Fight for Power

?-Orvtre-?

I put up several barriers as Megadakka emitted another shockwave, making sure that everyone is okay. Now that the shockwave has passed, I had shot another Black Pikmin that wandered too far away from the group with the Prism Cannon.

As we approached the closest heatsink, even more Black Pikmin began pouring out. Is Megadakka a clown car or something? There seems to be an awful lot of these Black Pikmin around, probably too much to fit inside the whole complex...

As I slashed another Black Pikmin who was bold enough to attack me head on, I darted aside as a huge Black Pikmin, encased in an armor of ice, slammed down onto my previous position. It became quickly apparent that this Black Pikmin in particular could control ice, as he utilized large walls of ice and frost to offset my lava blasts.

I tried electrocuting him, but it was clear that he had brought a whole squad of Black Pikmin to back him up, as my electric attacks were promptly blocked by barriers put up by some 'Ard Boyz. There were promptly a swarm of Mek Boyz coming over here to attack me as well, armored up inside their Mekz.

Unfortunately for them, I had an invisible clone sneak past them and then kamikaze into an explosion of various elements, destabilizing the nearest heat sink. I then magnetized some unlucky Black Pikmin, causing various large chunks of the heat sink to slam into them. Those were apparently some of the 'Ard Boyz, as me and my clones then burst through, killing some Mek Boyz, with me personally cutting into the ice wielder Black Pikmin with Gurgurant.

Before they could regroup, copies of the strange, Asura-like cyborg beast with dozens upon dozens of arms appeared behind them to divide them up, and a combination attack from Sapphire, Beta, and Vashj took out the split group of Black Pikmin.

I then fired a massive spear of magma and electricity, which finished off the nearest heat sink. Onto the next one.

<Trombe>

Rapidly growing tired of the three-way assault, Trombe growled under his breath, parrying the Teal Pikmin's insanely powerful blows. He didn't have time for this.

"Enough!" Trombe snarled, stomping the ground hard enough to shake the entire city. It put the Teal off balance for a second, which was all he needed. "Slaughter!" he intoned, and then vanished in a blur of pure speed. A black blur swept across the city, striking everything in its path with numerous devastatingly powerful blows.

Cross had just finished putting Pinocchio out from the flame wave from before when Trombe descended upon them like a hurricane of blades, leaving the puppet in pieces and Cross bereft of his limbs. He'd regenerate, but they'd probably be spending a few days putting Pinocchio back together. No sign of the cultist.

Keyza hadn't gotten back up to the city before the attack, and thus was spared from it. Loki and Black Manta, on the other hand, were not, the shredding force of Trombe's wrath carving into both of them and spraying their blood over the burning ruins of the city.

Rampa and Phoenix were, at last, forced apart when the Warboss's attack slammed into them from opposite directions, sending both sliding across the city on a slick of their own blood.

Arygas made it through the attack in perhaps the best condition, screeching in s***h'yar as Trombe's blades carved into the protections the Old Gods granted him.

Those closest, Mithril, Libera, and Cassandra, took the brunt of the attack, as Trombe struck at each of them every time he passed from one group of targets to the next. Libera weathered it with a Super Spiral Shield, and even then marveled at how he could still feel each blow connecting like a freight train.

But that didn't seem to be the end of Trombe's attack. When he finally reappeared, it was above them, blades glowing with heat built up from his previous strikes. With one swing he launched dozens of lines of fire out across the city's surface, carving burning gouges into it.

"Chandrahas!" Trombe roared, slamming down into the ground in the center of the city. A wave of darkness spread out from his impact, sweeping over everything. Everyone it spread under was thrust into the air as the Warboss slammed the pommels of his blades together, leapt into the air himself, and spun, releasing insanely powerful waves of cutting force in all directions. When he touched back down, the area around him was quite clear... and he now held Epsilon's orb in his left hand.

Mithril, picking herself up from the attack, swore as she lunged forward to attempt to grab the orb again.

"I will not," Trombe growled, his grip intensifying, "be distracted!"

The orb in his hand cracked, crumpled, and s***tered to pieces in his grip. Mithril skidded to a halt and Libera stared in shock as the fragments dissipated, small wisps of black energy seeping away from the remains.

"You... what did you-" Libera whispered, and then Trombe was gone again, his wake leading away from the city.

"s***!" Mithril shouted, putting on a burst of speed to follow him. Libera stared in shock at the pieces of Epsilon's orb for a moment, a pained expression creeping over his face, before vanishing in a whirl of green light, teleporting after his fellow Mark II.
_________
Power: 85%

<]-Mithril-[>

I honestly should have forcibly warped Trombe extremely far away from any settlements or living beings, all the way into an asteroid somewhere in space, from the very start, before this Final Phantasm nonsense. Hindsight is 20/20.

Now of course, Final Phantasm Trombe is proving to resist teleportation enough that we can't punt him over into space... yet.

Bloodriver's thousand years of experience has showed. Back when I told Hero Squad about Final Phantasm Trombe, Bloodriver had already been assembling the mass evacuation devices she had asked Orvtre to prepare a while back. Thanks to her quick thinking, Bloodriver had lowered the amount of casualties that Final Phantasm Trombe was causing... but there were still some, unfortunately. The Black Pikmin had largely passed the smaller settlements in the area, largely aiming for the bigger cities (presumably they would've cleared out the smaller settlements afterwards)... making this a chore.

Do you know how much focus Final Phantasm targeting civilians takes away from the actual fight? Quite a bit, apparently. I've (along with Libera) had to personally (and also via clones) teleport various civilians away that Final Phantasm Trombe was about to kill. They won't enjoy being irradiated, but dying to the pressure waves and attacks of a Final Phantasm is worse. I'll leave the civilians' treatment to Bloodriver, Gamma, and Orbin later.

Also Cassandra followed Final Phantasm Trombe and she's also causing civilian casualties as a byproduct of her attacking the Warboss. At least she's slowing down Trombe somewhat. Once in a while when I (or Libera) wasn't warping away civilians, I got in a potshot on the Final Phantasm, but keeping collateral damage to a minimum (aka trying not to get civilians caught up in my attacks which are now NUCLEAR is rather difficult. It's why I don't like using my nuclear mode anywhere near inhabited places.)

So instead of attacking with an explosion and getting more civilians caught up in this s***, I just made some clones and then opportunistically gave the Final Phantasm a SHOVE while he was parrying Cassandra's attacks.

That shoved him right into the path of a really angry Cassandra, who promptly punched him and unleashed an enormous explosion of arcane and frost. Now the whole village is ice... though there were unfortunately casualties from that, at least we evacuated some of the civilians here.

Final Phantasm Trombe cut off Cassandra's hands from the wrists but she simply froze her blood and then began angrily stabbing the Warboss with the icicle bone stumps. This lasted until Trombe destroyed her arms up to the elbows, and then ran off to try and kill more civilians. Ugh.

Throughout all of this, we've been more focused on evacuating civilians. Once in a while we'd try and warp the Final Phantasm away into deep space, but his resistances are still too high. Later then. Right now, we're in damage control mode.
____________
X-Pinocchio-X

"Do not worry, Onii-chan! Pinocchio can still fight!" the puppet cheerfully exclaimed, stringing himself together and gluing himself back together with some kind of tree sap.

"Oh yes, you're definitely going to 'fight' in that state," Cross muttered, before Pinocchio climbed back onto him and attached vines and flowers to the chimera-min, earning the puppet an annoyed growl.

"Pinocchio is SUPER and will make silly bone man deady-deady! Let's go Onii-chan!" Pinocchio exclaimed, still energetic despite his injuries.

It did not take much flying before they found Vizogg again. He was missing a few pieces of himself and there was a gaping hole in his bone armor, but none of that really slowed him down, being a Bonereaper and all. The Grand Reaper fired off even more bone projectiles at the two of them, though Pinocchio's enthusiasm remained undampened.

"Opening detected! AIM SET!" Pinocchio exclaimed, doing some kind of weird scopemonocle gesture over one of his eyes.

"SUPER FOCUSED SUPER ACCURATE PINOCCHIO AND ONII-CHAN SUPER SUN LASER!!"

<Sigma>

Grav's choice of environment in his Hero Squad "room" is quite interesting, aesthetically. More importantly, though, I find it a very interesting battlefield, what with there being no stable ground.

Broxigar and I were currently taking advantage of this in order to spar a bit, which mostly consisted of punting the various floating rocks at each other while Grav watched from the sidelines, occasionally pulling more rocks from... somewhere, to add to the battlefield.

Could we be contributing to one of the ongoing fights? Probably, but downtime is important too. Besides, the three of us are too slow to help with Trombe, and it helps to have a few people on reserve just in case something comes up.

Jumping across a few smaller stones towards a larger one to kick, I was forced to change course by a small storm of pebbles showering my intended route. Brox catches on quick; I'd diced up a rock and done that to him earlier, and now he's been doing much the same, interspersed with his axe occasionally flying in at me out of nowhere. Alas, I can't return fire with anything but boulders. Speaking of which...

"Catch!" I shouted at him, finally getting into position to dropkick a particularly large rock in Brox's direction. I get the distinct feeling that Grav is messing with the weights in order to enable us to do stuff like that, but if he is, it's subtle. I guess it counts as practice for him, at least.

Brox, for his part, stood his ground, readied his axe, and cleaved the boulder clean in two, sending the two halves past him and his current perch... which was what I'd wanted him to do. Three smaller rocks followed the bigger one, set to head straight through the gap he'd made in the larger boulder and leaving no room for him to jump away. I heard a squawk of indignation as he swiped his axe back up to cut through the first one, but he wasn't fast enough to hit the second or third, the two rocks slamming into him and carrying him off and out of the field of stones.

"Point to me!" I hollered, cackling as Grav pulled him back into the field. The Bloodseed huffed and hoisted his axe, preparing for another round.
_______
<Theta>

Two more plumes of flame signified two more heatsinks going down, and they were shortly followed by another as one simply overheated and exploded on its own. That was followed by a salvo from Omicron's ship blasting another to pieces.

With so many of the heatsinks destroyed, Megadakka is slowing down. It has missed its ten minute firing schedule now, and a persistent plume of steam rises from the cannon due to the heat of the barrel clashing with the cold.

Omicron's troops have used the opportunity to breach the structure itself and head inside. A group of Black Pikmin that was already outside is trying to flank them, but I'm going to head them off. Announcing myself by raising a large ice wall in front of them, I wrapped myself in a cloak of freezing winds and barreled into the middle of them, sword flashing through flesh and bone and metal. Something zipped past overhead as I went, firing upon the Black Pikmin as it repeatedly swooped over them.

A loud creaking noise got my attention for a moment, and I glanced at the cannon to see that the barrel was... splitting open? Along both sides, the barrel split, and with it the steam venting from it increased.

"Oh you're kidding," Orvtre's voice came over the Hero Band. "The damn thing has an emergency heat release?"

"So they can keep firing for a while longer..." I muttered as the barrel began to close, and the gun began to wind up once more. "Seems we'll need to hit it directly."

"But with that armor, nothing we throw at it is gonna do any damage!" Orvtre replied, "Not unless..."

"Unless we fire down the barrel itself," I finished for hir, parrying a swing from one of the Boyz at the same time. That's going to be tricky.

continued from my previous post...
______________
yelled the puppet, who fired a humongous sun laser at the Grand Reaper.
______________
Hmm, now that I think about it, Black Manta can and should be flying. Uh, just pretend he had been flying all along. That fits his character more.
______________
X-Black Manta-X

The first sign that something was wrong was the lack of blood. Black Manta did not seem to bleed.

The second sign that something was wrong? Vicious rapids, which was quickly followed by enraged screaming.

To Loki's surprise, Black Manta got up fairly quickly... and then promptly noticed the various cuts and ruptures in his armor. That pissed him off immensely.

"Disgusting, filthy, revolting... this is extremely disgusting, disgusting, DISGUSTING!" screeched Black Manta, who was taking offense at being exposed to the outside air. The Corrector was emitting soap and water out of the various ruptures in his armor, before he froze said openings over, sealing them.

He was still angry though, enough that he sent a mass of vicious rapids at Loki, aiming to kill the Snagret. This was promptly thwarted when Arygas stepped in, hoisting Loki away with some tentacles and then slamming Black Manta into the floor with more tentacles.

Arygas fed Loki some corpses to heal him up while the tentacles attacked Black Manta... only for the Corrector to burst out of the mass of tentacles in a geyser, unleashing tidal waves at the Cult members. The Grand Lector jumped onto Loki, with the Snagret flying away, attempting to evade Black Manta's tidal waves.

"Degenerate. The dirt eating insect below, the disgusting vermin here. Disgusting. You are all trying to dirty this Corrector... very disgusting. Extremely disgusting! JUST DIE ALREADY!" snarled Black Manta, who then created several ice shells filled with pressurized, boiling water, before hurling them at the two. The shells then exploded like the bombs they were, sending powerful shockwaves and water at the twin Cult members.
_______________
X-Count Dooku-X

A blast of electricity sounded out as Count Dooku fired off another attack against Zon'ozz. The Corrector avoided the worst of Trombe's attack, but still got some significant cuts and injuries from the Warboss's barrage. He had also been hit by Zon'ozz's Void of the Unmaking during all of that, but that was not enough to put down the old World Noble.

Zon'ozz, being huge and due to not having any meaningful way to avoid Trombe's assault, was fairly torn up, and in worse shape than Count Dooku. He had taken the brunt of those attack, and was in need of more health. It was then just the matter of draining it from the Corrector.

That would be easier said than done, as the injuries Dooku received from Trombe was not enough to hamper his mobility. Furthermore, with all of the open wounds the giant Faceless general had received, it was a simple matter for the World Noble to imbue his lightsaber with poison, and then deliver several quick poisonous slashes in succession. The poison would damage Zon'ozz over time, further pushing him towards defeat.

Even with Go'rath, the greater minion of the Old Gods spewing forth ooze and spamming tentacle lashing attacks against the Corrector, the old World Noble still darted about speedily. The attacks of said greater minion were annoying Count Dooku, and as he delivered more and more poison, lightning, and lightsaber slashes to the giant Faceless general, he sent a portion of his attacks towards Go'rath as well.
___________
X-Phoenix-X

f*** this s***. I am this f***ing close to triggering my Blood Flare, and I don't want to do it against this loser here. I want to withdraw, but Father won't let me. So I'll just burn some of the mook corpses here to deny that dirty b**** healing.

I ran off to go and do that, as Visceral took my place and then slammed my former opponent with a quake attack. Enjoy fighting a fresh Corrector, stupid b****.

X-Visceral-X

"SURPRISE!" yelled Visceral as he attacked Rampa with a quake attack. "I have vision problems!"

As the bleeding Rampa angrily hurtled towards Visceral, the Corrector got a good look at her eyes. They were covered in cataracts, rendering her completely blind.

"Gurarararara. You have worse vision problems! Gurarararara," mused the Corrector. "I am a senile old man. Hel-lo little boy little boy whose body is not snatched not snatched. GET OFF MY LAWN!"

Upon that sudden shout, Visceral charged full speed towards Rampa, both of his fists cloaked in quake-inducing power.
_________
?-Orvtre-?

As Megadakka's main cannon was about to fire, I decided to make a big push to try and damage the cannon, making several more clones and moving them into position, attempting to blast away into the barrel.

It turns out that the Black Pikmin were still able to perform an effective defense, utilizing all of their guns and various powers to shove my clones out of the way. Unfortunately for them however, it required having some of the Black Pikmin to personally fly up and get into shoving range. These incredibly reckless and incredibly stupid members of the Fist of Zeromus promptly got caught up in Megadakka's main cannon fire and the shockwave that accompanied it, which they obviously didn't survive.

I tried again, but this time, the shot down the barrel that my clones fired was blocked by what was probably a firing shield. So I have to wait for the main gun to fire again...

Well, since I have some time to burn before the main gun fires once more, status update: There are six heat sinks remaining. To try and take some pressure off of Omicron's colony, I used my fire and lava powers to heat the main gun directly, forcing it to vent longer.

Did I say six sinks? Make that five; the Bloodseed and the creatures worked together to take down another heat sink; the Blasting Corkoink and some copies of the strange, Asura-like cyborg beast with dozens upon dozens of arms blasted away at the Fist of Zeromus, drawing their fire. The Bloodseed then further pressured the Black Pikmin with melee and fire attacks, and after some fighting, they successfully made a gap in the Black Pikmin's defenses that the multiarmed cyborg beast exploited, dividing the Black Pikmin further. The Bloodseed and summoned creatures immediately took advantage of this battle state, routing the Black Pikmin near the sink. Before more enemy reinforcements could come, the multiarmed cyborg beast unleashed lots of fire-electric melty lances into the ground and heatsink. That, along with the melee and fire attacks from the Bloodseed, and the various other attacks from the other summoned creatures, slammed into the heatsink and ice, resulting in the sink's destruction.

On the other side of Megadakka, the robots were working together with Omicron's forces to take down another sink. Now with less sinks to defend, the Fist of Zeromus could concentrate more defenses on the sinks that remained, instead of spreading themselves out. Even so, all it took was a surprise long-range lava attack from me to tilt the local battle there in the favor of the robots, and the sink soon fell as a result.

As the Fist of Zeromus bunched around the remaining four heat sinks, the barrel of Megadakka's main gun began splitting open again, venting heat. With the gun preparing to fire again, I sent more clones over in firing position, ready to take another shot. This time however, Beta, Sapphire, and Vashj had an opportunity to help me, fending off the Black Pikmin that swarmed in in an attempt to stop me.

With the opening created by my allies, my clones pulled together a massive lava attack and fired it down the barrel, right before Megadakka's main gun was going to fire.

<Trombe>

Every life he cut down was a failure on her part. Every death as good as the deepest cut. The simple act a message: "You couldn't stop me."

For every person they managed to remove from his path, he cut another down. He hadn't bothered to keep track, hadn't had the attention span to do so what with their continued attacks. But even as he ran from one settlement to another, they fought, striking at him, doing everything they could to slow him down. Not the teal, though. She didn't seem to care much about collateral damage either; dragging her into this fight was a mistake on their part too.

Turning away from the next village in order to hit another one - fake them out, give them no time to evacuate - he deflected a few more attacks from the angry, persistent teal, cut through a few waves of Mithril's weapons, and then stopped and fired a massive crescent wave in the town's direction. That short pause was all it took.

"Thunderdome!" Libera's voice echoed from above, and suddenly a green dome encased the area. Trombe slammed into it, enraged, but could not break through.

"That's a Spiral Energy Shield, Trombe! There's no getting through that!" Libera bellowed, slamming into Trombe's side and going at him with a pair of drills. He backed off very quickly when Trombe retaliated, noticeably missing his own shield now, and Mithril took his place, a quick exchange of blows ensuing before Mithril backed off in the face of one of the teal's huge frost attacks. The Warboss snarled in frustration and took off running, zipping about the dome at high speed and striking at them whenever he passed. He focused his attacks toward Libera; the gold Pikmin didn't have his own shield up anymore, too focused on the dome, which left Mithril to cover for him, blocking or simply taking blows meant for the Spiral warrior.

Then, of course, the teal inserted herself into the equation with a massive, arcane-infused kick that sent Trombe tumbling end over end before skidding to a halt with both blades raised over his head.

"Final Split!" Trombe roared, swinging the blades down and unleashing a line of red implosions, forcing his three opponents to back off, giving him any opening to unleash...

"Shadow Azoth!" the Warboss called. Typically, this was an attack he'd have used during Master Shift, using the multitude of swords, but in this state he was fast enough to pull it off with just two.

What it looked like, to an outside observer, was a dozen afterimages of Trombe closing in on Libera all at once, from every direction. Even Mithril couldn't block them all, and two got through. One scored a slash across his chest, while the other skittered over his mechanical arm and sliced through his cheek. That was as far as they got before Libera unleashed a green explosion, blasting Trombe away while he clutched at his cheek and feeling lucky he hadn't just been killed.

"Getter Beam!" Libera growled, lifting his arm up and firing a swirling green beam at Trombe as retaliation. The Warboss crossed his swords, caught the beam upon them, and deflected it upwards into the dome, which flickered briefly at the hit. He wouldn't be able to keep it up for much longer.

_________
Power: 78%
__________
<]-Mithril-[>

It was all about the right timing. Hero Squad did not intervene against the Fist of Zeromus before Ludibrium. They couldn't, not without sacrificing the time necessary for Hero Squad to build up their numbers and strength. It was greatly unfortunate, then, that people who never wanted to be caught up in Black Pikmin activities had to die.

It was even more unfortunate for Trombe however, that Mithril was never the type to get hung up on failures. Every failure is just more reason to get stronger. Every failure is just more reason to get smarter. Every failure is just more reason to f***ing annihilate the enemy.

By now, the Final Phantasm's power had diminished, enough for Mithril to do more damage. All that was needed now was an opening.

Attacks were exchanged. After being hit by some of said attacks, Trombe had been halted, if only for a very brief moment.

Was it due to the nuclear charged attacks a few of Mithril's concealed clones launched at the Final Phantasm from below? Or was it due to Cassandra unleashing a two-fisted ice-lance punch charged with arcane energy at the Warboss? Whatever the cause of Trombe's opening was, Mithril capitalized on that.

First was "Triple Iron Maiden!" enclosing the Final Phantasm. Next was "Chrome Constellation!", a hellish storm of nuclear metal lasers taking place inside the Maidens, rebounding off the walls and slamming into the Warboss with nuclear force.

The final attack of that series was comparatively understated and quiet, but perhaps the most effective. It was simply one of Mithril's detached arms taking advantage of the carnage Mithril's other attacks caused to snake around Trombe's defenses and slip into the opening where his heart once was. Grabbing hold of the dark red orb that now pulsed there, Mithril's arm then squeezed.

This elicited an agonized, angry roar from Trombe, the Final Phantasm turning his attention away from Libera, and several brutal slashes of dark red power headed Mithril's way.

The dark red orb in place of the Warboss's heart was now noticeably dimmer, wisps of red energy dissipating from the opening due to the attack. Whatever Mithril had done to him, it had clearly shaved off some of his power.

The Final Phantasm still had Cassandra to worry about as well; the teal Pikmin unleashed a hellish downpour of massive, arcane-infused icicle-stalactites at Trombe, slamming down upon the Warboss, each icicle cratering the earth around them.

In addition to his goal of killing civilians, Trombe had to be careful in preventing attacks on his dark red orb directly. Allowing such "organ" damage to occur additional times would be unwise.
_________
Power: 62%

-{Arygas}-

"The chaff of the world thinks to dirty US with their vile blandishments? We think not!" Arygas bellowed, holding his book over his head, the pages flipping rapidly. A violent swell of thick green gas burst from the book, coalescing around Loki and the high priest before instantly solidifying into a spiky saronite wall, which weathered the wave easily before returning to their gaseous state and flowing out towards the Corrector.

"The claws of fate grasp the unbelievers!" he shouted as the saronite fumes shot out at Black Manta, solidifying into spikes to stab at the Corrector. Though he dodged the attacks and fired back at the spikes, they would simply return to their gaseous state when broken and renew the assault.

"The voice of the Old One beckons! Heed its call!" Arygas chanted, the air around him rippling as dozens of tentacles breached through time and space to reach out towards Black Manta. Whatever complaints he may have had fell on quite literally deaf ears. A soapy burst of water sprayed in his direction, but it did nothing to the tentacles.

"Fool! Lord N'zoth is the king of the oceans! Your feeble splashing cannot harm us!"

Apparently Black Manta took offense to that, and redoubled his assault on the tentacles. As he closed in he began to actually deal damage to them, but that simply meant he didn't notice what they were actually doing...

While he'd brought corpses along for Loki, he'd also brought more along for this: one of N'zoth's special presents for his foes. Arygas withdrew as a swarm of extremely fast, bloated bodies charged at the Corrector, screaming unholy hell. Black Manta, of course, immediately turned to blast them... only for the ones he hit to explode with apocalyptic force, showering the area in corrupting energy. Arygas could only imagine the screams of rage, what with being deaf, but he imagined Loki was enjoying it. As the swarm of explosive bodies grew in intensity, Arygas pulled himself up to Loki's back with a tentacle and situated himself at the beast's head.

"Come, brother! Let us be away from this oafish imbecile! The Masters grow impatient..." he said as Loki took off with a tremendous screech, turning to look for its own master.

-{Vizogg}-

'Finish playing with your toys. We're leaving,' Seraph's voiced echoed out to each of the Cultists still within the city. For Rampa, who was too violent to listen, a shadow appeared beneath her and pulled her in, even as she struggled to keep fighting the Corrector that had come.

Vizogg, though, was one of the ones expected to be sane enough to get himself out. Which is why he was currently rather angry at his current predicament. For the past ten minutes he'd weaved through a forest of bone spikes, avoiding the laser the puppet was firing at him, while occasionally getting glimpses of the chimera he was drawing power from. If anything, the chimera looked like Vizogg felt.

"BEEEEEEEAM!" the puppet cackled again, launching another beam through the forest of bones. It was at this point that Vizogg decided enough was enough.

"I've had it with you! C'thun, grant me the rage to put this pest in his place!" the Bonereaper snarled. From beneath his skin, chitinous plates erupted and slotted themselves over his bone armor, shortly followed by eyeballs - far too many eyeballs - sliding open across his body. The Grand Bonereaper took his scythe in hand, reared back, and swung, releasing a wave of cutting force that mowed through the bone spikes, split the puppet's solar beam in two, and then continued forth to split the puppet and chimera in half as well.

"Now let's see if you like it!" Vizogg growled, a large eyeball growing from his hand. "Eye Beam".

The purple beam of hateful energy that lanced out from the eyeball was nothing at all like the solar beams that Pinocchio had been launching. It hit Cross first, then ricocheted, hitting his other half before rebounding, again and again, across all of the puppet's many pieces. The result was rather explosive, and it scattered the puppet's bits all across the street. The screeching coming from his head seemed to indicate that the annoyance had even survived that, but before he could move to end the foo the chimera pushed himself back together.

"Well, finally," Cross muttered, before four curved swords manifested in his hands. "I thought I'd never get a chance to do this my way."

"Hah. And what do you think you can do-" Vizogg scoffed, before Cross rushed through him.

"Tapasya!" Cross intoned, dozens of slashes cutting into Vizogg's armor. With a growl of pure rage, he reached back, grabbed Cross by his stalks, and swung him overhead to slam him into the floor before stomping on his head hard enough to crater the street. The chimera-min simply bounced back to his feet and prepared another attack... at which point Vizogg simply held his hand up again.

"Dark Glare," he growled, a wave of red light washing over Cross. All of the skin on the front of the chimera-min's body peeled away as he was blown across the street, howling in pain. When he didn't get back up immediately, Vizogg took that as his cue to simply walk away. The rat's demise would have to wait.

Cross, meanwhile, spent some time writhing on the ground as his skin slowly regenerated. Boy howdy, that had f***ing hurt. A clattering noise announced Pinocchio's arrival... well, his head's arrival, as it rolled up to him.

"Hi onii-chan! Uhm... could Pinocchio have a bit of help? Pinocchio is in a lot of pieces, you see..." the puppet pouted. It had drawn some of the pieces along with it using vines, but hadn't gotten them all.

"Ya just... gimme a sec," Cross drawled back at him.