Fight for Power

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

Haha, she's trying to bog me down. She must not be very familiar with Death Knights. As Mithril refocused her attention on Eranikus - she seems oddly focused on him - I simply stood up and marched forward, dragging the chains and anchors along as if they weighed nothing.

Death stops for no one.

As I marched forward, the winds began to pick up. As first they came slowly - this gas seems to be hindering me somehow - but the freezing winds came anyway. Mithril's clones closed in to attempt to stop me, only for me to go spectral, phasing out of the chains and zipping through the line of clones at high speed.

Most Death Knights can't pull this with Wraith Walk, but I'm not most Death Knights.

Mithril noticed my spectral form coming right at her, and immediately primed the area around her with more of her metal gas. Annoying, but not terribly so. A bit more pressing was all of her clones diverting immediately towards Eranikus. I gave him a mental order to descend and fight them on foot somewhere nearby. Even if they mangle him I can fix that, it'll just be annoying if I have to walk a long way to find him.

More anchors came out as soon as I dropped out of spectral form, her using them as flails as well as projectiles. I cared little, using Shadowmourne to slice through the chains as I approached. Mithril attempted to back off to maintain optimal flail range, but I grabbed one of the anchors and pulled her to me. Don't need Death Grip when you've got all these chains for me to pull on.

Now in close range, I simply cleaved through anything she tried to put between us. Sawblades, walls of metal, vehicles, none of that matters when I've got a legendary weapon in hand. The lasers (aimed mainly at my hands, cheeky runt) I soaked up with Anti-Magic Shell. The metal gas I froze, causing it to flutter down. I bashed through everything she threw at me until I saw my chance, then reached forward and grabbed her by the neck. This got an angry grunt of "Alloy Arsenal!" from her, a large number of weaponized arms emerging to strike at me, only to break upon a layer of permafrost growing over my body... and then down my arm and over Mithril's neck. It might not stop her, but it'll slow her for long enough. Even as it grew, her body began to heat up, blazing hot weapons emerging from her back. I dropped the temperature around her weapons, which promptly cracked and broke. Rapid temperature change isn't good for metal, you know.

"Anything else you'd like to show the class?" I asked, only to be answered by a guttural roar cutting through the blizzard, followed by a loud thump. Mithril grinned.

"Got your dragon," she grunted, still trying to form more weapons. I frowned at her.

"He's undead," I replied snidely, "I can fix him. You though... you're gonna need more than a fix. Chains of Anguish."

A cacophony of spectral chains erupted from her, trailing off into the snowstorm. Each connected to one of her clones... who then each sprouted more chains leading to each other.

"Gorefiend's Grasp."

At this one I broke myself free of my permafrost shell and stepped away, just in time for all of her clones to crash into her at once, yanked there by a lightshow's worth of purple tendrils.

"Heimdall."

The blizzard cleared, to reveal the massive glacier I'd been forming overhead. At my command it fell, smashing upon Mithril and her swarm of clones, and at last revealing the purpose of the chains; for all the damage each clone took, a spike of sympathetic energy lanced out along each chain they were connected to, copying that damage to all the rest, as well as the original.

"Bifrost."

The massive glacier of ice I'd just smashed over her head refroze in an instant here, and I twirled Shadowmourne in my hand as I approached.

"Embrace the serenity. Renounce the hatreds that consume you... and scatter them like Dust in the Wind."

At last, I brought Shadowmourne's pommel down on the ice formation, s***tering it explosively, producing another surge through the chains. I didn't turn back to it; I merely started walking towards Eranikus, the undead dragon dragging itself in my direction for all the damage it had taken. Bit of fleshcrafting, he'll be good as new.

"She's going to get back up, isn't she," I sighed in the dragon's direction, shaking my head.

"Of course she will. But I can't die here. I've got plans before that," I continued, as the crackling of ice shifting sounded from behind me. My voice dropped to a growl.

"So whatever it is you came here for, I'd suggest you do it... before I decide to stop playing nice."

<]-Mithril-[>

Immediate concern here is not letting Ark'thugal discover the shard. I'll attack him to draw his attention off of Eranikus. I'll use clones.

Yes, I realize that using clones in this fight comes with a great degree of risk of added damage. That being said, I may just have to bite the bullet here and use clones to some degree anyways since an aggressive strategy is probably the best in this case; I don't want to dwaddle around too long and risk having Eranikus get some kind of absurd powerup from the shard like that crazy alternate Striker did (which would heavily signal to Ark'thugal that the shard exists), or risk Ark'thugal finding out about the shard.

I sneered at Ark'thugal. "Since you're dense, I'll elaborate on what I said earlier: I got your dragon. That means I can focus on killing you."

I split up into a few clones and literally rocketed at Ark'thugal, shedding large pieces of said multi-stage rocket and copious amounts of metal gas as exhaust.

First off, I'll assume that Ark'thugal can only initiate Chains of Anguish on the main me, and not initiate it on any of my clones. The reason I'm assuming this is that if he could initiate Chains of Anguish on a clone, then why bother to spectrally move towards the real me in the first place?

That said, there isn't enough evidence that indicates that Ark'thugal has any super discerning power to tell me apart from my clones; I think I was just being too obvious with who main me was back then. However, I'll pay attention for any indicators if he has such a distinguishing power, such as if he consistently guesses right which one of me is the main me.

The question is whether it is easier to eliminate Ark'thugal at long-range or at extremely close range. Long range I can utilize charged attacks to overwhelm his guard, in contrast at extremely close range (as in right in his face) I am close enough so that it is presumably more difficult to hit me with his axe.

Elaboration on the long range combat option: In addition to and/or instead of the riskier option of charging up attacks with clones; I can also charge up huge attacks by generating metal and scattering it around everywhere, having it store up as an external charge for big attacks later on.

Elaboration on the extremely close range combat option: I'm faster than Ark'thugal and it would be somewhat difficult for him to pull away should I commit to bashing his face in directly.

More clones lowers the odds of Ark'thugal guessing the real me out of the clones correctly if he needs to guess, and increases my ability to switch between long range combat and extremely close range combat. This also increases the damage I take from him should he catch the real me however.

Since the immediate concern is drawing Ark'thugal's attention away from Eranikus and the shard, I'll go with the meathead strategy of extremely close range combat plus screaming in his face for now, while quietly building up external non-clone charges via metal littered around the place, to transition to long-range combat later on should I decide to do so.

For now, I'll use less clones overall than I did before he used that series of attacks, but I'll allocate more of the clones that I do use this time around to forcing through an opening and slamming heavy attacks right in his face and generally focusing more on eliminating him, basically using just enough clones for just enough pressure, not too many and not too few.

"Oh? You're approaching me?" Ark'thugal asked, firing off an attack.

The attack that Ark'thugal sent my way to try and stop me rushing at him? Parried. He'll have to do better than that, since with Eranikus mostly down, I can focus the bulk of my attention and efforts on the Death Knight.

"It was always you!" I cackled while attacking, ranting on to draw his attention away from Eranikus. "Out of all the Warbosses, you alone are not protected by the currents of fate. You, the one with no destiny, have no equivalent safeguard against an early demise before that turning point. I'm here to take your head and tip the scales in our favor!"

"Well isn't that interesting. You think you can kill me because I'm not running on the hamster wheel you call fate! But if you had thought about that for maybe a few more seconds, you might've asked yourself a very important question: why does this guy have no fate? Because the answer might surprise you!"

A few additional exchanges of attacks later, and it turned out that I was mistaken in one crucial area. Turns out that Chains of Anguish could be initiated on a clone and not just initiated only on the real me, which is something I discovered when Ark'thugal grabbed a clone and initiated Chains of Anguish.

"Cobalt Crusher!" I shouted, immediately crosscountering with a rocket-hammer swing from me and all my clones.

"Pestilent Eruption," said Ark'thugal, gathering plague energy and detonating it across all of the clones.

As my Cobalt Crushers slammed into Ark'thugal, a pulse of red washed over him, followed by a layer of frost covering his whole body. The Warboss took the hit head on, but seemed to suffer much less damage than he should've.

"Ah, I see now," I spat, as Pestilent Eruption, a magical plague that could even affect non-flesh targets, wracked across my body. "The reason that you used that spectral movement technique... it wasn't that you needed to grab the real me to initiate Chains of Anguish, but rather, it was buy time to charge up Heimdall."

"That, and for swag. You got something like that up your sleeve, you wanna show it off every now and then!"

The revelation that Ark'thugal can initiate Chains of Anguish not only on the real me, but on any of my clones as well, changes the risk/reward analysis so that extremely close-range combat using clones would probably only be worth it with my nuclear mode and/or maybe Aggro or Accel Shift active. Taking that into account, I opted to switch to the long-range combat option, immediately creating distance between us and generating power nullifier-infused metal gas to shut down any Death Grip attempts, while littering the battlefield with metal in order to build up future charged attacks.

Yes, I am still using clones. The general idea of an aggressive strategy to kill Ark'thugal before he discovers the shard is still valid, and clones would expedite metal accumulation across the area to hasten any external charges for upcoming charged attacks, and I can just kamikaze the clones to disrupt any attempts of his to charge up Heimdall or any other charged attack of his. The question now being what Ark'thugal's next move is gonna be now that I've committed to this ranged strategy.

Ark'thugal attempted a few Death Grips experimentally, before shrugging and raising a s***load of ghouls to swarm me and my clones. I and my clones took to the air as the ghouls crawled out of the ground. Despite how the ghouls looked, they could leap deceptively large distances, even vertically, which they proceeded to do so in an attempt to attack with their unholy claws. That being said, they were individually weak and thus it wasn't too difficult to kick or blast them away... except for the fact that their vast numbers made it annoying. There was also a trick of his where the Warboss ignited them like rockets to launch at airborne opponents like me and my clones, which he proceeded to do with a whole bunch of them.

One interesting thing to note was that it was only most, but not all, the ghouls that were being sent my way. The rest did not seem like they were under any sort of order to clean up the metal I've scattered around the area, instead opting to wander around and attack just about anything that isn't Ark'thugal or another ghoul.

While this ghoul attack was underway, souls began to swirl around Ark'thugal... you know what I'm just going to go for my charged attack right now.

"Beryllium Boulder!" I roared, as me and my clones threw the charged, giant, mass-based attacks at Ark'thugal.
______________________
++Bloodriver & Xenon++

Originally, this part of the fight was where I fought a defensive battle, buying time until the other Pink Pikmin fighters and Black Widow could arrive as reinforcements. If Dusk has the shard this time, this means that there will likely be additional complications compared to the original fight... good thing Zeta and rock guy are here.

Question: To what degree should we aim to repeat the actions we took in this fight a thousand years ago, and to what degree should we diverge? Xenon pondered.

Well, I'll have to be honest: Zeta and rock guy are here right now, so the fight has already diverged from how it was a thousand years ago. I'm not too concerned about going off-script here.

Anyways, Dusk is approaching me fast. I immediately fired off a wave of blood and light in the general direction of where Dusk was to try and hinder his advance a bit, while I simultaneously ducked into a nearby building for cover.

A few lightning strikes to the building from Dusk, and luckily for the pyrophobic lightning-user, the building decidedly did not catch on fire; we had updated the building codes after that fire incident with the Red Pikmin a while back. Rock guy caused a bunch of the earth erupting from underneath Dusk to try and hit him with some boulders; though Dusk avoided that, Zeta grabbed one of the boulders that missed Dusk and then hurled it back at our opponent... however Dusk was fast enough even to block that with his blades. Is it just my perception, or is Dusk more agile back now than he is in the present day?

Upon realizing that the buildings were sturdier than expected, Dusk started zipping between them at high speed, launching ball lightnings into the buildings.

This was when Adaptrix arrived, launching some plasma attack against Dusk. Rock guy began to break out the explosive bomb-rocks, attempting to use the blast radius of those to try and hit the lightning-user. I fired a barrage of blood bolts and light blasts at Dusk, before firing a larger stream of blood at him.

Trivia: In the original version of this fight back then, I didn't know about Dusk's fear of fire yet. However, since I'm from the future, I have this information. And if the presence of the shard causes any strange effects, then I may very well be justified in using this knowledge in this fight...

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

I'd have liked to get a few more souls gathered first... but ah well.

"Soul Rend!" I growled, loosing the swarm of souls like seeker missiles. Some tore through one of the boulders and kept right on going after Mithril and her clone swarm. For the remaining boulders, I held up Shadowmourne, pulled power from several of its runes, and waited for a boulder to very nearly strike me before swinging.

The boulder was heavy as hell, but tapping a few more runes allowed me to push it back, causing it to soak up the hits from the other boulders, sending them all scattering about the area. One still almost hit me, thudding into the ground just nearby and sinking quite deep. Mithril, meanwhile, had dealt with the soul swarm by producing a bunch more clones as shields. Soaking those hits couldn't have felt good, but she's still up there... alright, enough of the flying.

"Chains of Domination!" I called, dozens of runic circles appearing around me as shadowy chains launched out of them. I'll pull them to the ground, or at least tear them apart. Chainsaw sounds echoed from above as Mithril and her clones fought back against the chain assault. I picked off a few, but she's clearly winning against this, and chains of her own are coming down at me now, among other things. Avoiding those by Wraith Walking, I felt my irritation growing. I have other things to do.

"Enough..."

A sickly green and black energy rippled off me. The pieces of my ghouls, strewn all across the ground, began to slide together in completely unnatural ways, flesh blending and molding together in a way it really ought not to. Bones broke and reassembled into completely new shapes, flesh stretching out into leathery wings as ghouls became two-headed, winged fleshbeasts. I sent the group into the sky, all unearthly howling and corrosive spit, and Mithril's target focus very quickly shifted to them. I made sure to toughen their skin so she wouldn't just cut them out of the air immediately.

Drawing upon more of that green energy, I opened a pair of small portals over my hands.

"Deathbolt Whirl!" I intoned, firing wave after wave of deathly energy bolts. Already busy with the fleshbeasts, Mithril responded to this by launching a bunch of flying sawblades in my direction, followed shortly by a bunch of vehicles. I turned one portal toward the vehicles and a swarm of deathbolts hit them, ripping them apart at the molecular level. For the sawblades, I let loose another ripple of green energy, and a bunch of ghouls rose up in front of me... before their flesh began to meld and fuse together into a much larger abomination, who barely even seemed to notice the saws hitting it. It held up three misshapen hands and unleashed a salvo of bone spikes towards Mithril and her clone army.

"Are there really this many corpses around here?!" I heard Mithril call out, as even more rose up and began to meld together. A few were blasted by metal beams before they could finish fusing.

"The dead outnumber the living... and always will!" I called back, cackling. Doesn't matter where you go, that fundamental truth remains. A truly skilled necromancer can produce ghouls like this anywhere you find a sufficient concentration of death... meaning, anywhere.

This is still taking too long. I've got places to be, and I still have to fix Eranikus, something that'll take a bit more effort than fusing together some lowly ghouls. This little irritation is getting on my last nerve.

>Adaptrix<

Firing a few more plasma bursts in Dusk's direction - since we seem to be fighting him and all - I swooped in next to Bloodriver.

"Sitrep? Thought this guy was... kinda on our side?"

"Not at the moment," Bloodriver replied, gathering up blood for another attack while Zeta and the rock guy took it in turns to throw exploding boulders in Dusk's direction. He mostly simply evaded them while firing back with lightning bolts. "We're a thousand years in the past, so he's not so friendly right now, and I'm betting he has the shard."

"Shard..." I muttered, recalling the tiny pinpoint of light that had appeared in that timeline with the younger Omicron. "So what exactly does that mean?"

Bloodriver loosed her attack, a stream of burning blood that got Dusk's attention firmly on her. "It means we have to beat him and take the shard, preferably before it can screw things up too much." Dusk lined up one of his blades at her, and the air suddenly became greasy. "He's afraid of fire, make good use of that!" she warned, before diving away from the beam of lightning.

Fire, you say? I can do fire. Lots and lots of fire. Spinning up protocols for flame-based weapons, I took the opportunity to watch Dusk as he went after Bloodriver, analyzing his movement patterns. His fastest movements are preceded by a negatively charged leader, much like a lightning bolt. A quick calculation revealed an immediate discrepancy, though: he's moving faster than a bolt of lightning when he does that, which makes no physical sense.

I decided it'd be best to sit back and watch for a bit, setting up weapons all about the town while the others kept Dusk busy.
______
<Zeta>

As much fun as tossing rocks at this guy has been, it hasn't exactly been effective. Goddamn speedy jackass, hold still.

Seeing as that's all gone not much of anywhere, I decided to hang back with Rock while Bloodriver had a go at him. She's actually fought the guy before, so she should know what she's doing.

Or at least I thought so, but she seems to be a step behind him at every move. Lashes of blood, bolts of light, and bloody blades always seemed to be just a hair away from hitting him, while Dusk's attacks always outsped her guard, to her readily apparent frustration and confusion. Somethin' ain't right here.

"This isn't looking good... we need to grab his attention," Rock suggested.

"I can do that," I grunted, flexed my legs, and leapt at him at my highest possible speed. With the amount of force I can exert, that's a speed comparable to Quicksilver, if only in a straight line. I threw a punch timed just perfectly to hit him in the chin... only for him to just barely dodge it anyway, zipping backwards just a hair too quick. Little bastard.

What he wasn't prepared for was Adaptrix, because as he fell back, he backed straight into a veritable wall of fire. Evidently he was displeased with this, because that triggered a shriek of pure terror and an erratic storm of lightning lashing out in all directions as he beat a hasty retreat. The buzzing nerves are getting really annoying, at this point.

"Well, that seemed effective," Adaptrix commented as the storm circled back around. "Bloodriver, would you happen to know why his movements are faster than lightning? Because that doesn't seem to make sense, given how he moves."

"What do you mean?" Bloodriver questioned.

"He moves exactly like a lightning bolt, but he was faster, and gaining speed it would seem."

"Could that be the shard doing that...?" Bloodriver asked, mostly to herself.

"Hey, he's coming back for another go," Rock pointed out, as the cluster of electricity approached once more.

"I currently place him at 30% faster than he should be going. Correction, 31%," Adaptrix reported, generating flaming blades and tossing them out between the others. "We need to make this quick, or he'll become too fast for any of us to hit him."

"Great, because he wasn't fast enough already," I grumbled, giving the flaming sword a few test swings. Really just two superheated rods with a handle more than a blade, but hell, it's dripping something molten, so if fire freaks the guy out, that should work.

[<@>Magnus the Red<@>]

One of the first considerations I had was that the earth elemental could draw power from its connection to the ground and use that to repair damage to itself and otherwise make this fight more difficult. A quick psionic scan was enough to confirm that the earth elemental indeed had a self-repair ability powered by the ground in the immediate area. Additionally, I noticed that the earth elemental did have some fire energy installed, most likely as a defense against ice elementals and being frozen. Relaying this information to the others, I asked Candle to coat the ground in the immediate area in a layer of wax, and for Bloodriver to add in blood into the wax as well, to slow the rate which the wax would melt when the earth elemental turns molten.

One "Wax on!" from Candle and some blood additives from Bloodriver later, and nearly the entire ground in the immediate area was covered by a layer of wax and blood; the only spot uncovered being the area the earth elemental was currently standing on. While the earth elemental did have some fire energy installed, my scan indicated that the earth elemental would almost certainly be unable to recover any earthen matter that had melted into gas, a fact that I made sure to inform the others of.

The next order of business was to force the earth elemental onto the wax floor to prevent its regeneration. I detected more than a hint of plant elemental energy inside of it, so if it is anything like a tree it may have been more time-consuming to uproot it... had Sigma not been with us. As the Platinum Pikmin was currently here, it was a simple matter for him to cut the earth elemental below the knees with his energy blades.

The earth elemental roared and fired a huge barrage of boulders at us; however I put up several kine shields to deflect some of those, while Xenon blasted away most of the boulders I had missed. The Squad was able to get around and/or through the few remaining projectiles left; Dimetrodon (who had been sleeping recently and just woken up) and Stormwalker plowed into the elemental at top speed while Phi generated a bunch of shadow clones to pile onto it and help bring it down.

The earth elemental had fell to the floor like timber, landing with a thunderously loud crash. Helix then pinned it with a bunch of long, thin drills. Candle and Bloodriver produced more wax and blood mixture beneath the pinned earth elemental to further elevate it, as well as covering the elemental with the mixture to clot its joints.

As I predicted, the elemental turned molten, and fired off an intense barrage of explosive rocks, attempting to attack us and free itself.

Xenon unleashed a barrage of light blasts to fend off those molten rocks, while Bloodriver, Candle, and the others also helped in defense.

This is when Mars stepped in, blasting the earth elemental, each blast evaporating part of it. All of us with fire and/or heat based attacks pitched in as well to hasten the earth elemental's evaporation.

<]-Mithril-[>

Interesting that Ark'thugal seems to be holding up against my ranged charged attacks better than Trombe did, though I suppose the necromancy diverting a lot of my attention is a big part of that. Trombe also was berserk during the early part of our fight... additionally, I kind of suspect that Trombe didn't have as much experience with his Grand Phantasm power as Ark'thugal had with his Death Knight abilities. (I had only seen Trombe use his Grand Phantasm powers once before our fight; I believe it was Trombe versus Fallen Seraph versus some now-dead Red Pikmin.)

It is visibly obvious to me from Ark'thugal's facial expressions and body language that he is about to lose his patience and that the next hit I land on him will have him start utilizing those super evil black magic green flames. I'll address this, but first I want to try something on the ghouls.

So, the giant ghoul fusions and the ghouls in general. I blasted them with a variety of elements in tandem with my metal attacks, with fire, lasers, electricity, and wind. While this was initially rather effective, Ark'thugal then began to molded their flesh in a way that caused them to more significantly resist these elements.

Another attack came from Ark'thugal, and the ghouls kept on popping up. I dealt with that, and me and my clones are still airborne, but the direction of the fight in terms of a damage race is still drifting towards a result that I don't like.

Still in Metal Gate for now, I then hit the bigger ghoul fusions with an "Iron Maiden!" to seal them off while I spammed more chains at Ark'thugal. Both times Ark'thugal used that spectral movement technique were to avoid my chains, so I think I can use the chains to bait that out, and sure enough right before the chains were about to hit him Ark'thugal used that spectral movement technique to evade.

I'm going to activate my nuclear super mode very soon, right as Ark'thugal's spectral movement ends. My increased output level will help suppress the ghouls while having more power I can allocate to break through Ark'thugal's defenses, since Metal Gate so far hasn't been cutting it well enough.

Additionally, I could potentially use the sudden activation of my nuclear super mode to try and surprise him and force through extra damage before, as I previously mentioned, Ark's patience runs out and he starts to spam those super evil black magic green flames. I have one opportunity to surprise Ark'thugal with my nuclear super mode and it's when his spectral movement ends.

Ark'thugal's spectral movement has finished. I activated my nuclear super mode.

"Uranium Uberspear! Tritium Titanslayer!" I roared, firing my gigantic nuclear-powered spears at Ark'thugal. Besides the obvious intent of these attacks to damage Ark'thugal greatly, they also function as a way to clear the ground of ghouls, and to scatter metal across the area to build up an external charge for my Titanium Train Thrasher later on to close out the fight.

Those nuclear explosions created a large amount of smoke, and the smoke hadn't even cleared yet when a bolt of green fire lanced out at me. However, I had anticipated that Ark'thugal would probably attack in such a way, so I dodged that.

The smoke quickly cleared, revealing that Ark'thugal has serious burns all over his face and likely under his armor as well. I saw him using Anti-Magic Shell right before the explosions began, so this confirmed what I suspected: Ark's Anti-Magic Shell has limits. And I can surpass and overpower those, with two nuclear explosions, or perhaps with other means as well...

His armor is scorched but looks mostly undamaged, but I don't think Ark made that armor with radiation resistance in mind, so it's very likely that that wouldn't prevent nuclear radiation from burning the s*** out of him underneath it

Oh, and he now also has glowing green eyes and an ominous green glow is emanating from under his gauntlets. ... And now my fate vision is starting to bug out. I'd guess that anyone who happens to be peeking on this scene also got a great big poke in the third eye from that.

Anyways I can indeed confirm that those two nuclear explosions cleared the area out of ghouls quite nicely... and I noticed something else as well. While Ark'thugal was using that spectral movement technique, no new ghouls were being raised, though he was still able to mold their flesh during that time. This could probably be exploited to help suppress the ghouls, something that I'm going to put to the test because it's now chain spamming time! If Ark'thugal saved that spectral movement technique for chain attacks specifically, it is probably for a reason, one that I'm interested in finding out.

I'm guessing that Ark'thugal's spectral movement technique has some kind of cooldown timer, or else he would be spamming it more heavily. So it will be interesting to see how he reacts if his Wraith Walk is on a cooldown timer while chains are coming after him.

O-Mars-O

With the earth elemental guard out of the way-

"Wait, the legs!" Phi called out, as the severed stumps shifted a bit. I snapped a few times and blew them into shards, which Vika then pulverized into dust with a series of arcane blasts.

With the earth elemental guard now *very definitely* out of the way, to Stormwalker's disappointment ("That was it? That was barely a fight!"), we were now free to get to the task of actually infiltrating the abandoned bastion, a process that consisted mostly of Magnus and Helix carefully boring their way down with a combination of Magnus's psychometry and Helix's drills.

The rest of us simply stood guard while they worked, tension thick enough to cut with a knife. So far, no further interference, but everyone's still a bit on edge. I kept glancing at the horizon, and the clouds visible there; the edge of one of the super-bastions. Vika had a few sensor spells pointed in that direction, but nothing was headed our way yet.

It wasn't long before Magnus called up to let us know he'd broken through. Vika immediately dove down to help him scan for traps, while Helix made his way back to the surface, he, Dimetrodon and Stormwalker being on guard duty while the rest of us investigated. ("Do you want *Stormwalker* down there when we're trying to be stealthy?")

Unsurprisingly, the bastion isn't exactly laid out for Pikmin traversal, being more of a porous series of twisting tunnels that flying earth spirits made essentially randomly, patrolled by smaller earth elementals.

"Should we destroy them?" I asked quietly. Magnus shook his head.

"The larger one doesn't seem to have triggered an alert, but I don't want to chance some kind of alarm if we go destroying these. Let's go for stealth if we can help it," he advised. Phi, being likely our stealthiest member, went ahead to scout things out while the rest of us followed at a more sedate pace, Magnus and Vika working together to keep our presence hidden from the elementals.

Eventually, we reached an area that seemed more built-up, with far more elemental guards, not only patrolling but actually standing in place. Moving in further would require us to fight them. Hunkered down in a dark corner, with Magnus and Vika doing everything they could to shield our presence, Phi rejoined us.

"I managed to get a good look at most of this area. Nothing particularly weapon-like, but I did find something interesting," he reported, "There's an area with a number of different elements on... display? And a few seraphim loitering within some of them."

"Sounds like they're recuperating," Xenon chimed in, "They're in a deep restive state and drawing in ambient elemental energy to recover, so I don't think we need to worry about waking them unless we make a real ruckus."

"Anything to the fact that all of them were Earth seraphim?" Phi asked.

"... Ah. That would explain the heavy guard. They're not just resting; this is some kind of experiment, I'd wager. No wonder they didn't want anyone finding this place."

"Well, if we want to get in there and investigate, we're likely going to need to fight our way in, and that means once we start we're likely on a time limit," Phi said. "I haven't explored the whole bastion, so we could also pass on this and keep looking..."

/|\Ark'thugal/|\

That wretch actually hurt me.

Fine then. No more games.

"Congratulations," I growled, "You've unlocked hard mode."

As soon as the chains she'd sent touched me they burst into emerald flames, searing their way up the chains like a fast-burning fuse. Some of the clones launching those chains managed to cut themselves free; those that weren't, the flames consumed in an instant, leaving nothing but glittering ash. A hail of depleted uranium shells came after, each simply popping as they got near me. I glared up at the one firing them from an artillery cannon, and the cannon began to glow before exploding in an emerald burst.

As those that remained rallied for her next attack, I conjured a small green star in my hand and lobbed it into the air. A prevalent sizzling noise soon made clear what it was for: burning away Mithril's metallic fog. She got her first notice when I Death Gripped one of them down - clearly a clone given the lack of panic - and cleaved it in half with a single swing, the two halves burning away in my swing's wake.

As I repeated the process a few times, one of Mithril's clones fired a beam at the star I'd sent up, only to suffer the same fate as the ones that'd sent chains after me. With that message sent and received, she abandoned attempting to attack it in favor of going after me directly, spawning a large number of fighter jets equipped with nuclear lasers.

Alright then. Time for a demonstration.

As the jets began their attack run and fired their streams of nuclear radiation, I raised my left hand and grabbed the beams, pulled them together, and drank in their power until they were spent. As the beams abated, I raised my hand, palm first, in Mithril's direction.

"Coronal Ejection."

An enormous burst of green plasma sprung forth from my hand, wide enough to obscure my view aside from my gauntlet, steaming as impurities within the metal cooked off. Didn't much matter, there's no dodging a blast that wide. As the spray of plasma dissipated, it revealed a rather changed environment, the land around us now baked brown and the sky overcast by an ethereal aurora. I took my time walking over toward where Mithril had fallen, and grabbed her by the neck as she stumbled back to her feet.

"What did we learn today, Uncle Ark'thugal?" I asked mockingly, lifting her off her feet, "It doesn't matter so much if your power is radioactive if the other guy's power is worse than radiation."

A fact that I proceeded to demonstrate by gripping harder, causing black and green cracks to begin spreading through her body from my hand.

"And they all died happily ever after."

Minor addition for post #417, add plasma and sound to: I blasted them with a variety of elements in tandem with my metal attacks, with fire, lasers, electricity, and wind.

I'd imagine that if Mithril was in the top room with the Earth Seraphim, she would attempt to wake them up by bashing them in their faces, or whatever they have as face equivalents, with ringing alarm clocks while shouting "WAKEY-WAKEY SLEEPYHEADS! :U". Hah, perhaps I'll do that if/when main timeline Hero Squad finds this hidden Earth bastion on the main timeline elemental spirit planet.
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i-[[Candle]]-i

"An experiment... perhaps these Earth Seraphim are attempting to gain a second element?" Magnus the Red pondered.

"Hmm... a second element sounds like it would be useful," Xenon noted.

"These Earth Seraphim seemed like they were down here for a long time though. Would it really "move the needle" for us if say, Xenon, got her second element?" Vika asked doubtfully.

"Very much so," insisted Bloodriver.

"I'm doubtful as to how practical this would be to us though, simply due to the implied high time costs," said Vika skeptically, adding: "Would this really benefit us if the cost of this was that we had to have Xenon go inactive for a long period of time?

"This does seem fascinating, however," Magnus the Red mused.

From what I could tell of the conversation so far, Magnus the Red is in favor of fighting their way in right now, while Vika is in favor of passing on this and exploring the rest of the bastion.

"It would be useful to have a multi-elemental seraphim on our side... " Mars noted.

"Yes, but I question how much hell we'd catch in trying to grab one... and whether they'd be willing to join us in the first place," Phi replied.

"Yeah I'm not sure if we can force one to join up... though if we could get a close enough look to figure out the secret, and maybe how to replicate it..." said Sigma.

"Is that really feasible though?" asked Mars, adding: "The time scale might be an issue, we can't exactly wait several thousand years for this."

"True... " admitted Sigma.

Bloodriver pondered for a bit before asking: "Phi, how feasible is it for you to explore the rest of the bastion before we make a decision on whether or not to break into this room?"

"I can go further, I just thought it prudent to catch up with you all here. The guards posted aren't quite as dense after this point," Phi noted.

"We could go deeper and maybe check back on this on our way out... you know, after we inevitably set off the alarms," Sigma suggested.

"If the density of guards beyond this point is lower, it is likely that there isn't anything as potentially "needle-moving" as the heavily guarded room we see now. This room is likely our best lead at the moment, even if it's probable that we may need a time-accelerating artifact or something else to utilize this. Believe me, I do, in fact, wish to search every nook and cranny of this bastion with my psychometry, but we currently don't have enough power for such a luxury," Magnus mused.

"I'm still wondering if they have a weapons-cache or something else elsewhere in the bastion. Would there also be a power supply for these guards or something somewhere?" Vika pondered.

"It's possible... do I have enough time to scout ahead?" Phi asked.

"Currently I don't detect any sign that we've been discovered," Vika noted.

With the knowledge that we're probably undetected for the moment, Phi stealthily ventured further into the bastion. It was at this point that Magnus the Red brought out a tarot deck for aid in precognition. I won't get into much detail with that since Magnus the Red would be better at explaining the individual cards and their meanings, but depending on what tarot card he draws and whether its upright or reversed, the tarot precognition gives a vague hint as to what comes ahead.

Magnus the Red drew the Wheel of Fortune upright for the room with the Earth Seraphim, also showing Phi the Tarot reading as the Purple Pikmin returned.

Phi told us what he saw, stating: "I found another large, heavily guarded area like this a fair bit below, but I was unable to ascertain what exactly they were guarding. I was only able to see part of some kind of complex engraving."

"So either way we're smashing and grabbing. We know what's up here, while we have no idea what's below," said Mars.

"Could be even more valuable down below... or it could be worthless to us," Sigma noted.

With the existence of a mysterious bottom room reveal, Magnus the Red did another Tarot reading, drawing the The Magician, upright for the aforementioned room with the complex engraving.

"Considering what we're up against in the future, how about we hit both rooms at once?" I suggested. After some short deliberation, we agreed on this course of action. Bloodriver and Xenon plan to hit the top room with the Earth Seraphim. Sigma and Mars will go with Bloodriver to the top room.

Magnus the Red will go to the bottom room, since the Major Arcana he drew showed The Magician, upright, and that suits him. Vika will go to the bottom room probably since she was kinda doubtful as to how much the top room with the Earth Seraphim would help Overlord verse Hero Squad. Phi picked the bottom room as well perhaps because he seemed a tad skeptical of the top room as well.

As for me, I picked the top room, since the Wheel of Fortune upright means good luck, and I like being lucky (that, and the fact that Bloodriver, Xenon, Sigma, and Mars might appreciate the defense I can provide, and Magnus, Vika, and Phi can handle themselves). My gut was also telling me that the top room was easier to handle combat/diplomacy/searching-wise, so there was that as well.

As the bottom team left, I could overhear Magnus inquiring about a virtual screenshot of the complex engraving of the bottom room to Phi. Our Hero Bands record videos, audio, and visuals, so that we can rewatch and review fights later, for example.

Right on time too, since shortly after we began moving into the rooms we got a message from the topside team, Helix, Stormwalker, and Dimetrodon, that we've got a lot of incoming. (Though it was Helix who sent the message; Dimetrodon was shouting "Dimetrodon fight!" and was, along with Stormwalker, most likely rushing towards the enemies that were headed our way. While I am somewhat concerned about the two battle maniacs moving out of position, it's fortunate that Helix can warp around to corral them if needed, and could even warp in to any room down here later on as backup if necessary.