There was a point where Kaida knew she had messed up. And it came at an instant when she thought everything was under control. The blonde reached a piece of drift wood and footed herself on it go get a little bit of elevation when a neoshadow ran by and got in a good swipe on her leg. The blonde winced and fell over and the next thing she knew all she could see was black. Not because she was unconscious, but because she most definitely being trampled by several of these heartless. She quickly tried to bring up her arm to swipe the creatures off of her, but while she managed to knock off one of them, a bunch of them went to attack her at once. Kaida felt all of her energy was gone and was certain she was about to fall unconscious, but with an incredible stroke of luck, second chance kicked in and she let out a huge sigh of relief before she realized she still needed to get out of there. The girl reached up her keyblade and used stopga once more. While the time was stopped, the blonde used splattercombo and quickly got herself out of there while also knocking out a few more shadows along the way. Stopga's effects began to fade and she made her way as fast as she could to a high ground. This is when she decided to climb up a palm tree. Although weak, she successfully made it up to the top and started panting heavily as she looked down at the creatures. She hoped they could not sense how fearful she was, because that last swarming took away more health than she would have liked. She raised up her keyblade to cure herself, and then looked down at the shadows wondering her next approach. Word Count: 307 EXP Earned: 30 EXP Total: 620 Blessed Thief: 80 Munny Sweet Memories: 4 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 Shadows Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,194/1,500 Enemies Remaining: 1767 Shadows 420 Neoshadows 399 Darkballs 24 Invisibles 2 Darksides
Kaida began a strategy where she ran along the edge of the horde and did her best to knock back the shadows so they were not able to break through and swarm the rest of the party. It was definitely not a perfect strategy since the horde could have easily overwhelmed her at any point if they tried, but so far they seemed to jump move mindlessly to random spots and not together in a hive mind of anything of the sort. Kaida kept slicing and dicing at the shadows and as some attempted to jump at her from behind, her shadow companion knocked them back into the pile. Word Count: 109 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 590 Blessed Thief: 50 Munny Sweet Memories: 4 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 Shadows Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,194/1,500 Enemies Remaining: 1795 Shadows 426 Neoshadows 408 Darkballs 25 Invisibles 2 Darksides
Kaida could feel the gravity in the area feel stronger and it made her look in the direction of Stratos just as he was finishing up. When he asked about the aura she said, "Yeah, I got... time I think. It seemed flashy. I liked it. Though I wasn't expecting a cosmetic effect." Kaida admitted, scratching the back of her head. The girl looked around and some of the shadows heading back in their direction and she said, "I'm gonna get a few more of the littles. I might be back later. Keep it up." and she saluted a bit before she took off. Kaida was only a little bit away but she just decided to get it over with fairly quickly and she began using Red Slash to do a colorful combination of... gravity and fire. It was a bit strange but it looked cool as the heartless began to float up into the air while on fire before disappearing with a poof. Kaida knocked out several more around the general area but made a point to not jump into the swarm again. She was not planning on it unless she had a team of people with her so she knew she would not be overtaken. Or at least healed. Word Count: 211 EXP Earned: 21 EXP Total: 580 Blessed Thief: 20 Munny Sweet Memories: 4 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 Shadows Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,197/1,500 Heartless Remaining: Defeat 1903 Shadows Defeat 441 Neoshadows Defeat 432 Darkballs Defeat 25 Invisibles Defeat 2 Darksides
Kaida had not noticed Stratos' drain escapade. If she had, she probably would have reacted with a lot more vigor and quite a bit of awkward distrust. Since she had not, since she had been in a long air combo dealing with darkballs, she only had seem him in brief glimpses. Though she darkness aura was definitely a new one. She clicked her tongue a bit as she processed it, but having a bit of darkness around someone at this rate was not enough for her to freak out or anything. When he mentioned the heartless with swords, and how she would be as surprised as him with that, she turned to look around at other heartless and asked, "So what you're saying is, you aren't surprised then? Cause a heartless with a sword? That doesn't surprise me. Now, a heartless with a keyblade, THAT would surprise me." she paused and looked at him straight away saying, "Oh no they can't use keyblades can then?" Kaida asked this just in time for an invisible to begin running her way and swinging her sword at her. She moved to go and block it but the force was a lot stronger than she anticipated and the blonde went upward into the air a bit and fell back to the ground and said, "Ooooh. It's a mean one. But it's better than a bunch of munchkins. Alright. Let's dance." The blonde waited for the invisible to make it's swing again and she quickly maneuvered into a dodge roll. While off balance from it's swing the blonde began to hack and slash as much as she could before she was forced to back away. She kept her keyblades outward as she paced around waiting for another opening and as it went to lunge in again, she went for a second time. But this time the invisible phoned a friend and a neoshadow came swooping in from the side and staggered her a minute. But it moved her just out of the way from the invisible where it's slash did not affect her. She took a deep breath, now focusing on the opponents as a darkball seemed to also be floating down towards the other side of her, ready to jump in when she was off balance. This was going to be a matter of timing now. She watched the invisible lunge again, the neoshadow moving in ready to strike slightly before the invisible moved. And the darkball moving towards the place Kaida would stagger into so it could push her back. Kaida decided to deal with the adds first, slamming one keyblade into the ground and the other one up as she said in a calm voice, "Stopga." The opponents froze and her aura began to activate as she seemed to have small after effects show up in her place. She kept the one keyblade in the ground and ran towards the others as she slashed the neoshadow once, then the invisible twice, and the darkball once. She landed towards the center she tapped her keyblade gently. Seeker mine placed around her keyblade and she rolled out of the way and pointed her keyblade towards the group and snapped her fingers. As time unfroze, mine seeker activated and the heartless exploded in a large kaboom. Without even knowing it, she got herself another shadow in the mixup. The only one remaining at this point was the invisible. Who was definitely barely hanging onto whatever it had left and was ready to strike at her again. Kaida walked over to pick up her keyblade and provoked for it to attack her. The invisible charged itself and she dodged and hit it with the butt of one of her keyblades as it disappeared. Word Count: 627 EXP Earned: 60 EXP Total: 559 Blessed Thief: 90 Munny Sweet Memories: 3 crowns Heartless Defeated: 1 Invisible 1 Neoshadow 1 Darkball 1 Shadow Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,197/1,500 Heartless Remaining: Defeat 1929 Shadows Defeat 441 Neoshadows Defeat 435 Darkballs Defeat 26 Invisibles Defeat 2 Darksides
As the blonde settled down a bit more, she began to consider possibilities to get further out of the jam she had placed herself in. She knew full well that the best way to go about this was to get more inland. But with the way these heartless were, she was genuinely concerned she would fall into the group and be knocked out before she could say "oops". So as her eyes scanned the area for potential escapes, her eyes fell onto a group of darkballs floating away towards other potential victims and she raised an eyebrow as an idea came to her. Kaida looked down as she grabbed pipsqueak and held it up and it got angry at the way it grabbed her. She held it a good length away from her while it tried to slash and grab her. Perhaps she was so used to pipsqueak jumping up without a problem but she did not truly realize just how large these shadows were until she was trying to hold one and keep it at arms length away so it would not hurt her. The girl took aim and backed slightly further into the rock so she could drop the shadow and she launched the shadow in the distance towards the darkball. The shadow panicked, covering its eyes before it realized it was moving at a surprising pace, and the shadow tried flapping its arms as if it could fly. It almost seemed happy, heartwarming a moment, before it slammed into the darkball. The darkball panicked and tried to figure out the source while pipsqueak held onto the antennae for dear life. The darkball turned to look at Kaida who began taunting at it, and a group began to float on towards her, one after the other. Kaida held her fist towards her chest, giving a soft confirmation to herself this would work before she leaped as high as she could into the air. She began an aerial combo like no other. She slashed the first darkball and pipsqueak quickly jumped onto her hood and clung onto her while she destroyed each darkball along the way. It was almost fun, like a good practice to keep up her aerial combos as smoothly as possible. The blonde soon realized she was high off the ground. A little too high off the ground for her to feel as though she would land safely. Not that she necessarily accounted for fall damage before but she still did not want to feel the sting on her ankles. Below her, she saw Stratos managing to keep up the good fight, getting himself hit far back before charging in with the hunter limit. It was cool, she kind of wished she used it more often. But a tiny shadow was trying to sneak in behind him after the attack from the creature. Kaida didn't exactly have aerial slam, which would have been pretty cool right now, so she was gonna have to improvise a little more than she expected. With the final darkball in her path she used an aerial finisher and used the last of her energy from it to fall from the sky and straight into the tiny shadow behind Stratos. A lot of sand suddenly wooshed up into the air and Kaida began coughing. When it cleared she smiled and said, "Hey, sorry for dropping in so suddenly without notice... I had a bit of a complication with... a thousand shadows and the edge of the... world... or island." Pipsqueak fell out of her hood a little shaken as well as Kaida stood up to reorient herself. Word Count: 605 EXP Earned: 60 EXP Total: 499 Blessed Thief: 60 Munny Sweet Memories: 3 crowns Heartless Defeated: 8 Darkballs 1 Shadow Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,197/1,500 Heartless Remaining: Defeat 1930 Shadows Defeat 442 Neoshadows Defeat 439 Darkballs Defeat 28 Invisibles Defeat 2 Darksides
Kaida got herself far too excited when she was done with the first wave. But once Hikaru cheered about it she looked over at him and mumbled, "No don't jinx it don't jinx it don't-" But by that point it was far too late. And the next horde began. Unfortunately for Kaida, she seemed to stand perfectly in the middle of the spawning point of two thousand shadows and she gulped. Her shadow friend held up their hands in a scratching motion and the girl took a deep breath in and out trying to calm herself as she tried not to curse Hikaru's name for this under her breath. Kaida ran through the horde, dodging as much as she could possibly muster before getting to a large sandbar and running across it as she was chased by the horde. Her shadow friend followed her with no problems, though it absorbed itself into the ground and kept reappearing at intervals in order to keep up. Some of the horde began adapting this tactic as well but because of the head start the other one was leaps and bounds ahead. Kaida eventually ran to a point that was the edge of the island and she lost balance a minute as she tried to grab herself back on the ledge. She slipped a bit but forced herself to put all of her weight upwards so she landed with her face and torso in the sand and her legs dangling off the edge. She grunted and looked up to see the shadows rushing at her. She looked up just in time to see Hikaru go flying and she could not help but let out a laugh in this situation before she focused on the problem. Kaida summoned out one keyblade and pointed it straight towards a line of shadows as they approached her. Closing her right eye to take aim before getting a perfect line. She stretched to get her foot flat against the surface of the rock, and with incredible speed and electricity, the girl charged forward with powerline. As the first shadows dissolved she was back in the horde and she spun around her keyblade and summoned her second one. The shadows swayed to come at her again and she closed her eyes to take another calming breath before Kaida let out a scream. It probably seemed unnecessary but it was just what she needed to let loose a lot of energy. It even made the shadows back up a bit in confusion. She held her keyblades out to provoke them, before one shadow attempted to jump out at her from behind. She turned to hit it back, and two more leaped towards her as she turned. She flipped her hands around and slashed them without looking at them. The blonde kept her eyes closed as more heartless attempted a turn at her. Jumping into her not at once, but like each individual shadow was up for its own challenge. When she'd defeated 12 of them. Some of them began to try and push her back towards the cliff, like being able to knock her out. Kaida tried to find herself a more suitable hiding space and her eyes caught a rock a little ways north of her path. Kaida pointed at them shouting, "Firaga!" and burning a pathway towards the rock. When she was up there, happy to have a high ground again. She was sweating and scared as a thousand heartless were trying to climb up towards her. She looked around the sea to see how others were dealing, but she was more than a little tilted. Word Count: 607 EXP Earned: 60 EXP Total: 439 Blessed Thief: 30 Munny Sweet Memories: 3 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 Shadows Heartless Injured: Darkside 1,197/1,500 Heartless Remaining: Defeat 1933 Shadows Defeat 444 Neoshadows Defeat 449 Darkballs Defeat 30 Invisibles Defeat 2 Darksides
Take was surprised once they were out that Torrin complimented his skills. He almost wished he had been a little more under control then cause he considered this one of the worst examples of his skill and control out of combat. Still, the boy felt a bit honored at the compliment and bowed his head slightly, "I appreciate the comment, but I would think I wouldn't do very well with heartless hordes or anything of the sort. You guys seemed nearly noncha... noncha... calm about a darkside and spoke like it was more of a minor inconvenience. That thing was... terrifying."
Well, since the urgency of the scenario seemed to call for them to not have him Take the breather there. Take just let go of Torrin's shoulder and said, "Guess no break then. Just don't drop on us then. You look like you're going to." and he just quickly moved on ahead lighting up the room with his keyblade, what with what little energy he had left. Hopefully the plot's tunnel end was there soon.
Takehiko watched the way Torrin just seemed to be very worked up and he couldn't really help it as he placed his right hand firmly on Torrin's shoulder and spoke up, "We'll head there but please take a moment to breathe. You look all over the place, and in a way that will only lead to yourself getting hurt if we start rushing. Especially if making that portal took a lot out of you." He stared at him a moment then looked towards Adalric and Boreas, he hoped they wouldn't push for them to move anywhere. Just in case he looked back to Torrin before adding, "Even if it's urgent. No one is helped by someone having... well... for lack of a better word to describe what's going on with you right now, a panic attack."
Passionately ready to get this wave over with when the only one of the shadows left was her little friend, Kaida ran on over towards the darkballs and jumped up into the sky to begin a flurry of aerial combos. As the pulled two of them down to get them grounded, her shadow friend started slashing at them too until they disappeared. It definitely did not feel as fulfilling as destroying a little more than two dozen shadows a pop, but she managed to knock out four before she took a deep breath and pointed at the sky shooting a fireball at them. One of the darkballs almost made a popping noise like a balloon at that, while some of the darkballs seemed to kind of move around quickly as if to put out the fire. The blonde made a point to knock out the ones that were on fire and burning, just to put them out of their misery. Word Count: 160 EXP Earned: 16 EXP Total: 379 Blessed Thief: 0 Munny Sweet Memories: 3 crowns Heartless Defeated: 8 darkballs Heartless Remaining: 1 Shadow (Reserved) 11 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 8 Darkballs (1 Reserved) BP left 4/76
New members and employees have been added to the wall! xx This is exciting, having more regulars! The last one's ended up disappearing after that demon tide destroyed half the town. *shivers* you xcouldn't bring me back. Anyway, let us know what drink you'd like today. I'm not sure what there is to really talk about today. xHm... *snaps fingers* how's the weather been where you hail from? We've been getting a couple of snowstorms. Yeah I know, in the realm of darkness of all places. Who'd think? Well, it happens, and the snow takes FOREVER to leave. But how's it where you've been?
Take didn't waste any time when it became clear the portal was going to disappear, the boy made a run for it and jumped through, arguably before Boreas even had to encourage it. He waited on the other side with enough space between them making sure everyone made it out.
Kaida was happy to see the horde was finally beginning to dissipate into more of a crowd. That meant they were near the end. Kaida looked towards her shadow helper who got himself a couple more swipes in before jumping up onto her shoulder again. She booped her little friend on the nose and said, "We're doing well. We've almost got em." The blonde threw her keyblade in one direction and went the other with the single keyblade in her left hand as he knocked out many shadows in her path, while the other one created a domino effect in the opposite direction of her. She stopped when she'd reached a tree and she jumped up and kicked herself off of it. She raised up her hand to recall her keyblade to her and she swung her keyblade back and forth a bit until thunderbell and blizzara to create another explosion of magic. Kaida then took a breath and dropped her keyblades quickly to point towards a group of shadows. She clenched her hand into a fist and felt a bit of fire surge into her. The girl pulled back her arm and a firey punch formed around her fist as she punched into one of the shadows. The small creature flew back into a crowd and another explosion was heard. Not as powerful as her other firaga explosions but what was she to do. She could tell her aura was adding some nice potency to her fire spells and that made her feel pretty damn good. She looked at the small remainder and took a breath, "Just a couple left of you now... We can do this. Yep. Definitely." Word Count: 280 EXP Earned: 28 EXP Total: 363 Blessed Thief: 70 Munny Sweet Memories: 2 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 shadows Heartless Remaining: 22 Shadows 26 Neoshadows 64 Darkballs
I am generally in agreement with most of Ego's points here, especially in regards to the rigitiy of these systems. It depends on the host of the rp though. I'm in one rp where talking with the RP owner makes it very easy to help get the stats in a direction you'd want to go, while another one forces you to just kind of take what you get and deal with it. The flexibility is a big deal, and this is specifically light chaser: at the beginning there really weren't any aggro abilities available and I wanted my character to be built as a tank so I went to arch to ask for an ability on it and that essentially gave everyone a "special snowflake" ability. So I was able to build my character as a beginning keyblade wielder with a tank lean (granted now two other people are like that but eh). Now over in SOS, I have a character that I want to essentially build as someone who can essentially move so fast and manipulate time at their leisure that she can seemingly defeat her enemies in the blink of an eye. Obviously it's a bit unrealistic an expectation, even though my character has hit the rank of master there. But the point is I wanted to build it so she's really fast and really loves throwing spells. But it's nearly impossible to work this sort of play into the system that we have. Now, both of these rps have drastically different systems. SOS has a brawl/bodyguard fight system, and a boss system. In the boss system, we all look like chumps. But once we hit brawl missions we can flavor our fights however we want without it effecting stats. So like, we suddenly have an infinite amount of MP and HP and our gauges basically become full for the purposes of flavor and we can do combo attacks you've never be allowed to pull off in the boss fights. LC uses a system that is the same for boss and random encounters. There are abilities that can only be used with bosses, but overall the system is exactly the same. This makes it so characters stick at roughly the same combat level for both encounters, so characters aren't unstoppable badasses in random encounters and barely hanging on in boss fights. Now, I think there's benefits and drawbacks to both systems. I think LC's mechanics ground everything in the same level but as a result the creativity and flexibility has to go into character development and backstory rather than boss fights. SOS makes it so all of the creativity of the RP shows itself in brawl missions and then everything else becomes stagnant. Now, I have seen an rp that tried to do a "levelling" system that made it so a character became stronger through their own training montages and their abilities as a result became whatever the RPer wanted it to be so long as people tried to not become unbalanced. But the problem with that one is slightly discussed in another thread I don't know where the happy medium is. I know some people prefer combat over character moments in these types of rps. I'm the opposite. But I understand the want for flexibility. (btw in that fire scenario you described, I also had my character decked out in fireproof stuff. He was trained for firefighting type situations in his homeworld because of his villages constantly being burned down so his stuff is built to not burn. And that didn't factor in either. In this situation it comes down to 'the need for the rp owner to push the story/threats' which I might make another thread for just to discuss in detail there)
>two hp boosts >one ap boost >reflect >cura
Kaida listened to Hikaru's explanation intently, keeping an eye out for more potential heartless. When he finished speaking his mind, Kaida made one of her keyblades disappear as she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder as she replied, "I don't want you to feel like you have to make promises you can't keep. I understand the need for secrets, and well, now I know why you were so focused on Aux. I wish I had known, but that can't be helped." She looked at him and said, "I do not know if you've come to terms with this yet, but regardless. Your bonds are real to me." Kaida shifted into her pocket and held out the bird charm he had made for her and said, "This was your making and your work, of your own volition because you cared enough about our bond. Even if it turned out to not be real at the start, that's your impact." she put the charm back safely in her pocket, "Please don't forget that." Kaida resummoned out her keyblade and stood in a stance as she said, "Now if you'll excuse me. I feel recharged enough to jump in with pipsqueak back into the horde. Shall we?" she looked down at the shadow who climbed up into her hood. She looked at Hikaru and nodded at him before she jumped into the horde once more. She moved at her top speed through the horde, causing them to separate before she held her hand out and said, "Stopra!" the heartless froze around her and the girl closed her eyes as she quickly flashed through a group of twenty. She flashed between them moving back and forth between them as they stood still, taking whatever damage the blonde managed though they didn't feel it while they were frozen. She flipped around a couple times and the small area seemed to try to flicker back to the normal timespot. When she was done, the girl stood still and snapped her fingers for time to unfreeze and for the heartless to explode. She turned her way back to deal with a couple extras that managed to not get destroyed in her cool moment. The shadow also jumped out and helped out with a few extras as well. She looked back at it and said, "Thanks little guy." The shadow made a noise back, and Kaida stepped slightly away from it mostly out of concern. Word Count: 410 EXP Earned: 41 EXP Total: 335 Blessed Thief: 40 Munny Sweet Memories: 2 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 shadows Heartless Remaining: 204 Shadows 95 Neoshadows 149 Darkballs
Kaida hit the heartless a couple more times and throwing another fire spell into the crowd before the little shadow came back with another coconut and she chucked it into the crowd, knocking a couple of shadows into each other like a domino effect. She tensed up a bit as a couple more jumped at her and she knocked them down. She had fun flipping her keyblades around and knocking a few more. She waited for Hikaru's response patiently, but a form of dread was beginning to creep in that she couldn't quite shake. She took a deep breath as she waited for his answer. Word Count: 105 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 294 Blessed Thief: 10 Munny Sweet Memories: 2 crowns Heartless Defeated: 25 shadows Heartless Left: 231 Shadows 97 Neoshadows 149 Darkballs
Kaida at this rate was not going to be allowed the chance to process this and grab a raincheck on the convo since Hikaru was still yammering away about it even though he was trying to be as indirect as possible. Kaida knocked away the horde to get herself standing again. She got up just as Hikaru's fairth blasted all of the shadows out of a nearby and she quickly stepped back out of worry it might friendly fire, but she turned out alright. She took a deep breath and held her keyblades in a stance as she focused in and felt her keyblades begin to glow a bit. The blonde smirked and quickly dashed in and in a flurry of attacks, red slash made her keyblades clash together in a beautiful combination of thunder and fire. As the shadows took the damage, Kaida backed carefully away and without much struggle she jumped her way back onto the dock. She looked down at the heartless and said, "I don't like how you talk about yourself like this is your fault." The girl took a knee as she continued looking down at the heartless, watching the shadows jump up as the little friend ran over to grab a couple more coconuts. Kaida focused in to point her keyblade and yell, "Thundara!" the heartless were struck by the lightning bolts in an instant, and the shadows stood paralyzed. "The circumstances were clearly not under your control. And you're talking to me as if you... took something from me." Kaida stood up and looked towards Hikaru and said, "I met you first. You. Not Aux. Even if... you had Aux's memories... that wasn't what we based our friendship on." she sighed as a shadow jumped up to attack her and she slashed it away and it disappeared with a poof noise. She turned to focus on the group before she asked, "What do you mean... once we cross the portal... the remnant will return to him?" Word Count: 333 EXP Earned: 33 EXP Total: 284 Blessed Thief: 80 Munny Sweet Memories: 1 crown Heartless Defeated: 25 shadows Heartless Left: 259 Shadows 97 Neoshadows 165 Darkballs
Kaida was going to take a while processing what Hikaru just told her. Because it simply hit her in a way that she was definitely not fond of and it was only emotionally taxing on a different level. The blonde sent multiple projectiles back into the horde and was going to respond before she was pulled down. In a yell, she was under the horde and keeping up guard as she said, "Get back to me in a bit... you dropped a lot on me and now I'm being chowed on by shadows. Raincheck on the convo please!" and she continued her fight as best as she could, annoyed at the interruption. Word Count: 112 EXP Earned: 11 EXP Total: 251 Blessed Thief: 50 Munny Sweet Memories: 1 crown Heartless Defeated: 25 shadows Heartless Remaining 345 Shadows 103 Neoshadows 178 Darkballs
Takehiko wasn't doing particularly well after that last hit, though the boy was trying to keep himself together. He felt like he was on the very last of his energy and he wasn't about it. He knew his reserves weren't spectacular, but he didn't think he had a choice here. The dark room suddenly glowed in a green light as it surrounded Take, giving him a bit more of a leg to stand on. While his keyblade was out he focused on it and began emitting a glowing light for himself and Adalric. He looked towards Torrin and Boreas for a minute before saying, "That eye thing you guys have seems very useful. Kind of wish I had that. Anyway." The boy made his way over towards the rocks and stared at it saying, "This will be a bit inconvenient." he looked towards Torrin, "You can make portals, right? That isn't affected by magic, is it?"
