Video Game: Kingdom Hearts SOS: The Road To Light

With having destroyed the last few dark balls, Stratos looked around to see the next heartless that he would have to deal with. As his current charge was dealing with mostly the dark ball, or rather the dark balls had made them his charge. As he was about to get ready to fight though, he heard Ignis call out her question and looked back to her. "Oh come on, these kind of heartless are nothing to deal with. So they're a bit dexterous and numerous. I'd much rather fight a horde of these then those behemoths again. I'm sure if we keep persisting for awhile we'll be done with this fight in no time. No help needed...Except maybe some from that master over there," he pointed over to where the man who fell from the sky was. "Though he seems to be a bit occupied at the moment." Looking over to Beuce, who seemed to mostly agree with his sentiment, the boy then said, "yeah, if all that's in there is a bed I'm not going to complain for a bit. Though maybe we'll all find another clothing store to get a new wardrobe change." With that banter done, Stratos moved on to fight a dark ball that had appeared in front of him.

Backing off from it, the boy raised up his keyblade to guard against the attack, the chomp somehow being deflected against the metal of his keyblade. Leaping into the air after it, the boy charged his keyblade with ice once again and begin to strike at them. With the first two slashes, he had managed to cleave off two of the tendrils spinning in the air for another third strike against the dark ball. With the final strike being brought down against the creature, he managed to cleave the dark ball in twain, and completely destroyed it. With that done, two more dark balls bowled towards him, causing the boy to dodge roll backwards and forcing the two dark balls to run into each other. The boy imbued his blade with darkness as he rushed forward, striking the two dark balls with a splatter combo attack. Two more spawned in trying to bite down on him, but the boy merely matched blows with one of them, bringing his flaming blade into one of their mouths while trying to kick the other one away. Spinning his keyblade, he then tossed it towards the dark ball, and struck the creature with his strike raid.

As Ignis asked about Auras Stratos said, "you know I haven't actually used one of mine yet. Trying to get used to the power this form of mine is giving me now, first, you know?" He felt an odd sense of duty to try and defeat the heartless that were attacking him first with the power of his soldier form before going into another form against the heartless that were left. And the wave seemed to be thinning out, so Stratos felt confident to go and attack the remaining ones with this power. As the dark balls in front of him seemed to be ready to attack him, the boy looked like he was about to respond in kind, only to then look to the side. Seeing a wave of flame come towards him, the boy yelped a bit, trying to use a cross slash to stop the attack from hitting him. While he managed to get rid of most of the attack, he was still a bit singed by the residual damage of it. As Ignis apologized he said, "it's alright, it's alright. I figured I could use a hair...burn anyway." Looking over to see that the dark balls he was fighting were also destroyed by the attack he said, "and I think it did more good than harm."

Total words: 632
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 840
Blessed Thief: 420

Heartless Defeated:
2 Shadows
8 darkballs

Heartless Remaining:
47 Shadows
26 Neoshadows
64 Darkballs

 

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

 

After recovering from Ignis's attack that he managed to be in the crossfire of, Stratos took a deep breath as he looked around. He could barely see any of the shadows left, the small tykes barely able to form any sort of offensive now that there was so little of them. The tall, gaunt neo shadows were also very few in number as well. Seeing that they were almost done with this wave, Stratos felt a wave of relief run through him. Before, they had fought one thousand heartless. They were able to be brought to their knees by such a number, and were barely able to get out of the last fight. However now, they had fought far more than one thousand to begin with. The shadows alone had almost matched that number, and with the other new and dangerous heartless that they were facing against. Though he knew that there were still many more heartless to be defeated, some looming in the distance threateningly, Stratos knew that they were far from over. Yet, with this wave almost finished, Stratos already felt pride well through him, and though he had taken some damage, he was nowhere near out of stamina yet. Taking in a deep breath, Stratos readied his blade to begin the assault against the remaining heartless.

Of those that were still around, the only one that was still numerous in number were the dark balls. Thankfully or not, Stratos had been a focus of theirs for a bit now, and he had them as a focus as his. Spinning his blade around, the boy looked at some of the remaining dark balls that had just been floating around, moving towards him. One by one, another dark ball started to join the fray, with the dark balls beginning to cackle a bit at them. Each of them opened their mouths, gnashing their teeth seeming to just let out a strange noise that resembled laughter. As they had all gathered together, eight of them in total, the boy spun his keyblade around, getting ready to fight them head on. All eight of them began to roll, floating down to be parallel with the ground before starting to roll against it. Trying to bowl him down from just the ground, the boy leaped over the first three that rolled at him, but as he did, the next five all seemed to bounce off the ground. With each of them bowling towards him while he was still in mid-air, the boy had to think fast.

Being unable to dodge roll while in the air, he knew he had a skill that would allow him to still perform an aerial dodge. With a burst of speed, Stratos had sliding dashed through the air, dodging the attacks entirely and landing back onto the ground, safely. As the eight stopped their rolling, trying to roll in place to stop their momentum, they all started to fling back towards him. Spinning his keyblade around, the boy tossed it in a strike raid, causing it to bounce off one of the dark balls as it slayed it, forcing the blade to lodge into another one. Summoning his blade back to him, as the other five made their way towards him, the boy took a deep breath before slashing an X into the air. As it exploded into a gust of wind, the force of it stopped the dark balls in their tracks and destroyed them entirely. With that done, Stratos walked forward, only for two shadows to try and stop his advance. With a swift slash, he managed to cut through the two of them, destroying them almost instantly.

Word Count: 613
EXP Earned: 60
EXP Total: 900
Blessed Thief: 450 Munny

Heartless Defeated:
2 shadows
8 Dark balls

Heartless Remaining:
19 Shadows (leave one alive)
21 Neoshadows
56 Darkballs

 

As the fight continued on, Ignis finally began to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And that light was the dread of knowing they weren't even close to being done after this. It was a little bitter sweet, but as the island seemed to be dwindling of heartless, she knew there were more that were bound to show up, so it was almost a given that they were't done yet. And as if there were some kind of bell to announce the next bout between keyblader and heartless, some darkballs came charging at Ignis out of nowhere. Seriously, she didn't even see these things a second ago, blinks, and there they were, charging at her face first. Though considering that their whole body was basically their face, that wasn't saying much. At the very least, when she felt like punching something in the face, like she had been doing for a majority of this fight, she could always look to a darkball.

Taking the initiative this time, she tossed her keyblade toward the darkball in front. This time she didn't toss it to use her strike raid skill, but just through it straight forward, like a javelin. The keyblade pierced right through the darkball, dispersing it. Though she might have tossed with a little too much force, as the keyblade kept going and went straight into one of the walls. The darkballs seemed confused by the tactic, and Ignis just wondered when this comedy act going on with her was going to come to an end. She never seemed to have this issue back home, so why was it everything went wrong when she was fighting here? She tried to get rid of her distracting thoughts and recalled her keyblade. At the very least, while the darkballs where confused about what just happened, she had the opportunity to strike a few of them down. She came up to the closest two and knock the away into a tree, causing them to disappear. At least a coconut didn't fall on another heartless's head this time and caused a riot against her. She wasn't going to count that out from happening again, but at the very least it wasn't this point in time.

The Darkballs seemed to regain their senses after this little mishap from earlier, and seemed to want a bite out of Ignis. She wasn't really surprised by them doing so at this point, given how much they liked to chomp at anything in front of them. She brought out flames from her keyblade and roasted a few more darkballs, giving them a nice little heat storm. They vanished in the flames, leaving only a handful left. As per usual, things could be that easy. The darkballs flew at Ignis top speed, and out of nowhere, some Shadows popped out from behind the balloons. She wasn't sure where they were hiding exactly, since they weren't there a minute ago, but that wasn't the issue. She had to put up her keyblade to stop the bite of the darkballs, which left her defenseless against the Shadows. While they were small, she'd rather not be hit by anything so puny and deal with the consequences later. Given no other alternative, she released flames from her keyblade full force, giving it no general direction. She let the flames run wild, burning everything in a fiery pillar around her. She didn't know if it was because they were her flames or she just had control over fire, but luckily the pillar didn't harm her; or at the very least, it didn't feel like it harmed her. The heartless vanished, and she was left with smoke wafting around her.

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot," she turned to Stratos to respond to his recent reply about the auras, "Using that isn't too difficult. It's basically just a hack and slash, so if you got that down, just work your skills around it. I've had to fight my whole life without the use of magic, so I'm used to it."

Total words: 676
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 540

Heartless Defeated:
9 Darkballs
2 Shadows

Heartless Remaining:
17 Shadows (leave one alive)
21 Neoshadows
47 Darkballs

 

With the last few dark balls that were attacking him having been dealt with, the boy turned around to see the next set of heartless that he needed to go and deal with. hel ooked at the dark balls that were still around, seeming to be under fifty in count now. He was pretty sure there was at least a few hundred of them to start with, so the dwindling sight of them started to inspire Stratos to start kicking it into high gear. Spinning his keyblade around, the boy got into his fighting stance as he began to move towards his next few dark ball enemies. Of course, as he started to move forward, one immediately warped in front of him to cut him off. Opening its maw to chomp down on the boy, Stratos dodge rolled backward to avoid the maw of the creature. Spinning his keyblade, the boy tossed it at the heartless, though the attack seemed to go wide as the dark ball had moved to the side. Summoning back his keyblade, the boy ignited his keyblade as he jumped up towards the heartless. With a powerful slash, the attack flaming keyblade cut through the dark ball like a knife through butter, causing the creature to be engulfed in flame as it was split in half.

As he got ready to go back and attack the other ones, he head Ignis call out to him about how to use his soldier job more effectively. Nodding at her comments he said, "yeah, it seems like a pretty simple power to get used to. I'm just not too used to raw swordplay with my keyblade is all, you know? Up until now I've always been more reliant on using my magic to compensate, or trying to use large super attacks as shortcuts to win fights. So, just charging in and slashing like this is pretty new for me. But, a guy could get used to this kind of thing." Trying to rely more on the raw power of his blade, the boy started to step lightly on his feet, before charging out towards the next set of dark balls.

Of course, before trying to actually start his attacks against these creatures, he was immediately stopped as the seven dark balls teleported all around him. Suddenly surrounded, the creatures started to cackle at him before hovering towards him. All of them had then began to hover towards him, maws open and ready to chomp down on him. Without being able to jump away from this attack, and not having any magic to blow them away, Stratos knew that he had one get out of jail free card. As the closed in on him, the boy took a deep breath as he seemed to focus inward. Slowly, the advance of the dark ball began to slow down, only for them to come to an absolute stand still. The cherry blossoms began to flutter around, only for the boy to suddenly vanish from where he was. A large slash mark had appeared across each and every one of the dark balls. Appearing outside the circle, the dark balls slowly turned to face him, only for their eyes to go wide as they paused. The slash marks became more defined as the dark balls were split in half from the slash itself, breaking back into their clouds of darkness, dissipating into the void. Taking a deep breath, the boy looked around to see that he had managed to get out of that sudden swarm scott free. Even if he didn't have magic and he didn't abuse the power of limits, he knew that now with his physical strength, he could fight on par with everyone else.

Total words: 623
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 960
Blessed Thief: 480 munny

Heartless Defeated:
8 Darkballs
2 Shadows

Heartless Remaining:
15 Shadows (leave one alive)
21 Neoshadows
39 Darkballs

 

​

After the fiasco with that one neoshadow getting completely changed through the act of eating another shadow, the neoshadows seemed to be more wary about that as opposed to jumping the gun and all trying to eat them. Probably because they would end up fighting among themselves if they did, which would be perfectly fine for him. Both options really. If they didn't turn themselves into incredible hulk like monsters then they would be easy to beat and if they did and beat themselves to death, then ideally the last one standing would be too worn out to be of that much of a threat him. It wasn't quite a win-win for the last option still has the possibility of the last one standing not being worn out and ready to take on the challenge that was keyblade wielder. With that one possibility in mind, Kel would rather avoid the possibility of the latter happen. The occasional smaller shadow that wandered over here was swiftly vanquished by one of the neoshadows more in lined with the first option that Kel had thought of. Once that was dealt with, the very same neoshadows set off towards Kel in a mad sprint. His first attack had been a downward strike and the heartless did, in fact, manage to dodge the attack. Not only that, it had managed to knock one of his keyblade up into the air. It would have been an impressive feat, not counting that Kel had another keyblade waiting and ready to be use, but because that very same keyblade that was knocked into the air fell from the sky and landed right back on the heartless. Having been felled by the very same weapon that it managed to knock away caused an awkward silence between Kel and the remaining heartless. They would've been silent regardless, but this was just to emphasize how badly that one neoshadow had messed up.

The silence came to an end when the sounds of feet hitting the ground were heard. The next batch of four heartless had mad their way down from the tree and up to bat. None of them were in that much of a hurry to go and fight, not after the embarrassment that was the first neoshadows attempt at fighting. What they had done instead was stranger. The four heartless had come together in a group huddle to 'discuss' their next plan of action. Least that was probably what it looked like form their perspective, but as for Kel he just saw four shadowy figures grouped together with the occasional movement that they made. Nothing more than that really. They stood like that for quite a bit, really into forming whatever plan that they hoped to come up with to get back Kel to get to Luna. Yup they were still on that train despite the numerous of failed attempts at trying to do so. Kel had decided to be the nice guy and patiently wait for them to finish formulating whatever strategy that they could Their planning must have gotten really intense for there had been a couple of times in which the heartless raised an arm up in protest or smacked whoever was next to it. Kel found it all to be pretty entertaining despite the fact that they were heartless still trying to kill them. A couple of are raises later, with another smack thrown in, and they seemed to be ready with their game plan. That plan was to simple run in from the front. All that waiting just for this was kinda a let down to be honest. Kel sighed, then attacked with a zatetsuken that dealt with the remaining batch of heartless.

Total Words: 619
Exp: 60
Total Exp: 600
Blessed Thief: 30
Total Munny: 300

Heartless Defeated
1 Shadows
5 Neoshadows

Heartless Remaining:
14 Shadows (1 Reserved)
16 Neoshadows
39 Darkballs

 

Ignis watched as Stratos continued to fight against the darkballs. She personally found it hard to understand what it would be like fighting with raw strength and no magic as opposed to magic as a helping hand, but she could try to watch and give tips at the very least. As she observed, Stratos became surrounded by darkballs and relied on his Zantetsuken to get out of it. She began to wonder the best way on how to provide him tips on fighting with just strength. Walking up to him, she took a closer look at him, checking out his arms, legs, and so on.

"Hmm," she began to think about his form and other things, "it looks like you're fit enough, but I wonder if maybe you're using muscles you're not used to. Like you said, you've been used to fighting with magic and such, so I wonder if maybe your body has relaxed a little using it. Since I've always had to fight with pure physical strength, they always got worked out without the use of any skills. Try fighting without using any skills and see how it feels. Kind of like this."

She looked around and found a group of Darkballs hanging out on the far edge of the island, wavering around the water. At least, she thinks it might be water. Given its purplish color, she wasn't entirely sure about it. Either way, she went over to them whistled, getting their attention. Apparently they were the dumb ones of the heartless they were fighting, because they were just bouncing around having fun and not noticing anything. In fact, she wasn't sure if they even heard the whistle just now. She was getting kind of annoyed about being ignored by some stupid heartless, and threw her keyblade to one, missing as it bounced out of the way and knocked down a random Shadow instead. At that point she was wondering if it wasn't just messing with her.

She cupped her hands over her mouth and yelled over "Hey, balloon head! Get over here and take your beating like the Heartless you are!"

That seemed the get the Darkball's attention, as it turned around and bounced angrily at the comment. The other darkballs joined in and started to charge forward. Ignis took the initiative and jumped over to them midway, and knocked one out immediately, causing it to disappear. At this point she had jumped into a circle of darkballs and figured it would be a good chance to knocked them all around. The group of them began to bounced around wildly and Ignis put up her guard, blocked the attacks and sending them in other directions, having them bounce into each other. As they did so, she hacked and slashed at them, giving them all some damage and slowly dwindling their numbers. One bounced toward her haphazardly and she brought up her guard, knocking the darkball backward, and brought her keyblade down on it, slamming it hard enough to throw it back into another unsuspecting Shadow and causing them both to disappear. At that point there was only a single balloon left and it wasn't happy. It turned into a smoke cloud and tried to move around randomly, but at this point all she had to do was wait for it to reappear. She kept her keyblade at the ready, and as soon as the heartless popped back out, she rushed forward, swinging her keyblade horizontally, taking care of the final heartless.

"Try to do a fight like that and see how you do. Sometimes the best exercise is to limit yourself. You'll get use to it soon enough. Even the best fit body has something it's not used to, but I'm not much of a teacher, it's just how I trained myself."

Total words: 640
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 600

Heartless Defeated:
9 Darkballs
2 Shadow

Heartless Remaining:
12 Shadows (1 Reserved)
16 Neoshadows
30 Darkballs

 

Whether or not Steel had replied to her story, Ananta paid him no mind once things started to literally hit the fan. For the longest, Ananta wasn't sure what happened. All she knew was that they were suddenly on a sad looking island with many of it's original features seemingly broken off. Looking around, she could only imagine what it once looked like before all this had happened. Things started to hit the fan fast, however, and Ananta watched as hundreds of heartless filled the area up, leaving little room to breathe. Having newfound strength, Ananta smirked and pulled out two keyblades. "Look at them. Aren't they beautiful?" she asked noone in particular. She was glad she had become a master. She was finally able to do something cool with her powers.

Her comrades had already started to dispatch the horde and so it was finally her turn to try and defeat a few heartless. Small shadows approached her, one by one. Gripping her keyblades tight, Ananta slashed at two of them, watching them disappear into dark dust. One tried to take the highroad, but was soon met by a blast of blizzard magic. it went sailing across the ocean of shadows and other heartless, it too disappearing once it hit the ground. Three more approached Ananta, swiping and jumping at her. She dodged the swipes and smacked two away. Her keyblades pierced one and made it disappear. Fire magic dispersed of the other two.

All at once, 5 more shadow heartless approached her, glaring at her longingly. "Man, these things sure are gross." she commented to herself, stepping back with her keyblades help out front. All five heartless attacked at once, taking Ananta by surprise. She blocked the attacks as best as she could, but she couldn't really hurt any of them at this rate. Sneakily, she tossed a Thunder spell at one and watched it shake violently before disappearing. Sighing in relief, she turned back towards the last four. The next one got pummeled into dust by her keyblades, Stopping a moment to take a breath, she watched the last three eerily creep up on her and swipe her legs. She danced in place and dodged the swipes. Unfortunately, one did manage to get her and cause her ankle to sting.

"Ouch! Son of a digit..." she cursed under her breath, dispatching of the offending heartless with a well placed fire spell. That left just two more heartless. Ananta swung her keyblades at both of them and watched the heartless jump out of the way. Her mouth agape, Ananta was struck in the arms by these heartless. She dropped her keyblades and rubbed her arms in pain. For a moment, she moved out of the way of the attacks to try and heal her arms up. "Stupid things just don't know when to quit!" she yelled, raising her arm and watching a Mine Square form. Only one of the heartless was caught in it, but she didn't care. At least she was finally one on one with this heartless.

Summoning her keyblades back, Ananta held only her Sweet Memories in her right hand. Sure it wasn't her main hand, but Ananta was confident she'd defeat this heartless easily. With one slash, she watched it go poof. "Good riddance." she said, glancing up to see two balloon shaped heartless float around her. "Crap." she uttered, doing a split to dodge a combined effort attack launched by these two heartless. Both her keyblades stabbed into the balloons. This agitated them, but Ananta was ready and she immediately launched two well placed fire spells onto the heartless. Luckily, this was enough and she was able to lay back and take a breather.

Words: 621
EXP: 60
EXP total: 60
Munny total: 30
Crowns Converted: 0

DEFEAT 11 SHADOWS
DEFEAT 2 DARKBALLS

Heartless Remaining:
1 Shadows (3BP each) (Reserved)
16 Neoshadows (15BP each)
28 Darkballs (9BP each)​

 

"Crystals, huh?" Steel listened to Ananta's story with interest, briefly comparing it to the legend of the crystal in his own world that Griffon mentioned. He also considered what she might have left unsaid; the possibilities of her relation to the "Chosen One" archetype. She apologized for rambling. "You don't have too. Thank you for sharing your story with me: I liked hearing it." He gave her a small smile.

-----------------------

Not much later, after some strange incomprehensible scene that Steel couldn't make heads or tails of, the group was now fighting a massive swarm of heartless against a rather dismal backdrop.

"Couldn't even give us an easy trip back." He muttered under his breath. Having drawn his weapon earlier, Steel was noticeably not switching into his Ninja form. He instead pulled had been using his "Artisan Shard" and the fencing stance that had once been his standard. The rapid thrusts and parries of the style along with his own brutal additions made him a swirling mass of melee zooming about the field.

His latest target was a Darkball that he had actually impaled on his sword, wriggling its' ichorous tendrils in vain as it attempted to escape. Steel wasn't having any of that though. He chuckled slightly as he dodged a blow from behind... by leaping backward over the opponents head. Stabbing downward added another black sphere to his weapon, and it wasn't long before he had snagged a third from nearby to max out the swords capacity. It was a bit impressive considering how large Darkballs actually were.

"Hehe. It's a kebab!" He swung his Keyblade about like a toy as he watched the pest struggle to escape. Perhaps he was a bit too entertained by this, but as he gazed at the result of the Thundaga spell that had been coating the blade detonating, he realized he couldn't find it in himself to care. Inky black smoke fell to the ground menacingly as a good amount of volts tore through their bodies and purged them from existence. Of course all the nearby heartless were purebloods, and so no heart points were earned. Steel hid his disappointment at the fact, though.

Hearing the rush of an incoming projectile, Steel quickly turned to cut through it with his blade. The weapon met with a powerful wind spell in mid-air, and he found himself bracing the other end of his weapon with his second had before he was able to finally push through it. Seeing who had launched the spell, he was met with the interesting sight of a Neoshadow... wearing a cape...? In addition to large spiked shoulder pads? It was accompanied by an exceptionally toothy Darkball, and it seemed the two had worked together to launch the spell his way.

"I'm... not sure that's allowed..." His comment fell upon deaf ears, and the pair started to charge an icy spell that was taking form in his vicinity. Not taking chance with the results, Steel fled from the area of effect. A decision that was quickly validated when everything in it froze solid. Hoping to make use of his distracted state, the two then launched a large fireball at him. It was unfortunate for them that he was not quite as distracted as they had hoped. From his position on a palm tree that had sunk into the landscape, He quickly reached out to the side and dug his claws into yet another Darkball. The things were almost as omnipresent as shadows, though there were a lot less than when the battle had started. He shielded himself from the magic spell with the purple-black sphere, instantly obliterating it.

"Yeah, this really seems like it wouldn't be allowed."

OC:
Words: 617
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 60
Enemies Defeated:
4 Darkballs
ENGAGED NEOBEZ AND THE BALL DRAGON!
BP Used: 36/39
Enemies Remaining:
1 Shadow (Reserved)
16 Neoshadows (1 Reserved)
24 Darkballs (1 Reserved)​

 

After catching his breath from his last great escape attack, Stratos seemed ready to go back to killing the rest of the heartless that were floating around. However, before he continued his death march, he was stopped by Ignis. He was a bit weirded out at first, as the girl just seemed to be examining him head to toe, but things started to make more sense as she began to explain to him about the power of the soldier job he was using. She certainly made sense in saying that his body was probably not used to how he was using it. After all, whenever he had attempted to combo, it was only ever with the power of the ranger, which was highly nonphysical. Even then, the only physical power that he had ever truly relied on was Zantetsuken, which was for more explosive in nature than anything else others would normally do. At least it wasn't so bad that it caused him to break his bones every time he used it, though. So that was good. All the same, the girl had a point and trying to fight the heartless without using any of his skills and only raw bladework was certainly a different kind of challenge. Before trying it out himself, he decided to go and watch Ignis's demonstration of it, watching as she went to go fight a dark ball. Or at least attempt to.

He lightly chuckled to himself as the girl seemed to get frustrated that the heartless was ignoring her, but continued to stand around and watch as she got more aggressive in her approach. Idly watching as she then proceeded to get into a melee with the heartless, the girl eventually stomped away from them all, telling him to fight like that. While the intital exchange was humurous, what he saw was definitely quite skillful fighting, so he figured that if that's how she got to that point, he might as well try it. "Alright, well, let's see how I do Teach." Twirling his keyblade around, the boy began to run towards another horde of dark balls. As the heartless noticed him, the boy saw that they were also ready to fight him as well, and began to roll towards him as they cackled in his direction. Bringing his keyblade up, the boy instincitvely wanted to ignite his keyblade, but rather than doing that he instead forced himself into a guard. Skidding a bit back, when the attack first hit him the boy winced a bit as more of the dark balls continued to barrel into his guard.

As they were all now suspended in the air, the boy instinctively wanted to go and attack them all at once with a cross slash, however he held himself back. Instead, he jumped up into the air, spinning as he did so and slicing with his blade against them. He managed to cleave through two of them this way, delivering multiple cuts that destroyed them in the process of attacking them. Landing back on the ground, the boy was then assaulted by the other six, yet rather than trying to zantetsuken through them, he merely backed away from them. Dodging the first four, he then moved in forward, he unleashed a few basic slashed at the last two, cutting through them. He then continued to repeat this process for the last four, managing to cut through all of them with regular basic slashes. After he managed to cut through them, he said, "well, that was different. And kind of difficult. I think I see what you mean. Still, maybe I'll go get more practice with this thing after we're done here, kind of hitting the limits of what I think it can do."

Words: 628
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 1020
Blessed Thief: 510 Munny

Enemies Defeated:
8 Darkballs

Enemies Remaining:
1 Shadow (Reserved)
16 Neoshadows (1 Reserved)
16 Darkballs (1 Reserved)

 

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

 

​

As the result of various different means, the heartless had thinned greatly in numbers. The tree in which Kel had been fighting off the hordes of neoshadows while keeping Luna safe was practically bare in comparison to how it started off with. The five remaining neoshadows stood perched on the tree tops, surveying the area. If they were looking for more shadows to use as ammunition, then they would find none. Those were the first to vanish from the area following the fiasco with the rouge neoshadow. Maybe they got tired of being mistreated or perhaps they did not want to be killed on sight just to remove the possibility of another rouge neoshadow arises and running rampant. Either way, they were gone now from this area and probably defeated in a different part of the island. "It's almost over." His words ere more directed at himself to be perfectly honest, after all he was still injured to a small degree. All of the moving around that he's been doing, be it fighting the heartless or simply dodging their attacks, couldn't have been helping. Sure he could've just used magic to lessen the pain, but most of his magic went to means outside of healing. Like attacking, moving around and the occasional and unintended defensive maneuver. This made it so that Kel pretty much had to power through it for the most part and he did. At this point it was more so the fatigue that was starting to catch up with him and less the actually small injuries taken. After this he would definitely need to take a small breather to rest. For now though he would keep going. He's made it this far after all and so he could keep on going. Speaking of using magic for for offensive means rather than healing, the first thing that Kel did was to fire off an firaga spell at the tree. The tree was spared form bursting into flames, but more importantly it got the five neoshadows off of their little perch and down on the ground where the actually fight was.

From that point on, Kel remained on the offensive by closing the gap between them and slicing through the first neoshadow that happened to be near. That left only four left and they were quick to retaliate. Their actions were split into two, one group slunk into the ground. Forming their usually puddles as they moved about while the other two stayed above ground and took a more direct approach in trying to deal with Kel. The wielder took a quick look behind him and was relieved to see that there weren't any puddle behind him trying to head towards Luna. The heartless must have realized that the the only way they would get to the apparent heartless beacon that was Luna was to get through him and that was something that wouldn't be easy by any stretch of the imagination. Kel refocused on the fight at hand just in time to block one of the attack from the neoshadow that was above ground. That heartless was pushed back and the next attack was parried and countered with a thrust that ran through the other heartless. The one that was just pushed back made another moved and jumped into the air. As it did, one of the heartless from down below rose up, trying to get in a sneak attack on Kel. That trick wasn't going to work on him this time. Kel dodged the attack, grabbed on the the heartless's wrist and tossed it into the air with another firaga spell trailing behind it. That heartless had crashed into the one who had jumped up before which allowed the magic to burn away both of them. Now it was a one on one and it was still lurking about in the ground. Kel remained firm where he stood, opting to wait for a chance to strike to arise before making any moves. He focused in on the area around him, waiting for that perfect moment to strike. When it did arise and the last neoshadow leap up poised to strike, Kel quickly turned on his heels and cleaved the heartless in two as if he was using zantesuken. That had taken care of that, leaving this particular area heartless free for the time being and with that, he turned to face Luna. "Sorry about that." He'd offered her a sheepish smile having realized he hadn't left her with a chance to assist him despite asking her to do so.

Total Words: 762
Exp: 60
Total Exp: 660
Blessed Thief: 30
Total Munny: 330

Heartless Defeated:
5 Neoshadow

Heartless Remaining:
1 Shadow (Reserved)
1 Neoshadows (1 Reserved)
8 Darkballs (1 Reserved)

 

Taking another look around, Ignis finally started to notice they were low on heartless for the time being. She had a feeling it wasn't that easy, but for the moment, all they had to think about was the few heartless still roaming about. Although what she couldn't quite understand was why Kaida was having a Shadow help her out. At one point she wanted to ask what was going on over there, then she figured it'd just confuse her even more, so she let it go and worried about the rest of the heartless. She noticed some darkballs that were floating around blissfully, seemingly not caring about what was going on. Maybe it was because they were hiding out above everyone, floating and thinking they could get attacked from where they were. Ignis suddenly had the urge to prove them wrong.

Going over to a tree that was near, she jumped up on top of it and then took another leap, heading straight for the floating darkballs. They noticed her incoming and tried to float away. Ignis took a swing at the closest one, and managed to nick it with her keyblade. While it wasn't anything major, the darkball didn't seem to appreciate being hit at all, and tried to slam Ignis into the ground. She flipped herself around in midair,, dodging the attack and letting the darkball get lower to the ground. Then she tossed her keyblade at it and took it out. It seemed like this was another group of heartless that seemed to like each other, because as the heartless puffed away, the others seemed irritated and tried to go after Ignis. Landing on the ground, Ignis prepared to take out a couple more of them.

The first two darkballs came flying at her, teeth nice and sharp. The tried to take a big chomp out of her, but Ignis brought her foot up, kicking one right on what she expected to be the chin area, and the slammed her keyblade into the ground and threw herself around it, kicking the other darkball in the side of the head. They both flopped away, leaving the other darkballs alone. They dived in, teeth flashing just as sharply and ready to try and make a meal out of Ignis. She lit up her keyblade and shoved it into the mouth of the first one, and filled up the balloon with a load of fire. For a second she thought the darkball enjoyed it, seeing as it clamped down on the fire and what seemed like chewing. But then the heartless began to wail about and popped, leaving little traces of fire falling and fading. The next darkball tried to do that little crazy bounce thing that they all did, and flailed around. Ignis put up her keyblade and blocked the attack, sending the heartless back. Then she slammed it with her fist, letting it blow up in the middle of a group of other darkballs. She certainly enjoyed watching them blow up like that, either expecting nothing to happen or just watching the explosion up close and personal. It certainly brought a new meaning to "seeing a bright light at the end". The darkballs she had kicked back earlier were coming at her again, and Ignis figured they were pretty much done at this point. She tossed her keyblade at them, taking them out and watching as the smoke vanished. By this point there were only a few heartless left, and she wondered what the others would do to get rid of them. She decided to sit down on the ground, taking what little break she had. She didn't care if it would only last for five second, she wanted to rest her feet and lay down.

"So, how many more heartless do you think we have to deal now?" directing her question toward the other two near her.

Total Words: 652
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 660

Heartless Defeated:
7 Darkballs

Heartless Remaining:
1 Shadow
1 Neoshadow
1 Darkball

 

While the majority of the group was busy thinning out the remaining heartless crowd, Steel was locked in battle with Neoshadow and its pet Darkball. As he leaped about dodging fireballs and ice crystals acrobatically, he pondered how exactly the two lesser heartless had managed to learn such a wide array of magic. Of course, there wasn't much question as to how they were making it so powerful: their teamwork was the clear answer to that question. Though it was also true that heartless didn't usually participate in this level of cooperation. Steel yelped as he nearly collided with a thin red beam. He glanced at his opponents to see that they two had summoned a small, chromed black sphere.

"Oh come on! How did you even manage to get your hands on a Lunarian attack core!" His incredulous shouts were met with several larger beams, pulsing erratically as he weaved away from them. The shining array of red cosmic rays would have made dust of any debris it happened to come across, and a large ditch had been punched into the sand. Unfortunately, that was not the end of the barrage of attacks by any means. Several bolts of purple lightning arced towards him from a large purple orb, which he quickly countered with his own fireball. It seemed, however, as the two spells met and canceled each other out, that this time the terrible twosome had actually managed to distract him for long enough to get a considerably more damaging spell off. Steel's heart nearly skipped a beat as he eyed the massive chunks of rock that were falling from the sky towards him. However, with no deathwish to call his own at the moment, he didn't stay still for long. He quickly broke into a mad dash to escape the range of the Twin Meteors, crashing into a tree and digging in his claws. This was no safe haven for the wolf, however, as the telltale signs of yet another spell began to gather around him. Black energy began to swirl around him, and he simultaneously found himself pondering once again how two relatively base and weak heartless had learned such powerful magic, as well as deciding with a certain sense of finality that he could not keep running from said magic if he was going to win this fight.

"Not going to happen!" He shouted at his query as he sped towards them, frantically trying to get in range before the spell currently biting at his heels went off. Running just within distance of his target, he rapidly threw his own spell towards the duo to interrupt them. "Stopga!" With that, the pair were frozen in time, leaving them completely at the mercy of their Lupine adversary as he continued to dash towards them. The magic attack that had nearly charged dissipated into black smoke that faded without a trace, leaving him completely free to attack the duo. Which is just what he did.

He grabbed the pointier-than-thou Darkball and thrust into it several times with the Artisan Shard. An action that he suspected would have created several holes had the target not been stopped in time. Jumping on top of it, Steel dug his claws into the creature's head before leaping back off and using his momentum to flip around and budge it from its resting place in mid-air. He wrenched it from its spot and bashed it into the Neoshadows head before letting go and blasting them both with a Thundaga spell. With that, the Stopga wore off, and the Darkball burst into several smoky fragments. It's companion Neoshadow, though slow to understand just what had happened at first, began to panic and tried blasting him with some kind of earth-based spell. However, without his companion, the spell was considerably weaker, and the small resulting rocks were knocked to the side with a relatively effortless flick of the newly appointed master's keyblade. Not giving his opponent any more chance to attack, Steel lunged for the caped heartless, blade outstretched-

-And that was the end of the last heartless. His surroundings told him that the only one that now remained was a shadow that... had been helping Kaida?

Whatever the case, the creatures numbers had been reduced to nothing. For that to happen so quickly was suspicious, to say the least.


OC:
Words: 726
EXP: 60
Total EXP: 120
Enemies Defeated:
- 1 Darkball
- 1 Neoshadow
BP Used: 24
Enemies Remaining:
Reserved Shadow

 

As Stratos had felled the last heartless of his, he looked around to see that everyone else had similarly done their job in defeating heartless. With that done, the battlefield seemed clear for now, and the group was otherwise fine to proceed. Of course, the order member still seemed to be fighting off the man by the name of Hughes, and appeared to be having some form of difficulty in doing so. While Stratos was about to go help the man, beginning to jog over to him, he was stopped dead in his tracks a Hughes snapped his fingers. The newly appointed keyblade masters had felled over one thousand heartless already, and Stratos was feeling confident in how much they had managed to get done, and how swiftly at this. His eyes went wide, however, at the sight of the endless sea of shadows, more than doubling the size of the last one, alongside an onslaught of what he believed to be twice the number of neo shadows and darkballs they had dealt with previously. If that weren't enough, he saw the same looming figures in the distance that they had seen last time, creatures that were humanoid in shape with black tendrils covering their face. Only this time there were two of them. And after waiting a few seconds, there didn't seem to be anyone falling from the sky to destroy them this time. Whistling at the sight, Stratos felt odd.

The last wave hadn't exhausted him in the slightest, and he still felt as though he had plenty in the tank to go through. And despite the number of heartless that was before them being doubled in size, he didn't seem to be any bit nervous in his dealing with them. Instead, he seemed to be sure of something. Sure that were he to merely trust in the skills he had learned and acquired, that this wave would prove no bit more difficult then the last. Twirling his keyblade in his hand, the boy began to walk forward as he saw Aux immediately jump after one of the large humanoid heartless. While Stratos felt a bit tempted to join in on the action, he saw there was a bit of wave between him and it. Shadows and Neo shadows galore that seemed to start charging towards his direction. Sighing the boy got ready to go into a fighting stance and deal with them. However, while he was enjoying testing out his new found strength in the soldier power, he was starting to feel quite restricted by it. Which probably had something to do with the restrictions it put on him. So, letting out a deep breath, the boy focused and was enveloped in a red light. The light flooded off of him into small particles of red, as the boy was no longer in the red tinged uniform of his, his jacket returning to its black color. His keyblade as well had returned to its original shape.

As Neo Shadow leaped at him, the boy pointed his keyblade up saying, "firaga." The ball of flame formed at the tip, launching itself at the airborne heartless and exploding against it, instantly destroying it. Looking at the smoking blade he said, "much better." Opting out of his limiters now, the boy took a deep breath as cherry blossoms began to flutter around. He figured he'd give this wave the same greeting he gave the last. And thus, disappearing in an instant, the boy appeared on the other side of the heartless that were rushing at him, instantly destroying them in a single slash.

Word Count: 603
EXP Earned: 60
EXP Total: 1080
Blessed Thief: 540 Munny

Heartless Defeated:
3 Neo Shadows
21 Shadows

Heartless Injured:
Darkside 1,353/1,500

Heartless Remaining:
Heartless Remaining:
Defeat 1979 Shadows
Defeat 447 Neoshadows
Defeat 449 Darkballs
Defeat 30 Invisibles
Defeat 2 Darksides