, he was totally fine as the keyglider was just luckily positioned so that the blow was received by his glider rather than his body, and instead just sent him hurtling across the room again. As he twisted his body, the board twisted along with him as he pushed it down onto the ground coming to a hard break on the ground. As he regained his composure, he looked around and then notice he had absolutely no time to take a breath, with the swarm of heartless chasing after him. Oh right, that was something that was a thing. Realizing that he was still aggroing a good deal of heartless, he started to take off and try and add to this angry mob. While this wasn't his choice at first, it was the best plan he could think of to deal with the situation he was thrown into. And he kind of found just running away from these heartless and chipping away at them to be somewhat fun. Turning, he saw more armored knights that weren't aggroed onto him. Attacking at once, he threw his keyglider at them, hitting two of them, with two others jumping over the attack. And so, he now had another two members of the large heartless army that wanted him dead. As he got back on his keyglider, he saw the two assault riders he had been hit into earlier catching up with him. While he could still get away, he stopped when they did. They suddenly seemed completely unwilling to attack him, and he felt the same. Thus he realized that reluctancy was cast again. It was then that its caster, Karina, came over to him to smack him for coming up with this terrible plan. "It's not like I have a death wish or anything. This behemoth just hates me that much that it keeps launching me into angry mobs. I just thought this would be the best plan given the current circumstances. Can't always have everything turn out perfectly." It was then that he saw the heartless starting to get restless once more. "Now then, I should probably get going as these all hate me. Happy hunting Karina," and with that, he had jet from the scene with a mob in hot pursuit of him. OOC: EXP Writer: 681 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1140 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 43/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Derpy the Derpmoth 190/300 1-Armored Knight 4/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 4/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 1-Assault Rider 14/15 2-Assault Rider 14/15
Okay, so Stratos was feeling good. Yeah, he was able to keep aggroing all of these heartless, and yeah, he was totally keeping them all injured, but he could only keep up with this sort of harassment for so long. Not to mention there was god damn Derpy the Derpmoth trying to kill him at every given moment. Actually, the thing wasn't even really trying to kill him at this point. It just seemed to want to kick him into this large group of heartless. While Stratos started to think it would be smarter to actually kill the armored knight heartless first, but there was something deep inside that made him want to kill this Derpy the Derpmoth before anything else. And so, with his resolve to totally murder that heartless, Stratos turned around to realize that once again, it had vanished. Turning around, he saw that the Derpy was once more gone. He quickly turned around expecting the behemoth to be behind him once more, only to not see anything. Well that was weird. It was then that he saw out of the corner of his eye, Derpy the Derpmoth standing to his side. He was then kicked in the side, getting flung across the room, until suddenly the behmoth was next to him again. Derpy the Derpmoth then proceeded to kick Stratos once more, sending him back into the mob of armored knight heartless. He was back in the swarm of heartless, with their blades brandished and ready to kill him once more. Stratos quickly picked himself up, only to suddenly stagger around a bit. He then realized what was wrong with him. He was kicked by a behemoth, repeadetly. And he had not cured himself in a while, not to mention that he was completely exerting himself over the course of eight posts. So now, his body was starting to fail itself. Having realized this, his immediate reaction was to cast cure on himself, however, he then realized why that was going to be a bad idea. If he did that, he'd give the heartless time to attack him, and kill him anyway. This seemed like quite the pickle to be in, and Stratos was going to die. However then a giant bird swooped into the mob and- no wait, that was just Karina. She then told him that she'd clean up his mess, only to then proceed to basically murder every heartless in sight. And by every one of them he meant nine of them, but hey that was a start if ever there was one. He also was glad to see that her initial vigor of killing heartless was back. Doing a quick salute he said, "thanks." Noting that she had just fought a terribly strong foe, and he was definitely in a pinch right now. So he quickly cast cure on both of them and said, "alright, so this behemoth is not leaving me alone at all, so I'll draw away his aggro for now. During this, I'll also see if I can aggro any other heartless to see if they can follow me. Once they do, you pick them off until none are left. Sound good? Good." With that, he got on his keyglider and jetted off, only for the Derpy the Derpmoth to appear out of nowhere and kick him out of the sky again. He soon knocked into an assault rider, who then threw him into another assault rider, who then threw him at Derpy's foot. Stratos quickly casted fire at the behemoth's horn, having it land as a direct hit, and then fired off another blizzard spell. It was then that he summoned his keyglider, blocked the attack, and was then sent flying across the room, only to stabilized himself and fly away. The plan had begun. OOC: EXP Writer: 637 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1110 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 36/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 2/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Derpy the Derpmoth 205/300 1-Armored Knight 3/5 2-Armored Knight 3/5 3-Armored Knight 3/5 4-Armored Knight 3/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 3/5 7-Armored Knight 4/5 8-Armored Knight 3/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 4/5 1-Assault Rider 14/15 2-Assault Rider 14/15
Stratos had been feeling confident once more in his ability to kill heartless and not get killed by these armored knights. Granted, he hadn't killed a single heartless over the past, what, seven posts. Regardless, he was still kicking ass, taking names, and totally on the winning side. However, as he turned around to guard against an approaching armored knight, he turned back to see that good old derpy the derpmoth was nowhere to be seen. Well crap. He knew what was coming up next. He quickly swiveled around to see that Derpy had come forth in front of him, already ready to launch its deadly kick move against. Stratos saw this coming again, and managed to raise his keyblade in time to block against the strike. Due to his added defenses against the attack, he managed to get off lightly with it, and only skidded backward. However, this was then followed up with something he wasn't even sure how happened. The Derpmoth, Derpy, disappeared from Stratos's sight as soon as he blinked. It was then that the Derpmoth appeared behind him once, towering over the young keyblade wielder. The Derpmoth then kicked at him once more in the back, sending him sailing across the once more, and back into the angry mob of heartless. However, he hadn't had the time to go and kill the behemoth this time, but instead quickly got his footing back. Here there armored knights circling him once more, and he to go in and take care of them once more. And by take care of them he meant turtle like hell and whack them with his pitiful strength stat and wimpy keyblade strikes. And so the armored knights started to walk in, circling around Stratos trying to take him out with their various blade arm attacks. However, his keyblade was at the ready and he had managed to totally deflect blade strike after blade strike. He managed to keep pushing the blades back, only to suddenly be in a much, much worse predicament than he was expecting to be in earlier. They stopped attacking him one at a time, and instead all held their blades in the air at once. And so, they brought their blades down upon him, all at once. All twenty of them. This should, for all intents and purposes, have killed him. However he managed to pull out the biggest bull shit plan out of his ass. He quickly cast aero on himself, but rather than forming a shield around his entire being, he created an air bubble within his hoodie. When the wind expanded, the hoodie suddenly burst out, sending pieces of his clothing into all of the collective heartless's eyes. The armored knights then, totally blinded and pretty dumb and just plain confused, started slashing around like mad men. They started bumping into each other with their blades clashing together and the keyblade wielder, now just in his purple t-shirt, was completely unharmed. Taking his keyblade, he whacked the various heartless out of his way, only to get out of the circle of armored knights. It was then that he knew just what was coming up next. The derphmoth, Derpy, had appeared before him once more, as if from nowhere of course. It was then that the heartless started to rear back its leg, and then kicked at him once more. However, before the attack could connect with him, cherry blossoms fell from the sky once more,and he managed to dash through the derpmoth, striking its horn once more. He managed to completely avoid the kick, and damaged it in the process. OOC: EXP Writer: 606 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1080 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 27/100 Derpy the Derpmoth 220/300 1-Armored Knight 2/5 2-Armored Knight 3/5 3-Armored Knight 3/5 4-Armored Knight 1/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 3/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 8-Armored Knight 2/5 9-Armored Knight 2/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 3/5 12-Armored Knight 4/5 13-Armored Knight 2/5 14-Armored Knight 3/5 15-Armored Knight 1/5 16-Armored Knight 4/5 17-Armored Knight 4/5 18-Armored Knight 1/5 19-Armored Knight 4/5 20-Armored Knight 2/5
Stratos was now in mid air, having successfully pulled off a Zantetsuken on Derpy the Derpmoth. Feeling good about himself, he felt as though he could take on an army. He felt like he was a one man army and that nothing in this world could pull him down. He then realized...that this was true. He was fighting an army this entire time by himself. Man, that was an interesting revelation. However, as gravity took over, he finally managed to touchdown on the ground, and turned behind him, only to notice that Derpy the Derpmoth was no longer there. What the hell was this thing that it just kept vanishing into thin air? He then realized what was about to happen and cast aero on himself and then did a one hundred eighty degree turn, followed up with putting his keyblade up and in front of him. There was the massive heartless's attack. The foot of Derpy the Derpmoth was already in mid swing, and had Stratos not predicted this, it most certainly would've been an extremely painful hit. However, all that managed to happen was the foot hitting both the wind barrier and the keyblade at the same time. This not only reduced the shock of the attack, but the distance in which he skidded backward was much less. Now was the time where he could go on the offensive once more against the heartless. Getting himself ready, he was about to charge at the heartless with his keyblade in hand, and was going to lay the smack down with his various commands, spells and combos. He was going to do this. However, as he was about to attack Derpy the Derpmoth, something weird happened. The large purple hue that had enveloped the entirety of the Hall of Records, the very same one that made the guillotine blade before, seemed to flow around Stratos. He had no idea what was going on, but he suddenly felt like he couldn't attack. Hell, he couldn't even do anything. It wasn't like he was frozen in time or anything, no. It was just as if there was a set rule of him not being able to preform and action at this moment. It was then, from that purple light, a purple lightning bolt arced off of him and towards Derpy the Derpmoth. However, the lightning bolt looked pitiful, and the damage from it seemed to be less from even one of Stratos's basic combos. Boy was that unimpressive. However, now Stratos was defenseless, effectively not being able to do anything to defend himself either, almost as if any action he could have taken was skipped entirely. And so, as if he just sort of slid forward without moving a single muscle in its body, the behemoth was now in front of Stratos, and had kicked him once more. Having been flung back into the army of armored knights, Stratos soon regained his ability to actually do something, and quickly picked himself up. Granted, that attack had done a good deal of damage to him, but it wasn't no thang. Stratos, despite this, was able to quickly parry oncoming strikes from the armored knights, and managed to land a hit with his keyblade here and there. While he didn't feel confident enough to go into a full out combo, he was doing work by chipping away the health of the heartless one at a time. However, he soon saw an opening within the group of heartless, and quickly ran through it again, only to be stopped by Derpy the Derpmoth's sudden appearance. However, the keyblade wielder was expecting this, and quickly high jumped into the air, avoiding the kick it was to deliver. Being in the air now, Stratos wanted to make this hit a good one, and so he made a mini sun appear in his hand, that he quickly chucked at the behemoth's horn, inflicting not too much damage on it, but still enough to be totally worth it. Ooc: EXP Wrtier: 669 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1050 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 27/100 Derpy the Derpmoth 230/300 1-Armored Knight 2/5 2-Armored Knight 3/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 1/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 8-Armored Knight 4/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 3/5 12-Armored Knight 4/5 13-Armored Knight 2/5 14-Armored Knight 3/5 15-Armored Knight 2/5 16-Armored Knight 4/5 17-Armored Knight 4/5 18-Armored Knight 1/5 19-Armored Knight 4/5 20-Armored Knight 2/5
Having the valiant sacrifice of Paul the shadow take place, Stratos was now primed and ready to make a heroes come back against this large swarm of heartless that he was surrounded by. Wait. SHIT. He then realized that after having been kicked around by the Derpy the Derpmoth he was now in the middle of just a large circle of armored knights. Again. Only this time he was on the floor and completely defenseless. Oh well, this was just a situation he'd have to somehow god mod himself out of, or else he'd be nothing but a pile of dead, evicserated keyblade wielder in a matter of moments. That would be bad for everyone. Especially himself. Anyway, he had a mission to kill all these heartless, and damn it, he was going to make it happen. Rocking himself backwards, he put his hands on the ground and suddenly launched himself up into the air. He had no idea why he was suddenly able to do something like this, but hey, he did, and he was in no way questioning it. However, now that he was ready to start fighting once more, he summoned his keyblade to his hand and began fighting back all the heartless that had appeared before him. Pushing away the heartless with his keyblade, he countered every blow that was sent his way. This time, rather than converging, the heartless seemed to just approach him one at a time. This made it so that every time they tried to attack him, he would simply be able to push back each attack, one after the other. After parrying the blades of the armored knights an inordinate amount of times, they started to wise up and start converging on him once more. However, rather than come in all at once, they instead were only coming at him in pairs. While they seemed ready and willing to fight him, he still had his guard up, ready to block any and all strikes that could come at him. The only problem was, that despite they were in pairs, the pairs themselves still attacked asynchronously. This made his timing to parry the attacks exceptionally more difficult, however he was still able to keep up. Each time he managed to parry one of them, the group would leap back, and then another one would advance. For whatever reason, though, they seemed to be fighting him, the weaker one, in a much more defensive way then before. Stratos took this opportunity, and pressed his advantage by charging at a single pair of the armored knight heartless, keyblade at the ready. While they seemed to back off a bit, they soon charged forward to meet him, with the others trying to match suit. Having slashed at two of them, he managed to push the attackers away from him and continue on forward. However, it was soon after he left the ring that he was greeted with his old friend, Derpy the Derpmoth. He soon hi jumped over this grand behemoth's foot as it kicked at him, only for Stratos to immediately follow this up by doing a mid air guard. This was in anticipation of an attack that came at him. With the behemoth managing to appear above him again, he managed to predict the second kick, and didn't take the full force of the attack this time. Instead, he was sent flying back into a single armored knight, and launched himself off of it as soon as his foot touched down on it. He then went into start air comboing the creature, only for it suddenly try to kick him from behind. Despite the attack, Stratos had managed to use Zantetsuken in time in order to dodge the foot and deliver a heavy blow to the heartless. OOC: EXP Writer: 635 Words, 30 EXP Total: 1020 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 27/100 Derpy the Derpmoth 240/300 1-Armored Knight 2/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 3/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 8-Armored Knight 4/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 3/5 12-Armored Knight 4/5 13-Armored Knight 2/5 14-Armored Knight 4/5 15-Armored Knight 3/5 16-Armored Knight 4/5 17-Armored Knight 4/5 18-Armored Knight 1/5 19-Armored Knight 4/5 20-Armored Knight 4/5
Things were looking up for Stratos. With his extremely low strength, having only barely damaged just about all twenty of the ones he had been fighting, having a behemoth who would not let him fly in the air on his keyglider, having next to no MP whatsoever and being in the center of the large crowd of armored knights, things couldn't have been better. In fact, all of this was looking so up, that it was all actually a lie. This couldn't have been a worse situation. Okay it could; they could all be zip slashers instead. Granted the likelihood of them all transmogrifying into a far more threatening heartless within that short of a time was slim to none. And while now, since he had thought of it, he was totally expecting that to happen, he was glad to see that the heartless hadn't spontaneously become stronger. Random post filler. Anyway, Stratos had an angry mob to deal with, and very little to deal with them. But it was okay, he had this all under control...sort of. Okay, no he didn't. In fact, if it wasn't for this internal monologue, they'd probably have swarmed him by now. Speaking of which. The gang of armored knights soon converged on Stratos, ready to murder him at the first given chance. So, Stratos had to think fast. And react even faster because good lord these things were some sort of relentless. They first came in, three at a time, trying to cleave through him. Stratos was able to stop the blades, and push them back, set after set. However, they then started to try and go into a new pattern of attacking. This being, one attacking after another...all in the circle. So while they were attacking one at a time, moving in a circular motion, Stratos was only able to guard against each attack and spin himself around as fast as possible. Then, there was the problem of them changing up their attack pattern again. This time, rather than trying to strike him down in a circular pattern, they instead started attacking randomly. And so, Stratos had to start guarding randomly. Blocking each strike after strike, he continued to push the blades away. However, due to his low speed and the sheer random factor of where the attacks were coming from, Stratos could in no way keep up with these attacks. As such, some still made it through and started to cut him up a bit. Okay, this was a terrible situation and he was probably going to die here. However it was then that that magical thing had happened once more. As if a giant green triangle were flashing across one of the attackers, Stratos then mentally pushed a green triangle button and reacted to the attack coming at him. Glowing golden, he rose into the air and dove forward into the heartless mob. He had no idea how he was doing this at all. This was definitely not a command, though it felt similar to one. As he dove through the heartless, he managed to get out of the circle with that technique, only to be then faced with the magically appearing Derpy the Derpmoth. Staring down his opponents, which was really hard because this thing didn't seem to blink either, he quickly jumped in the air as he avoided a kick from it. Stratos then went in for an air combo against the thing, followed by a Vorpal Blitz, followed by another air combo. As the final hit of the como landed, Stratos felt confident in himself to get away from the behemoth, until it somehow managed to get above him in the blink of an eye, and kicked him back into the angry mob of heartless. Ooc: EXP Writer: 630 Words, 30 EXP Total: 990 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 27/100 Behemoth 250/300 1-Armored Knight 4/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 3/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 7-Armored Knight 3/5 8-Armored Knight 4/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 3/5 12-Armored Knight 4/5 13-Armored Knight 4/5 14-Armored Knight 4/5 15-Armored Knight 3/5 16-Armored Knight 4/5 17-Armored Knight 4/5 18-Armored Knight 4/5 19-Armored Knight 4/5 20-Armored Knight 4/5
So, Stratos was basically, no sugar coating or anything, in deep shit. Not literally though, that'd be disgusting. Anyway, he had to keep going all out against this large ass swarm of heartless, and there was no way he could drop his guard at all against this swarm. So, first and foremost, he had to get on some sort of distance between him and them, and by distance he meant make sure that they didn't circle around him again. Immediately hopping onto his keyglider and he started to thrust away from them, and all had seemed fine. That was, until IT happened. What was it? Why obviously it was the actions brought by Derpy the Derpmoth. The behemoth appeared before him, being a towering shadow of death that was one to be feared and yet, respected, all at the same time. Seeing the empty staring vacant eyed heartless appear before him, he knew what was coming up next, and had only one thing he could do in response. Angling his keygilder so that the point of the board was pointing at the tip of the behemoth. He then charged up the magical energy in the keyglider, and then fired the fireball at the behemoth's horn. Once impact was made, the behemoth still seemed to be completely unfazed by this strike, and instead of reacting at all, it followed with its same autonomous motion that had been doing this entire time, and launched yet another kick at the young keyblade wielder. Pulling the board up, he quickly used it to guard against the attack and was sent flying across the room. However, he started to push the blade board down, so that the tail end of it was now scraping against the ground, and it completely slowed him down. However, as he looked up, his behemoth foe was nowhere to be seen. It had, once again, vanished into thin air. This thing was really weird. Turning around, Stratos's eyes widened in horror at the sight before him. There they were. The group of twenty heartless he had been stuck in were now right behind him, blades brandished and ready to skewer him on them. Or just chop him up. Either way, it was not to be something pretty they were going to go and do against him. His first thought was to, of course, jet the **** away from the attackers. However, he started to think of Derpy the Derpmoth as some sort of guardian that would not let him fly into the air just yet. So instead, he quickly turned around and then fired off his strike raid-esque thing again with keyglider. Granted, the heartless still weren't really dumb, and had instead started to avoid it. While a good deal of the front ones had preformed the Free Willy Cat action of jumping over his attack, and those in the back took it upon themselves to guard against his attack. However, he was not to be deterred by this and had, instead, summoned his keyblade back to his hand and started a charge against the heartless. As he went in, he started to attack them, one after another, switching target with each hit of his four hit combo. And so one after another, they were sent back a bit, and at the very end, he sent a wide sweep across them all and knocked a good deal back. Now there was just the problem of Stratos realizing how big of an idiot he was. Having been caught up in the moment, he suddenly realized he had managed to attack his way into the group of heartless, and hadn't managed to kill a one yet. Well shit. OOC: EXP Writer: 617 Words, 30 EXP Total: 960 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 49/100 Behemoth 260/300 1-Armored Knight 4/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 4/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 7-Armored Knight 4/5 8-Armored Knight 4/5 9-Armored Knight 4/5 10-Armored Knight 4/5 11-Armored Knight 4/5 12-Armored Knight 4/5 13-Armored Knight 4/5 14-Armored Knight 4/5 15-Armored Knight 4/5 16-Armored Knight 4/5 17-Armored Knight 4/5
Stratos was now mostly on the run. Why? Because he had no idea what was going on with this god damn behemoth. Derpy the Derpmoth, so far, seemed capable of instant transmission and the ability to kick whenever it damn well pleased. Not to mention it seemed capable of complete and utter indifference towards whatever he did. And so Stratos was now flying away on his keyglider, trying not to get killed by Derpy the Derpmoth. Having quickly looked around, he noticed that there was no such behemoth around when he had gotten on his keyglider. Feeling safer for the moment, he started cruising around, simply looking around for his next prey. However, it was at this moment of safety that Stratos realized that he was never safe from the behemoth. He suddenly saw a shadow cast across him, and quickly looked up. When he did, he saw a behemoth, falling though looking as if it were just standing on solid ground while doing so. Having fallen far enough, it quickly revved up its leg, too fast for Stratos to react to what was about to happen. Shooting its leg forward, it ended up kicking at his keyglider, with the intent of knocking him away. However, Stratos was not about to be bested by the same move over and over again. Right before the foot made contact with the glider, Stratos ended up warping it back to his hands in blade form, and quickly decided to give this beast no quarter whatsoever. With cherry blossoms falling from basically the same dimension Derpy was appearing from, Stratos got ready to do the ultimate of physical attacks. When the behemoth had seemingly suspended itself in mid air, it tried to kick the wielder once more, shooting its leg forward once more. In that split second before the foot connected with him, Stratos ended up basically disappearing from sight and all physical reality, only to reappear on top of the behemoth's back. Getting ready to attack with it everything he had, he quickly generated a mini sun in his hand, and threw it straight at the behemoth's horn. When the sun exploded on impact, he had believed to done a good chunk of damage to it, only for the behemoth to seemingly not move at all, but still managed to buck him off of its back. While he had no idea how that happened, he did know this was not going to end well. Quickly casting Aero on himself, Stratos prepared for the worst, as he quickly acted like a stone skipping across a body of water, only his body was the stone and his ground was the body of water. After that whole analogy was over and done with, he quickly picked himself up only to realize where he had ended up at. Looking around, he had managed to get himself trapped in one of these sort of situations once more. To his left, armored knight. To his right, armored knight. Everywhere around him, in a sort of circular cage, there were armored knights. Well, this was terrible. Last time he had nearly died, and that was against a grand total of thirteen armored knights. Now, there seemed to be no less than twenty. Man his luck sure sucked. If only he had been to wonderland, or had equipped the lucky ring. Or had lucky lucky. Maybe, just maybe, it would be able to save him from this. However, no such grace could be found within this trial of one thousand heartless. And instead, only certain death. As they all converged around him, Stratos quickly thought about all of his options that he could do here. However, as they converged, it was almost as if he were against the morning star all over again. Reacting to a certain thing the armored knights were doing, Stratos quickly flew into the air, glowing, and then dove straight through a line of them. While he didn't kill any, he was extremely confused as to what had just happened. And realized that this might be his key to victory against this group. OOC: EXP Writer: 686 Words, 30 EXP Total: 930 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 49/100 Behemoth 267/300 1-Armored Knight 4/5 2-Armored Knight 4/5 3-Armored Knight 4/5 4-Armored Knight 4/5 5-Armored Knight 4/5 6-Armored Knight 4/5 7-Armored Knight 4/5
Stratos had thought of going and flying off to parts unknown, to go and hunt down more heartless to kill. The idea was to get on his keyglider and fly off to hunt down more heartless. Sure, he'd have to kill them while on his keyglider, so as not to go and get himself killed by crash landing, but it was still a plan nonetheless. This plan was soon interrupted the moment he stepped on a keyglider. The moment he did such a daring action, a familiar towering shadow appeared over him. Knowing what it was, Stratos almost immediately brought up his keyglider to block against the oncoming strike, purely off of instinct. Despite his instincts kicking in, he was sent across the room once more, though the glider had taken the brunt of the attack, allowing him to not be brutally hit down by that attack. What had happened, one might ask. Well it was simple. The towering shadow belonged to none other than Derpy the Derpmoth, distant cousin of Free Willy Cat. The attack that our intrepid hero guarded against instinctively was none other than the almighty behemoth kick move that had been just invented during this RP. Derpy the Derpmoth then continued to stare blankly into space, and as Stratos was able to recover the now swerving all over the place keyglider, and then he stared the thing down. He continued to stare it down, only for the behemoth to do nothing in response. As he continually looked at it, he was soon interrupted by a squad of two, yes two, armored knights coming at him. Man, it was like these things just traveled in perfect groups that he could just kill all of them at once and still be totally fine. As the two tried to slash at him, he turned his attention away from Derpy the Derpmoth and fired up his thruster, gliding away safely from the attacks. When he tried to turn his attention back to the aforementioned behemoth, he noticed it was no longer there. However, he had no time to just think of that as the two heartless were swiftly engaging and enclosing upon him.Gliding around them, he quickly shot out the glider into a strike raid-esque attack, only for the god damn things to jump. Since when could they do that? Probably always, but god damn it, it looked like other heartless were starting to take after Free Willy Cat. Returning the glider as a blade, he put it in front of him to guard against all oncoming attacks...which was just two heartless slashing at him. Well this didn't seem all that threatening. He was quickly able to push it away from him, and then went in to attack with a simple four hit combo, only to then stop short of his combo finisher and then bring his keyblade up to block against any sort of oncoming attack. Having successively parried away the attack, he then went to attack the one he just blocked with a vorpal blitz. This, however, didn't kill it, and so he was now about to get attacked by two heartless at once. However, while this wasn't Metal Gear Rising, he figured he could try and pull a move out of it in order to save his ass. So what he did was simply slash forward and leap backward. Aka, Offensive Defense...or Defensive Offensive, depends on the version. However, while he did successfully hit the heartless and kill it, the other one still managed to slash him, due to Stratos not actually having any invincibility frames. Getting his arm cut a bit, Stratos then went in and attacked the heartless with a combo, albeit sluggishly. After that was done with it, he quickly cast cure on himself, repairing any damage done to him and magically restoring his blood because MAGIC....Also Derpy the Derpmoth magically took damage somewhere along the line. RIGHT! Stratos clearly used Aero on his keyglider when it kicked it, that somehow managed to damage it. Yes, that's what happened. OOC: EXP: 679 Words, 30 EXP Total: 900 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 27/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 49/100 Behemoth 277/300
Stratos had continued gliding around to go kill **** once more, and so he put his hand to his forehead and simply looked around. While normally someone did this to block out the sun, thus making it easier to see, Stratos seemed to have absolutely no reason to do this whatsoever. However, it ended up working when he found a single, lone, other adjectives of singular, Armored Knight heartless. Firing up the thrust on his keyglider again, Stratos fired off and went sailing straight towards the thing. He decided not to try and land this time, and instead just kill it with his keyglider, given his ever so graceful landing skills thus demonstrated. However, as he flew towards it, something really weird happened. He was completely intercepted by something that seemed to come out of nowhere. That same behemoth he had been dealing with thus far, seemed to just be vacantly staring into space once more, and had seemingly appeared out of thin air. What was this thing? Stratos, had no time to react to its sudden appearance, and so he had instead, crashed into it. Well that probably did a fair bit of damage to it, however the damage coming up to him, was something entirely different. Having been flung off his keyglider, he was soon sent sailing across the ground, even bouncing a few times here and there, until he had finally ended up crashing into another heartless. It was not the heartless he had meant to kill, the lone armored knight. No. It was now a rather belligerent Assault Rider. So belligerent that the moment that Stratos had knocked into its torso, it flexed, causing Stratos bounce way off of it, and ended up skipping across the ground. He ended up flying into a book case, and then ended with books falling on top of him. Well that was certainly painful. Getting up, he was that the assault rider was now charging at him with extreme prejudice, whatever that meant. Trying to do what he had done before, he created a ring around him of books, and was about to cast mine square. However, when he attempted to cast it, nothing happened. He then realized what the main problem was. He had spent far too much MP in far too short of a time, and so he was now without any to cast his signature broken ass spell. Realizing what was going to happen next, he was the assault rider charge up to him, only for it to grab him with its free arm, and then fling him around through the library again. So Stratos was miraculously without any broken bones, especially given the amount of times he had been thrown around. He then looked around the hall and suddenly wondered what the hell was up with this place. It seemed to be an infinitely expanding battlefield, that had no bounds whatsoever. Not to mention the heartless seemed bound to stay in this infinite boundary during the fight, and for whatever reason they all weren't just trying to overwhelm the two keyblade wielders. While he was lost in thought, the assault rider had caught up to him once more, only to try and stab at him with its large ass spear. Getting up, Stratos brought his keyblade up to deflect the blow, having it bounce off his blade and instead puncturing a whole in his hoodie. With that done, the assault rider had his spear through Stratos's clothing, so it now could lift him up with its spear, which it did. However, Stratos wasn't going down just yet, and still had managed to use enough MP to cast fire, having it blow up on the hand of the Assault Rider. With that done, the assault rider let go of him, only for Stratos to grab the large spear the heartless was using and, through some miraculous feat that shouldn't be possible with his strength, managed to swing it around and impale the heartless with. With that done, Stratos went on to kill more baddies. OOC: EXP Writer: 677 Words, 30 EXP Total: 870 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 25/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 4/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 49/100 Behemoth 284/300
Well it was good to now know his partners name. While he had already left before he could acknowledge something about that, it was good to know that he no longer had to tip toe around calling her proper nouns or just avoiding calling her anything in the slightest. And so, Stratos started to go on his hunt for more heartless to kill. One that preferably wasn't a behemoth or zip slasher. He had had enough of either of those for the time being. Getting on his keyglider, he started to fly around and went on the hunt for whatever he could go out and find. It was then that he saw a cluster of three armored knights, just sort of patrolling around, and so he had decided they would be as good as any of a group of heartless to kill. Quickly changing course on his board like keyglider, he quickly activated the thrust and fired off straight towards the group. The only problem with this was that, while Stratos was a fairly competent flier when it came to keygliders, he was terrible at landing. And so he had preformed a miraculous blunder as he crashed in the ground in between all three heartless, and was sent on flopping and skidding across the ground. Well, couldn't win 'em all when it came to looking awesome. The armored knights quickly took note of their attackers failed attack, and quickly charged towards him. Summoning his keyblade to his hand, Stratos quickly put it in front of himself in order to guard against any and all attacks that would come his way. With the three continuously striking asynchronously, Stratos found himself in a terrible position. One where he couldn't exactly perform a counter attack, lest the mob of heartless slash him up all over the place. As he finally decided to go on the offensive, Stratos pushed one of the blades of the armored knights away, and then quickly rushed in with his three hit vorpal blitz, followed up with a ground combo to finish it off. However, this had left him exposed for the moment, and so as he finished off one of them, the other two had already started attacking him with their sword. Because this wasn't Metal Gear Rising, Stratos couldn't immediately cancel what he was doing to parry, and got slashed across the back by two different blades. While they just managed to break skin, it was still enough to hurt and deter the keyblade wielder. He quickly cast cure on himself, only to see that, due to not having leaf bracer, the two armored knights could still attack him. With their slashes coming at him, he just barely managed to recover from spell casting and immediately put up his guard. However, he was only able to block one strike, as the other one still managed to go across his chest. Again, not the worst of cuts, but Stratos had to stick to the defensive once more. It was then that he noticed a shower was towering over him. One that seemed to have just appeared out of nowhere. Turning around, Stratos notice that the shadow had belonged to the behemoth heartless he had just attacked. It seemed to not really be paying him any mind, and was just blankly staring into space. Any thoughts that this magical teleporting heartless wasn't going to attack him, was quickly cast aside as one of its legs was getting pulled back. It then launched it forward, in an attempt to kick Stratos away. However, he had started to adapt to this extremely weird and all too hilarious move, and quickly dodge rolled past an armored knight. The armored knight turned around to face Stratos, only to quickly die from having received the blow from the behemoth instead. Stratos then quickly assaulted the next armored knight with a quick few combos, only to the attack the now motionless behemoth with another combo. The behemoth still seemed to pay him no mind, however Stratos was not sticking around long enough for this thing to decide to care. Getting on his keyglider, he quickly flew away on his keyglider. OOC: EXP Writer: 695 Words, 30 EXP Total: 840 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 25/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 71/100 Behemoth 286/300
Stratos could only leap up in absolute glee as the behemoth had been felled by the girl's final assault. Sure, she seemed to be still angrily shouting about how the others didn't care about her, but he had a feeling this was more a part of her whole rage motif then something she had actually believed at the moment. After it was all over and done with, she simply sat on the ground, in her sort of bloodied mess that she was and started sobbing. It was then, while in this state, a Zip Slasher had come up and decided to attack her while she was down. Despite this, she managed to still block the attack sent by the super heartless, and simply muttered a thanks to Stratos before declaring that she was going to kill the heartless. Not wanting to get in the way of her and her duel of fate, not unlike the one he had recently had, and let her be. However, at this moment, she seemed to be exceptionally well, almost as if she had gotten back into her original groove of killing things that was there before they had fought the behemoth. Once she was done with her first attack, Stratos decided that he needed to get some stuff out of the way first before he went off to do his own thing again. "Right, I should probably tell you about the remaining heartless we have to fight, seeing as you only seemed to focus down the soldiers. Those ones over their," he pointed to a group of armored knight heartless, "they are basically the next step up from the soldiers. They're only slightly harder to kill, and that blade is the only really thing that makes them threatening, but despite that, they aren't too difficult. Then there's those ones," he pointed to the morning star heartless, "they'll try to crush you at a moments notice with their spikes, and their decently bulky. However, I found out that they actually make excellent weapons against other heartless. Then there's those ones," he pointed over to the assault riders, "they're just fast and relentless with their spears, so in your case it'd probably be better to hit them fast rather than trying to stall it out. The last one I know about is that guy," he pointed to the zip slasher she was fighting. "They seemed to be the toughest of the bunch, and are immune to magic. Not to mention they seem to be somewhat smarter than the others." After having given her a rundown of what he knew so far, he decided to get over one large elephant in the room. "I know we've been fighting this entire time but...I don't know your name. So, I'll just introduce myself first. Name's Stratos." After having gotten intros out of the way he said, "now then, I'm going to go kill the small fires and piss off another behemoth, just as we had been doing before." He started to almost run off before he stopped himself. "Oh right, promised myself I'd do this after the behemoth died." He then thrust his keyblade into the air and cast cure four times on Karina, making sure she was fully healed. "There, now that he's dead, no matter what you say, I'm going to worry about and support you. Especially if you go as recklessly as you had done before." And with that, he was off. The first to fall prey to the keyblade wielder was a single armored knight. It seemed to be all by its lonesome, and so Stratos crashed right into it on his keyglider. The heartless was then sent flying, only to be hit by the keyglider's strike raid-esque attack and the immediately died. Having killed that one rather fast, he decided that he'd start strong on the next behemoth. This second one seemed to be idly doing nothing on the battlefield, and continued to do nothing even after Stratos attacked it by performing Zantetsuken with his keyglider on it. Despite this, it didn't aggro on him, and probably didn't even care about him just yet. So Stratos just used the MP he regained to cast cure on himself, seeing as he didn't come out of that behemoth fight scot-free either. OOC: EXP Writer: 716 Words, 30 EXP Total: 810 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 1/5 Armored Knight: 22/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Zip Slashers: 93/100 Behemoth 288/300
Stratos listened to what Karina had to say, albeit he was busy sort of getting his ass handed to him by a behemoth the entire time it was happening. The behemoth first kicked at his guard, but due to it, he managed to block the brunt of the blow, and was only sent slightly skidding backward. As Karina continued to tell him about herself, he only got slightly more angered at the girl as she told him that she didn't even value her own life. She then continued to tell him how there were sometimes he you couldn't avoid death in a war, and that he was too soft hearted to think that he could. That was, somewhat true. Stratos had seen enough in his time to not want to see anymore of that. If there were people in front of him who needed saving, then he would. He couldn't just sit back and do nothing anymore. He couldn't just try and get nowhere. He wouldn't just let others down again. He continued to guard against the behemoth attacked him to which he just said, "even if you tell me I can't, I still won't let anyone down." Karina then went on to attack the behemoth in her own sort of usual titanic onslaught, only for the behemoth to eventually fling her away and knock her into him. As he tumbled across the ground alongside the girl, she quickly apologized for the unfortunate mishap that had happened. As she reached her hand out, he grabbed it and stood right back up. After her last onslaught of attacks, Stratos quickly began to charge forward on his keyglider, and jumped off of it while it was in mid thrust, causing it to crash against the behemoth's horn. It didn't seem to like this and shook its head a bit before charging at him. Stratos quickly jumped up and over the behemoth as he summoned his keyblade back to his hand and started whacking its head with a simple air combo. This was then followed up with a vorpal blitz, smashing the horn around, only to then be followed up with another air combo. Once that had been finished, Stratos ended it by doing a somewhat improvised fire strike, casting fire but not actually launching it, followed by smashing the blade and fire against the horn. That seemed to stagger it as it quickly fell down and seemed to be recovering its strength. Turning to Karina he said, "listen, it's not just me that doesn't want to see you die. I know you said that you don't even value your own life, and that no one else should. However, that just isn't true." He motioned over to all the other sides that were swarmed with heartless, with all the other keyblade wielders fighting their best against all the other heartless. "Even if you don't value yourself, others do. And others are counting on you right now. They can fight with everything they have right now, and they can all come out of this alive because they know that everyone else is doing the same." The behemoth then got back up and fired a large mass of dark energy balls towards the two. Stratos turned around, a sun generating on his keyblade. He soon threw the mini sun into the middle of the crowd attacks, only to slash at the air with his keyblade. The sun had suddenly expanded, enveloping any and all of the attacks, completely stopping them. He then turned back to the girl with a smile on his face giving a thumbs up to her. "And lord knows I value you right now. So why don't we end this creature's end." OOC: EXP Writer: 620 Words, 30 EXP Total: 780 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 15/300
As the behemoth had started to gain lock on Stratos, he was getting ready to run away at any given moment. Or, rather, fly away on his keyglider, and enact their aggro plan that they had been doing thus far. Granted, he was not entirely sure how much more of a beating he could take at this point, but it was probably more than his partner could. In fact, at this point, it'd probably be better if he drew the aggro longer in order for to catch her breath, calm down, or any other such thing that would help her not get killed. None of this ended up happening, however. And instead, the emotionally volatile girl who he had been thinking of trying to give more breathing room, instead, was now right in that behemoth's face. She seemed to be giving it just about everything she had in order to pummel down this behemoth, and it was certainly working. After having been thoroughly beaten up, the behemoth seemed to stagger a bit and Karina was barking out things about how she just pushes people away and that she doesn't need any friends and other things like that. It was after the onslaught of attacks she sent out, that she told him to do nothing but attack attack attack. To no longer draw away the behemoth's attention, just finish it off. While the plan seemed pretty bad compared to the last one they were using, he figured he'd go along with it, as the behemoth seemed to be on its last legs. However, Stratos still wasn't going to let what Karina say go unanswered. Sure, he barely knew the girl, but from what he had seen, she was someone who ran off of pure emotion, and not much else. "Are you actually lecturing me about the logic behind my actions?" He yelled this out as he soon threw his keyglider in a similar spinning motion as before at the behemoth's horn. "And did you just ask me why I don't want to see you dead?!" He quickly summoned his keyblade back to his hand as he charged at the behemoth. Hi jumping up towards its horn, he let loose a quick air combo followed by a vorpal blitz, smacking the heartless every which way. "I don't want to see anyone die right in front of me, regardless of if they're my friend or not. And no matter what you may think, no matter how hard you try to push people away, right now you are my comrade in arms and nothing is going to change that." The behemoth soon recovered from these serious of attacks, and soon leaped into the air. "And so like I said, I'm definitely not going to let you die here, and there's nothing in this swarm that's going to stop either of us." Still facing Karina as he made this declaration, cherry blossoms started falling from nowhere once more. As the behemoth was to land on him, Stratos seemed to have fazed through the gigantic heartless in a single instant, as he was now on its back, rather than crushed underneath it. Stratos then turned his keyblade into a keyglider, and crashed it into the horn of the creature, causing Stratos to flip off of the vehicle, turning the glider back into a blade, and casting fire from his keyblade. The fireball then homed in, straight onto the behemoth's horn and exploded on contact. The behemoth seemed to be staggered from the combination of attacks, almost slumping a bit before it was able to pick itself back up. OOC: EXP Writer: 603 Words, 30 EXP Total: 750 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 54/300
Stratos had to keep this behemoth off Karina's tail for awhile. Looking back at the girl, she seemed to be somewhat spacy, and not at all focused on their task of killing the behemoth at hand. If she didn't regain her composure soon, then Stratos would probably have to take the thing on by himself, which was not a pleasant thought. However, at the moment, he just had to believe that his comrade would pull through for him and get the aggro off onto herself, just like they had done before. The young keyblade wielder continued to fly away from it on his keyblade wielder, jetting off in a zig zag formation to completely distract the heartless, though it seemed to be doing little to the heartless after the first few times. Sure, it had tried to follow after him, but it soon wised up and decided that moving in a straight line was most likely a much faster means of catching up with his prey, than trying to follow it in a straight pattern. Due to this, Stratos was soon caught off guard by the behemoth closing in on him, and was left helpless as it had simply flung its body at him. Getting hit by the full force of the attack, Stratos was sent sailing across the hall, bouncing across the ground with only his Aero to provide him with some sort of minimal protection. It was not looking good, not at all. He could barely stand back up, and by the time he did, the behemoth had started to charge straight at him. This was absolutely terrible. At this rate, there'd be nothing that Stratos would be able to do, and he'd just be flattened by the large ass heartless. But there was no way he could die here. Not while everyone else was fighting so hard to protect this place. Even if he was the weakest one there was absolutely no way he could just let himself die here. Pulling up his keyblade to guard against what could have been the final attack, he awaited it, just standing there. However, the attack never came. Instead, the behemoth had its attention drawn to a particular warrior girl who had been furiously attacking it. While Stratos thought it was a good thing that Karina had gotten her fight back in her, he soon realized that something was off. She didn't seem to be in a clear state of mind, and instead was fighting like a person with a death wish. Not to mention she looked as if she had been struggling with some sort of internal issue, as he saw tears streaked across her face. Then there was the issue of her telling him not to worry about her at all, and that he should just focus on attacking. As he had gotten his second wind in this fight, Stratos came to one conclusion. Once they were done killing this god damn behemoth, he was going to cure the shit out of that woman. However, the behemoth seemed to be tearing her apart, almost as if she were a rag doll, and so he knew he had to go in and act fast. Getting on his keyglider, he launched forward and rather than attack it, he instead, used guard with his keyglider to intercept the attack that would have hit Karina. "You're damn right you aren't going to die here!" Stratos shouted out to her, in response to her declaration to the heartless. "We've still got a bet to finish with the others, and I sure as hell am not going to let any of my comrades go down in this fight. So come on! Let's go and kill this ass hat already!" Stratos then went in by using his keyglider to unleash a strike raid-esque attack on its horn, only to quickly warp it back to his hand as a keyblade. Skipping any sort of air combo he quickly cast fire and blizzard in rapid succession of each other, impacting across the heartless's horn, and making it drawn to Stratos. With its face being one of rage, it now decided to go over and kill Stratos once more, making their aggro strategy take effect once more. OOC: EXP Writer: 710 Words, 30 EXP Total: 720 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 93/300
Stratos was above the large behemoth, simply sitting on his keyglider, hovering above the heartless. He continued taunting the heartless, which he felt couldn't really touch him no matter what it did. Obviously, it couldn't charge him because he was above it. The same also applied to its most terrifying move, the kick. Even when it hopped into the air, Stratos quickly fired up his thrust on the keyglider, sending him flying away from the heartless. It would keep missing, leap after leap, landing hard onto the ground. Feeling completely safe for a moment, Stratos was then completely caught of guard by the behemoth doing another sort of magic attack. He roared into the air, firing off multiple lightning strikes that fired every which way, and they seemed to be somewhat focused on Stratos. Sure, there were lightning bolts that were pretty stray and didn't hit anything. Then there were the few that sort of seemed to hate the boy. The old saying that lightning never struck twice in the same place. Well that was certainly a lie. Having gotten struck by two bolts, and having his keyglider having been struck once, Stratos quickly lost his balance, and fell off the glider. Crashing onto the ground, Stratos quickly picked himself back up, coughing in pain, as he saw the behemoth start to finally charge at him once more. Stratos had no choice but to run his ass away from the heartless, and started to go as fast as he physically could. This was still not enough to evade the behemoth, was hot on his tail. However, once it had finally caught up, Stratos quickly dodge rolled backward, through the legs of the heartless, evading the charge. Despite this, the behemoth seemed to immediately change its direction once more, turning while rushing him, and oh so ready to kill him. Thinking fast, Stratos quickly summoned his keyblade and turned it back into the keyglider he had been using much better than usual. Starting to fly away, he couldn't risk pulling up at the cost of speed, as the behemoth wasn't slow enough for him to do so. However, it seemed to try and speed itself up by doing some sort of pseudo hop, to make it bound across the ground rather than run. It seemed to catch up to the young wielder, bucking at him once it had. The attack just barely missed, though it still grazed the glider making Stratos glide out of control and towards the rather spaced out looking Karina. Thankfully, she managed to regain her senses as the behemoth started approaching her, and started to attack it. However, there was something weird about how she was fighting. It seemed to be filled with way less vigor and enthusiasm as before. He wondered if this lagging state was due to exhaustion, though due to that battle cry she just let out, there was no way that could be the case. Seeing his opportunity open to attack the giant heartless, Stratos thought fast and realized that he had to get the behemoth away from Karina as fast as possible. In her current state, she probably wouldn't be able to last as long as before, and so he shot forward on his glider. Doing the same strike raid type thing he had done before, Stratos ended up landing on the behemoths back after jumping off the glider, and resummoned his keyblade. He then quickly went to attacking the horn of the behemoth with a ground combo, only to then follow it up with an air combo. After unleashing the Vorpal Blitz skill command, Stratos then realized the behemoth wasn't aggroed enough onto him. And so he did something really dumb. He grabbed onto the horn of the behemoth, sort of hugging it as to not fall off, and started punching it in an attempt to get it off his ally's back. Getting annoyed with his constant attacks, the heartless soon bucked enough that Stratos was sent flying off of it, and onto the ground. Okay, that one hurt. Getting up and coughing a bit, he saw the truly pissed heartless get ready to come in and kill him now. OOC: EXP Writer: 699 Words, 30 EXP Total: 690 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 132/300
Stratos now had the behemoths attention and was running for dear life from the creature...again. He briefly wondered how great his cardio was going to be after this fight, and just how much more punishment this behemoth was going to take before it actually went down. It certainly was a hearty creature, but with the both of the keyblade wielders having seemingly infinite stamina, it was really just a matter of just being completely unrelenting in their attacks. Regardless, the behemoth was still trying to be its usual bull self in its attempts to kill Stratos, and the young keyblade wielder was doing his usual thing of not dying. Guarding against the big lugs foot that came in at a kick to him, Stratos continued to skid across the ground, only to see the thing start to charge up that magic attack from its horn again. Well, this was certainly going to be bad. However, the attack was soon interrupted by Karina coming in and trying to attack it. However, everything looked not as good again, when the behemoth was about to eat her. Stratos himself couldn't do anything to protect her against the large ass heartless's mouth, and simply watched as it nearly chomped her. Nearly. Thankfully some giant bird, the same one that had come in and saved the group from Mim's onslaught in Camelot, flew in and snatched her away from the Behemoth's mouth. Breathing a sigh of relief, he then heard Karina's quick order to only travel in a straight line, or else she would be crushed. Stratos gave a quick salute before turning his keyblade into a keyglider, because he somewhat forgot that he could even do that in the first place, and got on. The keyglider provided a great boost in speed as Stratos made his completely linear escape from the large ass creature. He looked back to see Karina unleash another attack, however the behemoth still only seemed interested in killing, or even just kicking, Stratos away at the moment. As such, Stratos had to continue flying away from the thing, lest it kill him. As he continued to fly away, he realized that this was much easier way to avoid the behemoth's pursuit and quickly looked back to his pursuer to see that it was attacked once again by quick improvisation involving key chains. With the large tether having pulled the behemoth's leg out from under him, the monster quickly shifted its focus to the girl who was now using her sweater as if she were a matador. With this, was now Stratos's turn to injure the large behemoth, and so he quickly did a one eighty on his board shaped keyglider. Firing off at full speed, he quickly launched himself over in the direction of the behemoth. Flying on a course as if he were about to crash with the behemoths horn, he quickly started spinning, and jumped off the keyglider. This made the keyglider itself turn into a strike raid type attack as it rammed against the behemoth's horn. Still spinning himself, Stratos was soon above the Behemoth's horn, and then instantly summoned his keyblade back to his hand. Within another quick instant, cherry blossoms started falling from the sky, as Stratos disappeared from his spinning position in the air to a standing one on the ground, having slashed at the behemoth's horn during the entire process, back flipping with his hi jump, Stratos then launched off a fire spell from his keyblade while instantly shifting his blade back into a glider. When the fireball had connected and exploded against the horn of the heartless, Stratos then dove on the keyglider, smashing against the horn before flying away from the heartless and floating above it saying, "here kitty kitty," to it in order to taunt it into attacking him. Once the aggro drew to him, Stratos started flying away on his glider with the behemoth in hot pursuit. OOC: EXP Writer: 659 Words, 30 EXP Total: 660 EXP Spoiler: East Side List Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 171/300
After having basically mauled through Karina, Stratos seemed to have drawn the aggro at the right time. However, the aggro was now on him and so he had to get his ass away from this thing before it tore him apart. The thing continued to charge at him, with even more anger and vehemence than it had prior. Apparently it liked the two of them actually trying to kill it less than them just swatting at it every now and then. Stratos continued running the hell away from the thing as it started to bull charge him, only for the beast to easily catch up with him. When the behemoth had caught up with him, it stopped right near him so that it would skid across the ground and crash into the young keyblade wielder. Quickly putting up his keyblade to guard against the impending attack, the behemoth crashed into the blade, sending Stratos flying back anyway. Staying his ground, the behemoth was already in hot pursuit of him once more, almost immediately being on top of him as Stratos recovered from the attack. The heartless then immediately bucked at him, almost as if it were doing some kind of uppercut with its face, and hit Stratos, sending him directly into the air. He knew exactly where this was going, and wasn't about to let himself get smacked around by the next attack. Though he was essentially floating in air at this point, he still was able to position his keyblade properly to his side. As the behemoth jumped into the air end the young wielder, it was as if time started to slow down. With cherry blossoms falling from the sky, Stratos closed his eyes. It was at that moment, as the behemoth reached the apex of its jump and started bringing its two bull horns down to smash Stratos, that the command had happened. Reopening his eyes, it was in an instant that had Stratos had seemingly warped from his helpless position in the air to rather stable one on the ground. Having moved away with Zantetsuken,the behemoth's face smashing missed, and the large heartless then landed on the ground. As if angered by that dodge, it let out quite the bestial roar, and began to kick against the ground, ready to go in for another charge. Stratos knew that he couldn't do something like that again in a matter of seconds, so he basically was screwed at this point if that behemoth did that again. As it began charging at Stratos, he was ready to run away, only for the thing to completely stop moving. Then, it started to float into the air, and he realized the cause of this was Karina using magic of her own on it. Catching his breath a bit as he let loose her deadly combo on the behemoth, it was soon aggroed onto her, giving him a chance to go on the offensive once more. Though, do to not having very much MP at the moment, the only thing Stratos could do was run at the heartless that was now trying to kill Karina. He quickly hi jumped onto its back,, with it being none the wiser, and unleashed a full four hit combo against its horn. The behemoth then tried to shake him off, only for that make Stratos go airborne, and then allowed to unleash an air combo against the horn. The moment he finished the combo, he then chained in Vorpal Blitz, and then chained in another air combo onto the horn, only to end the combo with creating a chunk of ice at the at the end of his keyblade, and smashing it into the foes horn. "Alright, you're up next!" Stratos called out to Karina as he began to run away from the behemoth who's anger was now directed at him. Ooc: EXP Writer: 646 Words, 30 EXP Total: 630 EXP Spoiler: East Side List 'Casualties: Behemoths: 0/5 Armored Knight: 21/55 Soliders: 65/65 Lance Soldiers: 0/20 Morning Star: 2/15 Assault Riders: 3/15 Zip Slashers: 1/5 Power Wilds: 0/50 Injuries: Behemoths 210/300
