Fight for Power

<@-Vika-@>

Currently, we are inside an abandoned building make of stone, that contained various artifacts, documents, and other items. Joining me on this expedition are my fellow Hero Squad members, Magnus the Red and Phi.

"Fascinating... " Magnus muttered, using his psychometry on a large piece of what was presumably once a stone tablet, part of the text on it worn down and blurred with time.

"Found a lead?" I asked. We've been stuck on where to investigate next for quite a while; there's a lot to look through and time is precious. Something to help optimize our search for answers would be excellent right now.

"Very likely," Magnus stated. "I just need to take these back to the archives, to compare these with the rest of the items we've collected. From there we can... "

Magnus abruptly put up a kine shield as an enemy ambush unit, consisting mainly of wind spirits with some complementary elements, swooped in and attacked. Magnus' kine shield weathered the initial assault, and, having been put up with ample forewarning, I was able to unleash a charged barrage of arcane energy spears at the spirits, forcing them to scatter to avoid being hit. Magnus followed up with an intense burst of psychic flame, torching several of the elemental spirits that were relatively closer to our position.

Phi attacked some of the spirits who were on the back rank. He used an earth jutsu, creating a bunch of earthen spikes to impale them with.

The elemental spirits responded with a massive tornado attack in response. I used plant magic to grow a large tree; its roots providing an anchoring effect for me and Magnus. Phi might've grabbed on as well; not sure though, since he's invisible right now. The tree then spewed poisonous chemicals and star lasers at the elemental spirits, as the three of us continued blasting them with various attacks.

<Phi> (OVERLORD SIDE)

A quick glance was enough to tell we were being attacked by Seraphim; we are deep in their territory after all. I just wonder why they care about these ruins so much.

"Hey, shouldn't we be worried about damaging the artifacts?" I called out over the sounds of combat before vanishing again. Magnus shook his head.

"As long as they aren't totally destroyed, my psychometry should be able to gather the information from them!" he replied, firing bursts of lightning at the attacking spirits. I moved to a flanking position as he and Vika alternated peeking out of the roots of the tree to fire potshots, until, with a thunderous boom, a Lightning Seraphim swooped into the building and fired a few bolts of lightning of its own, setting the tree ablaze. Before either Magnus or Vika could put it out, the group of Wind Seraphim built up a windstorm, turning the blaze into a full-on bonfire. Vika left the safety of the tree's roots and immediately took a blast of lightning before she could throw up a shield to block followup shots, while Magnus moved into the flames, unbothered by the heat, and began to do something. The spirits, apparently unable to spot him through the fire, left him alone.

I, meanwhile, had made it into a good flanking spot, and after a few hand seals, declared "Ice Release: Hail!"

Exhaling a wave of bitter cold, I turned the seraphims' windstorm into a hailstorm, then followed up with a few more seals, "Ice Release: Collapsing Frost!" That brought the brunt of the freezing storm down on the very Wind Seraphim that had formed it. That got me the full attention of the Lightning Seraphim, and I only barely managed to raise an earth wall to block the bolt of lightning it fired at me.

With the Lightning Seraphim distracted, Magnus was able to use his psychokinesis to gather all the flames from the tree and form them into a huge fireball, which he launched at the frozen Wind Seraphim. The blast was so large I figured it'd be sufficient to destroy them... until the smoke cleared and revealed they now had an earthen barrier of their own, a group of Earth Seraphim having swarmed into the building just prior to the attack.

"We're going to be overrun if we don't put an end to this quick," Vika warned, gathering energy for a spell as Magnus used the tree as a focus to grow and launch a series of logs at the grouped Seraphim. These too were blocked by the earthen wall, but they stuck in it very effectively. Seeing that, I began the hand seals for a Great Fireball. Vika seemed to have had the same idea, as she gathered magic to fire a series of sap globules at the wood-impaled shield.

"That's combustible! Light them up!" she called, launching a fire spell as Magnus followed with a fireball of his own. I then jumped out from behind my cover to launch my Great Fireball, before immediately using a replacement jutsu to swap places with a rock nearby Vika and Magnus.

The resultant explosion was quite something; both Magnus and Vika threw up shields to keep our own attack from frying us. Whatever effect it had on the Seraphim, though, we're not sticking around to see; several of the artifacts in the building hovered up from their positions to float around Magnus as he lead the way out.

"That's going to draw a lot of attention, it's time to leave!" Magnus called over the roar of the flames. Vika and I agreed as the three of us beat a hasty retreat, even as a swarm of glittering lights descended upon the site of the battle.

boop

i-[[Candle]]-i

Well, that was another fun game. Speaking of games, there was previously talk around Hero Squad about video game development or something along those lines, but they were put on hold when Orvtre went into a coma.

Right now I was taking some time to stroll around the base, checking its fortifications. I had set up wax here and there as preparations in case we were ever attacked here.

It was not long before Vika, Magnus, and Phi returned from their expedition; Magnus hauling several artifacts with him via telekinesis. Bloodriver & Xenon, Vika, and Magnus ventured into a room together with the artifacts, to analyze them and try and suss out where we would head next.

It was right when I had finished my examination of the base and was heading over to check on Helix and Stormwalker that I heard it.

"EUREKA!" Magnus exclaimed, clearly having come up with an insight of some kind. Stormwalker and Helix, having finished their current sparring session, left the room, and all of us met up at Magnus's location to check the results.

"So I take it that you've found where our next stop is?" I asked. Bloodriver nodded, as Vika put up a holographic display.

"Yes. It took quite a bit longer than I expected, but we've found where we're headed next," Bloodriver confirmed, pointing at the location on the holographic map. "In fact, I've already begun packing our bags for our expedition."

I nodded in response, then walked over closer to the map to take a closer look.

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

Shadowmourne in hand, a riding atop a huge undead dragon, I was feeling pretty smug. It'd be hard not to, it doesn't get too much more stylish than arriving somewhere on fricken' dragon. The rest of the Death Knights lagged behind me; I'd finished raising Eranikus and moved out before the rest of them could even begin raising all the dead Green Pikmin.

So it was just me and the dragon when a hail of metal blades came my way, which I only really noticed when a few thudded into the dragon's hide. Huh. Whose cheerios did I piss in?

A quick twist of unholy energy was sufficient to yank all of the blades towards one focal point, which made a hell of a racket as they all broke upon one another. Funnily enough, whoever was coming at me made no effort to use the noise as cover.

"Sooo, who's got a death wish today, huh? May as well show yourself, make this quick for me, I got other s*** to do, you know!"

Something came at me at incredibly high speed in response. Or, more precisely, came at Eranikus. I issued a mental command, and he banked away at a speed a living dragon couldn't pull off without destroying a bunch of tendons in the process. A necrotized dragon has no such concerns. The "projectile" attempted to correct course, but still missed. It then came around, curving up towards me instead.

"Well well well, when did I earn this particular fan?" I called out as the "projectile" turned out to be... what's that, a metal elemental? In the shape of a Pikmin? Huh. She zeroed in on me, crafting an actual missile as she approached. As if it was that easy. I gathered unholy energy into a Death Coil and fired it at the missile to detonate it. Seemingly having expected that, she launched off of it as it exploded, using the blast to propel herself forward even faster. Clever.

My opponent generated a blade as she approached, going in for an overhead swing. A simple blade hasn't got a chance against Shadowmourne, though, and I contemptuously held it up to parry, s***tering her blade on impact before whirling it around for a speedy riposte. It scored across her chest before she could back away.

The icy feeling of Shadowmourne gripping a victim's soul did not accompany the blow. Something else did.

Ah. I see.

I sent a mental command to Eranikus, and he doubled his speed. I was gonna take the leisurely flight, but now I've got a more amusing reason to see this along. Sliding along the dragon's back to his tail, I brought Shadowmourne to bear against a barrage of projectiles. I could hear her calling out names for them, but didn't care enough to register them. I simply held Shadowmourne up and let loose some of the torment of the souls within as a devastating blast, s***tering the whole wave.

This time, my opponent did use the noise as cover, to dive in for a tackle that sent us both careening further up Eranikus's back, until I kicked her off and commanded Eranikus to perform a barrel roll. As he flipped, his head came into range to unleash a spray of poisonous decay at her, covering our flight for a moment. Not well enough, it would seem; as soon as the dragon righted himself, I found the metal 'min perched upon his back as well.

"Hah. Persistent, aren't we?" I asked conversationally, shouldering my axe as she generated a pair of blades. "Well, I'm not certain what you're expecting to get out of this... but I'd suggest you hurry it along. Wouldn't want to synchronize with your past self, would you?" I pointed out with a feral grin. That got a wide-eyed stare out of her that quickly turned into a narrow-eyed glare.

"What the hell is your deal...?" she questioned. I barked out a laugh.

"My deal, huh?" I considered, before my grin returned. "I am a monument... to all your sins."

X-Pluto-X

I do not like using my Black Pikmin unique ability.

An explanation should be given: The first time I used my Black Pikmin unique ability was back in the good ol' days, when Zankrieg was alive. A bunch of gangsters had stumbled across our den and were attempting to kill us. Normally, a random thug here or there would be easily dispatched, but these guys were tougher and more organized.

It got to the point where I had to use my Black Pikmin unique ability for the first time. I still regret that to this day.

It was very unpleasant and I blacked out partway into it, so I won't go into that much detail, but my unique ability works like this: I can transform into any and all people I kill, power and personality-wise, if those people had become Black Pikmin. The personality-wise part is the main issue; as you can imagine, now having the personalities of a bunch of insane gangsters, now with the aggressiveness of Black Pikmin added to them, in your head does not make for a sane time. I can kind of relate to what Black Scythe is dealing with.

I had partly become a pacifist for that reason, which was a bandaid solution that worked until Zankrieg died. When Pepe resurfaced in Vashj'ir Landing, it reawakened the personalities. Now I am basically one step away from something really bad happening. If I use my unique ability again... if I am forced to use my unique ability again...

Cut to current fight, where Pluto and Shoutah are losing to Alternate Hubert and Alternate Algora.

This is not going well. They, Hubert and Algora, managed to dodge or block most of what we've thrown at them. We've only landed glancing blows on them, nothing really significant. In turn however, they've managed to wound us significantly. They've even destroyed my Bolter and other weapons, with a combination attack where Hubert stabbed a few daggers into my Bolter and Algora punched them through, rendering it inoperable.

"I didn't expect a pair of nobodies to be this tough," I spat.

Hubert laughed. "The Galactic Gods have blessed us here today to ensure our victory!"

Algora also laughed. "We will kill you and then torture you and then you will die and suffer in endless torment and agony in the afterlife hell for the glory of the Galactic Gods! HAIL FATHER!"

"HAIL FATHER!" agreed Hubert.

Then they did something that I didn't expect. They put on some kind of helmets, pressed some sort of remote, and then did an evil laugh together.

So it turns out that we're in outer space, and we're in kind of airtight building.

"The original plan was to open you up to the void of space while you choked to death, but in space, no one can hear you scream. And that would be disappointing, because I want to hear you SUFFER! Poison gas it is!" Hubert exclaimed.

Although I attempted to hold my breath to stall for time, a punch from Algora thwarted that. Shoutah coughed and then collapsed to the ground, as I did the same in short order.

"Suffer! SUFFER! SUFFER FOR THE GLORY OF THE GALACTIC GODS!" Algora exclaimed.

"Writhe! WRITHE IN AGONY!" yelled Hubert. "YOUR TORMENT WILL BE A GLORIOUS OFFERING FOR THE GALACTIC GODS!"

Both Shoutah and I started having convulsions as we began to black out. At this point, I have no choice. I have to use my Black Pikmin unique ability.

As I activated my Black Pikmin unique ability, I blacked out entirely...

...

...

X-??????-X

The corpses of Alternate Algora and Alternate Hubert slumped to the ground, as something yanked itself out of Pluto. Cackling evilly, it spoke.

"We are free! Free at last to kill! No longer does this meatbag named Pluto hold us back. Now we, Charon, are free to maim and slaughter!"

On the ground, Shoutah slowly turned his head toward the shadowy Black Pikmin.

"There is an empty Warboss seat, and we intend to fill that vacancy," Charon hissed, as the split personalities given form slithered away.

<<<Sigma>>>

So, we're finally getting something big. About damn time.

"Doesn't look like much," Helix pointed out immediately as he spotted the holographic map. What with the constant terraformation by the Seraphim and Fiends, this planet's surface is completely bizarre, so the map didn't seem particularly notable in that regard.

"That's because what we're after is underground," Magnus replied, "There's a hidden Earth bastion somewhere in this area. It's deep, so I'll need to use my psychometry in order to find it, but I've narrowed it down to somewhere around here."

"Isn't that going to leave us horribly exposed while you're looking?" Mars asked, looking not terribly thrilled with the prospect.

"Ordinarily, yes, but Vika and I will be setting up a perception filter when we get there. It'll keep most eyes off of us, but we'll still likely get some attention."

That got a whoop out of Stormwalker, who grabbed his stuff and was out the door as soon as he'd confirmed there would be fighting. At least he's happy.

"Well then..." Mars drawled. "What about the super-bastion?"

"I've kept track of it," Control chimed in, zooming the holographic map out considerably until it came into view. "It's quite a ways away, so you shouldn't need to worry too much about it."

With that out of the way, everyone else went about gathering their stuff before heading out. It was a decent hike, though at least we had Magnus to carry us some of the way there ("Not all the way, I need to save some strength for the field"). Eventually the terrain starting looking familiar to the map, and a ways into that area we set up camp as Vika and Magnus got to work setting up their perception filter.

"So what are we expecting here, as far as enemies and what we're after?" I asked, just to make sure we're all on the same page.

"We're after just about anything of value. Weapons, technology, information, anything we can feasibly use against the Overlord... or any other enemies," Magnus replied. "But in particular, I'd like to see if there's anything about a precursor city. If this is a treasure trove we're diving into, a precursor city would be a king's vault."

"As far as enemies," Bloodriver replied, having finished laying out her equipment, "we're hoping to avoid drawing the eyes of a bunch of elemental spirits, so hopefully not that. I'd wager we're looking more at standard elementals, maybe some leftover defensive measures on the bastion."

"No matter how hard we try to avoid it, of course, we're liable to draw the attention of the seraphim anyway. This is their bastion," Vika noted, "and they're not likely to be happy about us poking around."

While Magnus began his psychometric search and Vika put the finishing touches on the perception field, the rest of us did a bit of patrolling, just to make sure we knew the area. We're probably going to need to leave in a hurry, if every other incursion on this planet is anything to go by.

Several minutes passed in mostly silence, until something other than Stormwalker disturbed the quiet. Namely, the ground shaking.

"Kinda sounds like we've got company," I noted drily.

"We do," Magnus agreed, rising from his psychometric trance. "I believe I may have triggered a defense mechanism... which means we are definitely in the right place."

"What kind of defense mechanism are we talking about here?" Candle inquired as the shaking intensified, already preparing his wax armaments. Before Magnus could answer, the ground cracked open in several places, demolishing the odd terrain formations around it, as something huge rose up from underground. Huge and made of boulders. It reared up and let loose a gravelly roar.

"An earth elemental. Probably left here to guard the bastion in case Fiends came looking for it. Given the size, I'd say the Seraphim really did not want anyone to find this bastion. And doesn't that say some interesting things about what we'll find inside...?"

As he'd been the one to trigger it, the earth elemental lunged at Magnus first, who slammed the thing's fist with a psionic burst to shove it off course. Stormwalker then slammed into what I assumed was its face (if a giant rock monster even needs one of those), and unleashed a huge burst of electricity, only slightly louder than his joyous shouting.

"Vika, keep the perception filter up or this thing's going to draw an army down on our heads! Everyone else... cut it down to size!" Bloodriver yelled.

Cutting. That I can do.

boop

<<<Savior>>>

Even if you notice the dim purple glow approaching, it's always just a bit too late to brace yourself. In fact, it seems to make it worse, knowing it's coming but unable to do anything about it. I wonder if he does that on purpose.

I grit my teeth as the wave passed, a following wave of expletives arising from all over the base. The sweep doesn't always come at night, but those always seem to be the worst of them. Me, I don't get much sleep these nights, but the rest of the crew doesn't function so well without some rest every now and then.

This tactic of Omicron's - if you could call it that - started about a year ago. He sweeps his psionic power across the planet, exploring every nook and cranny. The sweep brings with it an attack on the minds of everyone who opposes him. To me, it feels like a thousand screws trying to burrow into my brain, but the others have described it differently. I don't want to think about the possibility of him tailoring the attack to each person.

If it came at the same time every day, we could adapt, change our sleeping schedule, but it doesn't. It'd even be helpful if it came at some time we could maybe plan around, like on the hour or half hour, but it doesn't. It comes seemingly at random, like the bastard's got a random number generator telling him when to do it. And only ever once per day, but absolutely every single day, without exception.

I can't deny that it's effective. We've lost more than a few to this, someone deciding that working for the Empire can't possibly be worse than enduring this every day. I tried to counter it with heroic speeches at first, but even that petered out quickly; only so many times you can "inspire" the troops before it loses its charm. Now I settle for a pulse of Spiral Power, to remind everyone:

I'm Here.

Trust in me.

We'll make it through this.

Sometimes, I wonder if I'm telling them that, or myself.

I'm spiraling downward, in the wrong direction. Thoughts like this mean it's time for some action. Something to clear my head.

The crew's already awake anyway.

<]-Mithril-[>

It is a bad idea to let Ark'thugal know the shard exists. That suspicion has gotten only stronger after the initial exchange of attacks. I don't want him touching the shard or interacting with it in any way; I strongly suspect that letting that happen would be very bad. For now at least, Ark'thugal doesn't seem to know it exists, though I'm not sure how long I have before he connects the dots... all the more reason to take him down as quickly as I can. However, this may prove to be rather tricky...

The dilemma is this: If I kill Eranikus first, the shard would then pop out of the undead dragon... and then Ark'thugal would almost certainly grab it, most likely causing very bad things to happen. If I had not known that Ark'thugal would explode the way he did, I simply would've killed him first, killed Eranikus next, and then grabbed the shard. However I know that Ark'thugal explodes in a blast of those green flames, and because I can't rule out the possibility that his death explosion would negatively affect the shard in any way, I need to plan this fight out in a particular way.

Initial plan is this: I need to create as much distance between Eranikus and Ark'thugal as possible, so that either Eranikus is out of range of Ark'thugal's death explosion (if I kill Ark first) or so that Ark'thugal can't grab the shard before I grab it and warp out (if I kill Eranikus first). Problem is the extremely long blast radius of Ark'thugal's death explosion and the extremely long range of his Death Grip.

Which brought me to why I went with the initial attack choices of blades: Since Ark'thugal's Death Grip is emitted from his hands, I want to chop off those hands of his. Somehow I doubt that simple removal of his hands would be enough to prevent any more Death Grips, but hopefully that would at least limit or stop some of his attacks to make this fight more manageable.

Then there's the matter of my past self, and the fact that Ark'thugal is sending Eranikus over towards past me at higher speed. Now I'm not quite sure if me synchronizing with my past self would take me out in particular (there are a lot of specifics to that that I won't get into here), but I don't want to take that risk. However, stringing Ark'thugal along and making him overly focused on getting me over to my past self could potentially distract him and prevent him from discovering the shard. That sounds like a good idea; I'll go with that.

"How utterly cryptic," I spat. "However, what is clear is this: I'm going to stop your sorry excuse for an air ride right here, right now. You aren't reaching Ludibrium!"

Time to bulk the hell up. I rapidly grew giant, growing a multitude of legs, and then unleashed a devastating barrage of power stomps, "Titanium Trampler!"

The giant stampede put in work, quickly pummeling Eranikus and halting his flight, sending him hurtling down towards the ground. While Ark'thugal blocked most of the stomp frenzy that I sent in his direction with Shadowmourne, taking out a chunk of my giant body with an axe swing, he nonetheless also began falling, as the three of us began headed towards the ground.

Ark'thugal aimed Shadowmourne at me and called out, "Chaos Bane," releasing a torrent of screaming souls from the axe in an attack. Sensing that a portion of the souls powering his unholy axe were currently committed to the attack and thus busy, I had my giant body split up into multiple, still-large clones, and before the aforementioned souls returned to Shadowmourne, I rushed Ark'thugal from basically every angle that was in the ballpark of above him. One of the remaining clones got through his guard and slammed a fiery "Platinum Laser Crasher!" down upon Ark'thugal, the burning, flame and laser-spewing truck smashing him into the ground.

The Warboss however had encased himself in a whirling shield of bones+Anti-Magic Shell to protect himself. Eranikus roared from nearby, using a diseased breath attack while Ark'thugal attacked with unholy chains appearing from midair, lodging themselves into whatever they hit and radiating unholy energy, rotting away anything around them.

Speaking of chains, I had an idea: By impaling Eranikus with my own chains and having them covertly tunnel around through his body, I can discreetly search for the shard in his body without tipping off Ark'thugal about the shard's existence.

Since I am facing a pincer attack right now, I'll fight a battle on two fronts; I split into a bunch of clones and rushed both Eranikus and Ark'thugal, throwing various heavy projectiles at each of them and otherwise attempting to force them back like it's Rocky Rumble all over again.

Those aforementioned unholy chains appearing from midair effectively functioned as a "forest" of "trees" surrounding Eranikus, making it harder for me to land a heavy projectile shot on him. Nonetheless, I expertly slipped a chain or two through Ark's unholy chain forest, impaling Eranikus. It won't be long before the unholy energy both from within Eranikus and from the unholy chains decays the metal chains, so even as I used the chains gripping into Eranikus to throw him back away from Ark'thugal, I was covertly searching through Eranikus' body to try and find the shard. Of course it wouldn't be that easy, as my metal chains decayed and Eranikus snapped free before I could find the shard in that discreet search attempt. Narrowed down the shard's location in Eranikus' body though.

I myself had been forcing Eranikus back while the other group of my clones were attempting to force Ark'thugal back. However, Ark had decided to get more serious, having started to dip into some of what he used against Cassandra, in particular the skill he used to keep her from knocking him around... said skill being the precise reason why I myself went after Eranikus and delegated the task of forcing back Ark to my clones.

Even as my clones and constructs which were attempting to force Ark'thugal back were being wiped out by showers of frost, blood, and unholy, I was implementing my better idea for stopping Ark'thugal's Death Grip: Metal gas infused with my power nullifier. I was recycling whatever remained of the clones/constructs that were destroyed, having infused them with power nullifier beforehand, and, when said clones/constructs were destroyed, the remnants turn into power nullifier-infused metal gas. Ark would have to deal with said gas before he could send his Death Grip through an area where my power nullifier-infused metal gas had been.

There's also the idea of attempting to use the ARM EXPLODING EXPLODY ATTACK on Ark'thugal to try and prevent/weaken his Death Grip that way, but somehow I feel like this option won't be as effective as the power nullifier-infused metal gas trick.

I used a shockwave blast and projectile attack, "Concussive Copper Cannon!" to force Eranikus back again as he swooped back in, and for Ark'thugal, I generated a bunch of "Alloy Anchors!" If Ark's going to make forcing him back difficult, then I'll just bog the Warboss down to slow his advance and then kill the s*** out of him while I covertly search for the shard.