Fight for Power

<Sapphire>

Despite being surrounded by ice here, this is managing to be an uphill battle. I have literal tons of material to throw around, but these Black Pikmin are fighting tooth and nail for every inch, and I don't know how much longer I can keep pushing at this rate. At least I've got Beta and Vashj backing me up, covering for me when I have to fall back.

And Orvtre, I reminded myself as another ball of molten lava slammed forth from the back. The biggest aggravation, though, is probably that goddamn cannon. As soon as that thing starts winding up - like it is right now - everybody has to abandon offense to go diving for cover. I saw one of the creatures that got caught out in that shockwave, it wasn't pretty.

For me, though, marking my line in the snow is fairly simple, just a matter of slamming my fist into the ground and raising a sheet of ice. A really thick sheet, mind you, which was probably the primary source of my exhaustion. I need somebody to draw some power from... the Boyz keep fighting from range, and the only one that gets close is too fast for me to tag him. Jerk.

The massive boom of the main cannon echoed out over the ice, everyone bracing for the following shockwave. As soon as it slammed into - and broke - my ice wall, I gathered the fragments and launched them into the Black Pikmins' front line, an action that rewarded me with a few shouts of pain and a redoubled focus of gunfire on my location.

It was around this time that a sound like the universe coming to an end roared over the battlefield and a huge hole opened up in the sky. Some massive flying vessel came through, trailing electricity from the portal's edges as it came forth entirely. Some kind of bubble snapped into place around it, and then it was opening fire on the cannon and those closest to it.

"You will make no further assaults on the Colony!" A voice echoed forth from the ship, a large number of drop pods launching from its underside to slam into the ice below. Once they'd impacted, they popped open to reveal a variety of mechanoids and cybernetically enhanced Pikmin.

"Oh, looks like Omicron's decided to join the fight!" Beta cheered as a third front opened fire on the Black Pikmin, who responded in kind. Their weapons, however, impacted the barely visible bubble around the ship with no apparent damage done. This seemed to annoy them, and a number of their aerial troops moved forth to attack directly, passing straight through the bubble... and into range of the ship's point defenses. That wasn't going particularly well for them.

What was going well is that the new army had drawn off a significant amount of their firepower, which we used to punch a hole through their front line and get at those jerks with the guns. Vashj, like me, had gotten quite tired of them, which she let them know by caving their skulls in. Typically with one punch. Through their armor. Note to self, don't get on her bad side.

Beta, meanwhile, carved a watery trench right through the middle of the Black Pikmin's forces to keep them from regrouping, the rushing water moving at speeds that would carry them off even with their armor on. That was as much as I could see before one of their close range fighters got in my face, fists flying at entirely too high speeds. I blocked some of his punches, leaving a bit of ice with each hit that he failed to notice until his hands s***tered, at which point I caved his ribcage in. Those hits still hurt though...

?-Orvtre-?

I was doing well so far in keeping everyone safe; the summons have a safety mechanism enabled that warps them away to safety before they've taken too much damage. It's part of the summon contract, in fact. Lucky for that summon that got caught in the cannon shockwave in that it probably saved its life, unlucky that it'll be out for the entire Megadakka campaign and quite possibly longer than that... making something similar for our Hero Squad members is in the works, as well as some armor for almost everyone to further protect them. Yes, armor for even the creature summons as well. We're going to be thorough in our protection.

That said, the auto-warp if too-damaged safety mechanism will have an override if it is absolutely necessary to fight injured for whatever reason... I just hope our Squad won't abuse it too recklessly. (Looking at you, Libera... )

Now that I've started using lasers, I've been able to cut down on the amount of times Blade Wolf can freely jump around and throw knives, which helps immensely with defense. I haven't really been doing as much offensive duties as my primary mission has been to keep everyone safe, and I've been shielding and moving around anyone who is in danger of being significantly injured or killed by any attack.

Once in a while me or one of my clones has a free opportunity to blast some unlucky Black Pikmin in the head, in this case using the Prism Cannon. It takes a bit more sustained fire to kill one of the Black Pikmin since their barrier users are here now, but I'll take what I can get.

The current status is that the Black Pikmin's front line now has a nice hole in it, which I helped exploiting by shooting some other Black Pikmin in the chest with a well-aimed Prism Cannon shot. This hole was partly thanks to the help of Omicron's crew, which had, among them, Captain and... Seraph's old shell. Yes, I remember Omicron showing that to me a while back. The shell is moving around now and is probably inhabited by one of Omicron's AIs or something.

I also snuck in several powerful bomb-rocks in the water that Beta sent at the Boyz, the explosives' detonation maiming or killing several Black Pikmin. However, my focus was quickly turned back towards Blade Wolf, whose latest attempt at killing a Bloodseed was thwarted when I hit one of his legs with a frost ray, the cold slowing him down and causing him to utter an expletive. He then recloaked just before I lasered him, possibly to try and get one of his allies to help defrost the leg faster.

-{Vizogg}-

The wooden one has shortly lost Vizogg's interest, on account of not having bones. The multi-colored one, however, was very interesting indeed, because cutting his limbs off just caused him to grow more. It was like a neverending bone factory! All he needed to do was clear off all the flesh.

It had been several minutes since Vizogg made that discovery, and thus the street they'd been fighting on was now littered with a variety of purple and black arms that he'd been severing from the chimera-min. Cross, for his part, didn't seem overly concerned by the whole deal, though Pinocchio occasionally glanced around at all the arms with a look of mild amusement.

"So hey," Cross whispered towards Pinocchio during a brief lull in the fight, both sides circling each other, "Hate to say it but I can't just keep regenerating arms indefinitely, so if you got a plan I'm all ears."

Unfortunately for him he didn't get to hear the response, because that was when Vizogg exploded into motion, a whirlwind of bones swirling around him as he rushed Cross down, his scythe moving through the storm of bone without even a hint of pause. Cross brought four curved blades up to meet him, dancing backwards while deflecting bones and dodging the huge, vicious scythe. A number of Pinocchio's strings swept in for an attack, but those were intercepted by the whirling bones becoming tangled in them and then launching skyward. The puppet had a brief moment to consider that before he was yanked into the air.

And then Cross turned out to be not far behind him, because that was when the city fell.

"Oop. Hi, onii-chan! Where'd the ground go?" Pinocchio questioned as the whole city simply fell out from under them. As Cross could fly, he'd simply stayed put while Vizogg remained planted to the ground.

"Uh... down, apparently," Cross drawled, then cursed as a barrage of exploding bones began firing at them like a flak cannon. Cross dove back towards the city while Pinocchio untangled himself and responded with a barrage of wooden stakes, only to yelp as a number of spectral scythes faded into existence and came whirling at him.

Cross, meanwhile, plowed through a continuous storm of bones on his way back down to the ground, only to have to pull up short as the ground abruptly turned into a graveyard of bone spikes. That was when Vizogg leapt out of nowhere and came at him with a pair of sickles, tearing at his arms. Cross dropped his own, longer blades to instead deck the Grand Reaper in the face and deliver a salvo of blows to his chest, but Vizogg didn't even seem to feel it. They broke away from each other when Pinocchio's wooden stakes came raining down, the Old God cultist settling atop a bone spike while Cross elected to remain airborne. With a single gesture, Vizogg raised several bone spikes from the ground and launched them at the chimera-min, while launching several more in the puppet's direction.

X-Pinocchio-X

"Silly baka Onii-chan," Pinocchio mused, giggling. "Luckily for Onii-chan, Pinocchio indeed has a plan." That plan was sunlight-powered lasers.

Creepy, evil looking flowers suddenly started growing on Pinocchio as the puppet dodged away from the bone spikes that Vizogg threw at him. The Grand Reaper didn't have long to ponder what that meant before Pinocchio demonstrated by shooting him with a convergent sun laser, one powered by all the flowers growing on the puppet creepily.

Unlike Cross's attacks, this one actually hurt. And that was when Vizogg promptly noticed a burning smell, as well as his bones feeling like they were being melted by acid. This prompted the Grand Reaper to put up a massive wall of bones, blocking the sun beam. As his skeletal frame regrew, the Old God cultist then threw up a skeletal maze, and ducked into it, to make it harder for Pinocchio to aim at him.

Before Pinocchio could shoot at Vizogg again, he was promptly interrupted by more bonescythes coming his way and the way of his strings. Those bones were proving an annoyance, and the puppet really hated how they were interfering with his mobility.

"Onii-chan! Pinocchio wants to ride on the Onii-chan airlines! Pinocchio needs Onii-chan's energy to power up Pinocchio's solarbeams faster and stronger!" the evil puppet requested.

"... Oooooookay." answered Cross, as he somewhat uneasily took Pinocchio on his back. The sharp spikes on Cross's back stabbed into Pinocchio, yet the insane puppet didn't seem to mind. If anything, it elicited a crazed facial twitch before the puppet continued speaking.

"Yay, Pinocchio is riding on the Onii-chan airlines!" Pinocchio exclaimed as he shoved evil-looking flowers and vines all over Cross to absorb energy. "PINOCCHIO AND ONII-CHAN SUPER SUN LASER!"

The powerful solar beam slammed down onto the maze of bones, burning through the skeletal array and leaving a graveyard of melting bones. It also hit Vizogg, who retaliated with a heavy storm of bonescythes and bone boomerangs, sent at Cross and Pinocchio to make their flight a very bumpy one.

Throughout all of this, Pinocchio was giggling with joy, as he tracked the Grand Reaper, who had retreated further into the skeletal forest. The mad puppet had caught a glimpse of Vizogg's burnt skin underneath all that bone; for the sake of his Onii-chan, Pinocchio wanted to melt Vizogg to a crisp.

"More energy, Onii-chan! More! MOREEEEEEEEE! We need to make silly bone man more burny-burny, to make him deady-deady!" exclaimed Pinocchio as the insane puppet generated even more flowers and vines to attach to Cross, as the chimera-min muttered a slowly rising growl of irritation.

<Trombe>

"Exanosis..." Trombe muttered as another marble detonated near him. Several blades warped into position to fend off the worst of the blast, but the attacks simply kept coming.

"Aquisoma..."

A foul energy seeping from him into the air. Another marble managed to get through and strike him, but he ignored it. It wasn't going to matter in a second.

"Deyte..."

A few more attacks scattered across his defenses, the blades now whirling into a storm around him, blurring the air with their speed. Vaguely he became aware of another point of power within the room, doubtlessly Mithril preparing a massive attack. Meaningless.

"Rune!" Trombe snarled, "Exanosis Fog!"

An insidious purple fog rose throughout the room, blanketing the entire cavern in an instant. One of the marbles that Mithril had been throwing about thudded gently into Trombe's shoulder and bounced off, landing on the ground harmlessly. It, along with all the other marbles, had been turned to stone.

A great clatter rose throughout the room as several statues of Mithril fell to the ground and lodged themselves there. Clones, though one had to be real.

"Crimson Moon," Trombe intoned, having no intention of giving her a chance to recover. Every one of his blades turned skyward and shot into the ceiling, where they vanished, only to rain down on each of the statues, the blades now grown to gargantuan size. Most of the statues crumbled instantly, but one broke away from the attack as the blades rained down, moving towards Trombe himself at high speed. Meaningless, as he simply recalled his blades in an instant, the storm of swords reasserting itself before Mithril could strike, forcing her to brake hard and turn away, a swarm of her marble attacks launching off as she diverted. These came into contact with the fog, however, and were promptly turned to stone as well.

"So, you're hardy enough to resist my Exanosis Fog," Trombe growled, seething fury evident in every word.

"Oh hey, you're talking no-"

"Crimson Split," Trombe intoned, a single blade launching in the direction of Mithril's voice, trailing red bursts of energy. An expletive arose from that direction and Trombe launched several more swords the same way, cycling the same few blades through as they returned. Eventually Mithril returned fire in the form of a huge steamroller spraying lasers, but even as he watched, sections of it turned to stone. It was still a huge steamroller heading his way, of course, but that was easily solved by growing one of his blades to enormous size and slicing it in half, then mulching the remains with Break Rain.

"You're hardy enough... but it looks like your attacks aren't," the Warboss sneered.

<]-Mithril-[>

I kind of wonder what the hell the people who made the Experiments were thinking when they decided to play around with Zeromus-powered Black Pikmin genetics. I mean, giving an evil god even more soldiers? If I ever meet the Experiments' creators, I have quite a few questions to ask them, and not all of them are nice...

Since super angry super Trombe is talking now, I might as well ask him what the name of his super angry powerup is. He answered "I am the third Grand Phantasm, though I wouldn't expect you to understand the significance of that." as well as sending more swords my way. Blahblahblah significance, I'm going to kill him soon, so that won't matter much regardless.

It's too bad for him though that I've already come up with countermeasures against his Exanosis Fog. One thing I've discovered is that my bigger metal stuff takes longer to fully turn to stone than my smaller metal stuff. That means bigger clones. There's more, however. Shortly after the fog hit, I had been analyzing it to determine how to mitigate its effects and how to, in the longer term, shut it off.

For now, mitigation. Alchemize: Self combined with precise application of my power nullifier. That along with the larger clones should slow down the petrification significantly.

Onto my attack strategy. It's the same as my previous attack strategy (long-range precisely-controlled charged attack marbles fired by clones while in stealth) but with new modifiers and complexity: I already mentioned making the clones larger and the other mitigation factors for the clones. What's new here is that I will be encasing said marbles not only in Alchemize and in a specific tweak of my power nullifier to mitigate the fog, I will also be putting those marbles in a protective casing: balloons. And not just regular balloons, metal balloons filled with pressurized metal gas. Said pressurized metal gas is, when the balloon is popped either by myself or Trombe, a wind attack that will blow around the fog, creating perhaps just a very brief opening, but nonetheless an important one. And the thing about this strategy is that I can add even more layers of balloons and metal gas if necessary!

So now that Trombe is talking, he has apparently revealed the name of his swords to me in a taunt: "I'll show you... the power of the Crimson Azoth!" Trombe roared angrily while sending more of those Azoth at me, again with that electricity. Yeah I don't want to be hit with that again. Sucks for him though that it's time to execute my strategy.

Anyways it was right about this time that I warped back into stealth to execute my new plan, which is the same as the old plan, but with more layers. Now HERE WE GO AGAIN.

I had been thinking ahead and, while Trombe was focused on the real me, I had been warping away larger clones in secret to jumpstart my plan. Now that that's successful, I don't need to be out in the open anymore.

No element of surprise here: Since this was basically the same as the old strategy but with more complexity, Grand Phantasm Trombe wasn't exactly caught off-guard by what I was doing. That said, it was at this point he realized that the fog wasn't enough to stop my plan. That point was hammered home by the sound of popping balloons, the whooshing sound of metal air, and marbles impacting the Grand Phantasm.

Marbles are cycling through various elements now... elemental weakness analysis complete. This time, Trombe is weak to sound. Since that was the element the Grand Phantasm was weak to now, I decided to have the attack name be blasted out along with all the noise: "AMP BUSTER!"

As the attack blasted out the attack name, I was continuing my analysis of the Exanosis Fog, trying to figure out the best way to shut that off permanently. Even though I've found a way to mitigate the petrification, having to constantly deal with my clones and everything else turning to stone is really annoying.

-{Keyza}-

So he's decided to take a dip, huh? Let's see if I can't ruin his bath for him, then.

"Ya ready ta give him our kinda bath, Loki?" I nodded to the massive Snagret, who nodded back from beneath me. Flying higher into the air to get out of range of his waves, I began to focus on the sludge with stomach, as well as that within Loki's. Sliding down Loki's back to about where his stomach was, I grew a few bones into his back and began to channel my power into him.

"Let's do this! Bottomless Quagmire!" I growled. Loki's stomach rumbled ominously as something moved up his throat, bulging out his mouth before he hocked up a disgusting wad of blood and bone and filth. A few huge streams of water came up from the lake to hit it, but they simply vanished into the muck before it slammed down into the lake itself. Immediately it began to spread, completely resisting any attempt to dislodge it, then it began responding to Neat Freak's soap blasts with squirts of blood and gore. Cackling, I leapt from Loki to dive towards the pool of muck. I took a few shots on the way down, but that wasn't going to matter in a moment.

As soon as I hit the Quagmire, the whole thing rippled, sludge and bone and gore reacting to my presence. This is my element, and with it, I began to reach out. Streamers of filth branched out from the mire, seeking out my prey, even as the Quagmire continued to spread. I did say it was bottomless.

Far above, Loki turned back to the city to find more bodies and replenish his stock; this had taken almost everything he had. Wouldn't want to run him dry.

"Come out, come out, Neat Freak..." I cackled, my limbs of gore chasing the Corrector even as he desperately attempted to dissolve them. No soap is going to stop this, Neat Freak. Little blighter is fast, but he can't run forever. The longer this goes on, the more muck I have to work with.

"So, whatcha gonna do?" I sneered, licking my lips.

X-Black Manta-X

How disgusting.

That... Bottomless Quagmire was very disgusting. Very disgusting. So disgusting that Black Manta's soap is not stopping it. How revolting.

Black Manta temporarily halting the stream of attacks he sent Keyza's way was the only warning she got before the Corrector unleashed the attack he had prepped up. He wanted to be away from this dirty b****, and the hole Father's avatar had blasted through Ludibrium was one of the keys to do it. The other?

"HELL GEYSER!" screeched Black Manta, as he launched himself along with as much clean water from the lake as he could bring with him up top, through the tunnel Father's avatar made, to Ludibrium's surface. As for the water remaining in the lake, that was now filled with torpedoes, depth charges, and other underwater explosives, which promptly detonated.

Loki was in the middle of eating when he noticed the flow of water and immediately began flying off. Black Manta, however, was not going to let him escape easily.

"Disgusting! How dare you dirty my armor! You lowly insects! You vermin! That's how you were recovering energy! DISGUSTING! You insects touching insects touching disgusting voring disgusting eating disgusting filthy FILTHY die Die DIE BE CLEANSED AND DISAPPEAR! CLEANSING DOWNPOUR!" angrished the Corrector, as he sent a whole lot of water at Loki, who squawked as he attempted to evade.

It was clear that Black Manta was still pissed about Loki dirtying the Corrector's armor...
________________
Note: Since she's so strong, Cassandra is now being stalled by both the Sha of Pride and the Sha of Anger.

Sha

'Such pride... such anger... ah, you are just full of vices, aren't you?' a soft voice whispered through Cassandra's head. She responded by slamming a fist into the ground, releasing an icy shockwave that obliterated the swarm of Sha that had been moving towards her. Even as they dispersed, however, hundreds more formed, the mocking laughter of Pride and Anger echoing from above.

"Get the f*** out of my head," Cassandra growled, dislodging a building and chucking it at the massive skeletal form of the Sha of Anger. It cackled and swept its claws through the structure, rending it to pieces. It then opened its claws toward her, projecting seething rage in her direction. She tore through the shots and blew her way through the lesser Sha, though they simply came back in ever greater numbers. When she attempted to rush down Anger, however, Pride reached over and struck, nine blows folded into a single swing that even Cassandra couldn't fully block.

'A feast such as this... how could we resist?' the voice prodded as Cassandra crashed through the remains of a building, then sprung back out like fury given form, headed for Pride. She never got there, as Anger moved in her way and blocked her attack, then swatted her to the ground, cackling all the while. She exploded back up, blowing away the ever-swarming Sha, now interspersed with the Cultists of the Old Gods. These Cultists, however, were being empowered by the Sha, rather than weakened; one of the benefits of serving Y'shaarj. Their casualties, as it was, were far fewer than they should have been. Once again, Cassandra struck at the Sha of Anger, but it merely laughed.

"Yes, yes! Bring your rage to bear! Try to strike me down!" the Sha cackled. "Your rage sustains me!" it continued, blocking her strike, even as a barrage of purple and white bolts slammed into her back, courtesy of Pride. The distraction from that was enough for Anger to smack her again, right into another pile of lesser Sha.
______
<Theta>

In the midst of the blizzard, I fought on. s***tering the ice had given me an immense advantage in mobility, though it had also given them some extra cover. Not that it had helped them much; I'd carved through most of their back line within minutes, and now the front liners were throwing themselves at me in an attempt to take revenge.

The explosive one - Blaze - had continued to pester me the whole while, but all it took, in the end, was one slip up on his part. He fired off an explosion to block one of my attacks, slipped due to the unstable ground beneath him, and I'd impaled him with dozens of icy stalagmites, and that had been the end of that. Before I could begin mopping up the rest, the Ebo series had swooped in - moving to evade the shockwave from the cannon firing - and began doing so themselves. Then Omicron's forces had shown up and punched a massive hole in the Black Pikmin's line, taking all pressure off my front.

Given the blizzard still covering my advance, I took this opportunity to push forward to the closest of Megadakka's ancillary facilities, one of the many heat sinks. The ice around here was thinner due to dispersing the heat the cannon generated, and they hadn't had an opportunity to reinforce it yet. I wouldn't give them a chance.

Slamming Frostmourne into the ice again, I sent more cracks spreading through it, funneling the ice out in places to allow it to crumple properly. The building's foundations held for a moment before it collapsed into the ice in a cacophony of s***tering ice and crumpling metal, shearing screeches and snapping wires. It fell until it made a mighty splash, finally hitting the water below the ice. One down, plenty to go.

All the noise, of course, had earned me the immediate and sincere attention of every Black Pikmin in the area, and I had to quickly throw up an ice wall as a storm of gunfire fell upon me. Aggravating, but it'll leave an opening for everyone else.

X-Cassandra-X

Crossing her arms, Cassandra fired a humongous beam of magic from each of her palms, each of which slammed into a Sha and kept going, reaching out into space. The Shas of Anger and Pride effortlessly regenerated and laughed uproariously, earning them an angry stare from Cassandra. Subsequent beams of magic netted the same result.

More purple and white bolts, more rage blasts, more lesser Sha, more empowered Cultists. All of these met the same fate: destruction by Cassandra's power.

It was clear to both sides that the Sha could not hope to defeat Cassandra. Raw power is not overcome so trivially. However, it was also apparent that that was not the goal of the Sha: they simply wished to stall Cassandra to prevent her from joining the fight against the other servants of the Old Gods. And such a goal was far more realistic. Each and every moment, each and every second wasted fighting the Sha was a second she could've spent slaughtering the Black Pikmin. Each and every blast she spent butchering one of the Old God's lackies was energy she could have spent ripping apart the Fist of Zeromus. And the Sha did not hesitate to remind her of that fact.

Tick-tock tick-tock. Time is passing. The Terran Theocracy had provided the Correctors some data on the Old God servants, information that could prove to be useful. That said, time is necessary to defeat the Sha. It is not an if Cassandra will defeat the Sha, it's when.

Cassandra moves the clock ever forward. The teal Pikmin filled her arms with frost magic and then slammed her fists together, resulting in an explosion of ice and white. Said ice and snow then coalesced into a rampaging winter storm, centering around Cassandra herself.

The subsequent followup magical shockwave rang through the arena, slamming into the Sha combatants and s***tering the unluckier ones. Some of the cultists that survived those attacks did not survive the followup to that, a hellish storm of icicles that impaled them and then exploded with destructive magical force.

The powerful maelstrom of ice and hail has been cast over the battlefield, a frigid storm that delays the Sha, slowing their movements.

It would only be a matter of time, Cassandra angrily noted, the teal Pikmin being pelted by more purple and white bolts from Pride and more claw swipes from Anger, before she blasted at the two Sha again with another pair of gigantic magic beams.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.