Making his way down town, jogging fast, faces pass and he's bloticle bound, Stratos continued to just be staring blankly ahead, just making his way, making his way through the blots. And so Stratos continued to just tear a path through the blotling army so that they could get towards the space bloticle. Or was it wind? Probably water. Water seemed the most likely. While he had completely figured out which element they'd be going against, he was soon assaulted by a few more blotlings. These ones were completely black, but seemed to be riddled with star like lights across their body. As they ganged up on the boy, the jumped onto him in an attempt to bring him down, which was working because they were considerably heavier then the ones that he had been fighting so far anyway. As Stratos was brought to the ground by these blotlings, he drummed up a marching band plan to take them out pretty easily. If you guessed he got out of this using music, then you'd be wrong. No. Instead he used the power of worship! - I mean, Faith! With it, pillars of light were summoned up around him and fired outward, tearing through some of the blotlings. Unfortunately, the pillars didn't actually originate on top of Stratos, and so he was actually still in the exact same problem as before. That it, until a handy guillotine blade came chopping down towards him, looking like it was about to kill him. Wait, that didn't sound good at all. Realizing his imminent doom, Stratos tried to pick himself up, but to no avail. And so the blade fell straight towards its mark and decapitated it with ease. The mark, of course, being the blotlings, and not Stratos. In fact, after it sliced through the blotlings, it seemed to just stop short of Stratos's body, and just faded away. Picking himself up, Stratos let out a sigh of relief as his almost death was averted. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 86% Left Living: Blotlings: 847/1000 Bloticle: 8/10 Injured: Blotling: 1/3
After taking down the swarm of bloticles, Stratos looked over to see that Raisor had went to go and attack some of the blotlings himself, which helped invigorate him to go cut through more of these creatures at once. And so, looking at the swarm before him, he saw a collection of blotlings, these ones all made of water. Figuring that because they were water they must be weak to electricity, Stratos struck his keyblade into the air and called down lightning from the sky. As the thunder spell fell down onto the ground below, the lightning bolts had all found their mark, killing only three of these blotlings. After doing so, he was then immediately jumped by a blotling that had snuck up from behind him, jumping onto his back. As the creature latched on, it started to just sort of grab onto his face and be somewhat mildly annoying to the keyblade wielder. So, Stratos just hit it with his keyblade, knocking it off. Before he could do any sort of killing blow on it, though, others started to converge on him. With four such blotlings of fire rushing him, he figured that using water on it would be a pretty good idea. So, as he went to go attack the four with aqua splash, he realized soon that he had completely burnt through all of his mp once again. Well, that was unfortunate, if not inevitable. And so Stratos was immediately pelted by four fireball like ink blotlings, rushing past him and leaving scorch marks on his clothing. Well that was certainly rude. And so, to make up for said rudeness, Stratos unleashed the all powerful Splattercombo on them, striking through each of them twice...even if it was only a six hit combo, don't try to math it. After doing so, he turned to one last fire blotling and just shot it with blizzard, causing it to burst an inky puddle. Spoiler: Count Living: Blotlings: 864/1000 Bloticle: 8/10 Injured: Blotling: 2/3
After Beuce's raw display of...well actually he didn't even really do anything. The bloticle just seemed to die by its own folly. Furthermore, it had actually been apparently really weak that entire time. It's lightning couldn't even take down a singular regular blotling when it went for one last final attack. What a loser. Nodding at what Beuce had said, Stratos then looked towards the rest of the blotlings and realized that he'd have to start tearing his way through them in order to get to the next bloticle. Sighing at the thought of having to go through eight more of those, Stratos steeled his resolve as he went towards the mob. But before doing that, he had something to take care. The blotling that had just taken a lightning bolt was getting up, ready to attack Beuce once again, only before it could attack, it was met with some unexpected resistance. Getting struck by a spinning keyblade, it just seemed to return to being an ink puddle, and thus Stratos was now perfectly able to kill eight blotlings. No injuries in this post...only death. Running straight at the blotlings, an ice one had jumped straight at him, turning into a sort of icicle to spear him through. Stratos responded in kind by coating his blade with fire, attacking back with a fire strike. As the two objects met, the ice was clearly overpowered and the blotling wasa defeated quite easily. Next up there was two rock ones that charged at him, accompanied by two lightning ones. As they bolted towards him, Stratos guarded as the two bolt blots strike right into his keyblade, giving him a bit of jolt. As the rock ones converged, though, Stratos guarded against them, striking them back towards the lightning ones and destroying the four collective blotlings. To end the bonanza of blot death, Stratos coated his blade with ice as three fire ones leaped at him. Striking each of them with a vorpal blitz, Stratos had completely struck through the three of them in one fell swoop. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 87% Left Living -Blotlings: 880/1000 -Bloticle: 8/10
After Beuce had decided to forsake his power as a black mage, Stratos figured he might as well do the same. After all, magic was clearly the worst thing in the world, which was why ninety percent of all keyblade wielders were warriors who had zero appreciation for the usefulness of magic. Man, warriors sucked. Thinking on this, Stratos was briefly spacing out, just concentrating on his hatred of physical strength or something, when suddenly he saw that the bleeding bloticle had desperately charged up a bolt of lightning to strike at him. Really, it was kind of pathetic, as the creature seemed to charge it up rather slowly, and using the attack itself seemed to be one of great effort. So, Stratos just kind of dodged the attack pretty easily, and as he did, something happened. The voice in his head that had been counting this had just yelled, "200!" As it did, something really strange and out of nowhere happened. Materializing from the sky, a chest appeared above the bloticle, and just sort of fell on it. Landing on top of the creature, it seemed to deal at least some damage as it rolled down the body of the bloticle and then slid to Stratos's feet. Looking at the chest with a bewildered expression on his face, Stratos just sort of kicked it open, revealing the contents inside. Picking it up, Stratos saw that it was just a sort thing, with the likeness of the planet or goddess or something resembling Venus. What was a Venus? Regardless of that, Stratos just looked at it as the bloticle decided to strike him lightning again. Unfortunately, it hit the item from the chest with the bolt, which caused the bolt to reflect off it and strike the blotice again...thus causing whatever it was he got from the chest to just sort of explode from the power of the attack. Well that was underwhelming. "It's all you," Stratos called out to Beuce as he basically figured this fight was over with. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 87% Left Living -Blotlings: 889/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 25/1000
Stratos was a man who understood the importance of not bad mannering your opponent. Not only did it make you look like an ass, but it also ended up getting you stuck in situations that would normally be avoidable otherwise. And so, he didn't join in on Beuce's laughter. Instead, he just counted down on his hands and as they reached zero, a bolt of lightning was sent straight towards Beuce. Thankfully, the bloticle didn't get the shutdown gold and completely ended up wiffing its skill shot. Nevertheless, it was a good idea now to not BM the beast. Rather, Stratos was content just with trying to actually kill it rather than mok it. After all, the creature seemed pretty much on its last legs; the lightning that covered its body being far less plentiful than at the start, and ink seeping from wounds that were scattered all about it. So Stratos just stood there for a moment, thinking of what kind of attack he should use to hit this thing with. He could use osmose to try and regain his variable amount of mp. He could use bind to make the thing stop moving, even though it moving wasn't even so much a problem to begin with. He could use Bio, but Stratos wasn't really a fan of biology, and so using that move wasn't in his best interest. Then there was the basic kinds of magic alongside the mine magics that he could use, but none of that seemed flashy enough. Being unable to spam the strongest physical command, which was pretty much worthless as an attack on Stratos anyway, really made things a whole lot less interesting every now and then. While he was contemplating this, Dumbo just kind of kept firing water at the bloticle, dealing more damage to the thing. Man this elephant was handy to have around. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 87% Left Living -Blotlings: 889/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 77/1000
As Stratos kept dodging around, he shouted back to Beuce, "yeah, I just sort of stopped being a black mage for like a second without any warning, but don't worry I still am. Yep...totally legal use. Anyway, let's go kill this tank." With that, Stratos, who was now in Black Mage form after he had stopped being in it for a completely unmentionable amount of time, (which I feel the need to repeat so that you will no that it was totally and completely fine. Yes, you. The reader. Who I know cares oh so much.) Anyway, Stratos knew that if they were going to beat this thing, they'd need to drum up a marching band. Which wasn't even funny because there was no band humor involved in this. God, looks like as a comedian, Stratos didn't even have a ghost of a chance. Haha. Yep. Still wasn't funny. Anyway, back to killing this thing. Gathering water at the tip of his keyblade, Stratos knew the obvious solution to this problem. There were four lightning balls left. There were four bubbles of water that were shot out of his keyblade from aqua splash. There were also four pillars of light from Faith, but he couldn't use that because they weren't fucking tank...mages. They were just the far more offensive, and thus unable to use powerful magic, variations of that. And so, Stratos just decided to use the command he could use, (because he wasn't going out of black mage for a completely unmentionable amount of time again. Nope.) Firing off the four orbs of water, they all exploded on contact with the lightning orbs, as the orbs were sent back to the creature, dealing some good, albeit exactly the same as one of them did, damage. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 87% Left Living -Blotlings: 889/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 129/1000
With the orbs of lightning were hovering around and shooting lightning, Stratos could only really help but dodge. Now, while five external damage sources attacking him at once seemed like it would be a pretty bad thing, Stratos, for whatever reason, found it to be a blessing. Why was that, you might be asking completely irrelevant reader. Well, it was because it meant that he could dodge more lightning than before, which meant his lightning dodging count was going up by the second. Now this seemed to be a really weird thing to be pleased about, and Stratos couldn't quite comprehend why he should be dodging the lightning outside of getting hit, but the dodge count was certainly going up and that's what mattered. Even still, though, he had to do something about this or else he would never be able to actually win the fight against this giant ass bloticle. So, Stratos decided to strike back at the orbs. Spinning his keyblade in hand, he threw it straight at the thunder orb in the sky, striking it as soon as the two made contact. The orb went flying back towards the bloticle, exploding on contact in a storm of electrical energy as it hit him. Now, while the orb was entirely lightning based, and the tentacle too was all lightning element, it still seemed to be in visisble pain from the attack. Something something pure vs non pure or something nonsensical. As the tentacle was in clear pain, it fell backward onto a mine. This then caused it to continue falling back in different directions, landing on mines as it did so, and taking a massive amount of damage from all the attacks. Well, that worked out surprisingly well. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 87% Left Living -Blotlings: 889/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 181/1000
Stratos assisted Beuce in their completely ridiculous endeavor to get rid of the rain. As it turned out, creating a massive inverted gravity field at the apex of their magical strength had actually worked. Who would have guessed that Stratos's completely original plan would have ever worked. Anyway, with the rain now longer blocking their vision, Stratos could see that the bloticle was still engaged in firing lightning at the flying elephant, and so the duo decided to take action during this brief moment of visibility. Watching as Beuce had summoned a small amount of mines around the bloticle. Though the attack would probably do a good deal of damage, the bloticle was relatively stationary and so he wasn't entirely sure how Beuce was planning to trip them. Although, as if on cue, the tentacle mass of ink started to stiffen and point upright once again. Even with its domain still active, it seemed malcontent with how everything was going thus far. Lightning started to charge up on its body, all coursing across it and gathering at the tip. Each time enough lightning gathered at the top, it coalesced into an orb and a pulse was let out from its body, having the orb just sort of gently sail away from it. Continued to do this process four more times, until there was just five orbs of lightning gently floating every which way. Wondering what was up with them, Stratos continued to observe them closely, until it seemed that lightning was starting to charge up in them as well. Eventually, the lightning seemed to reach its apex charge, and Stratos immediately rolled out of the way, before anything had even happened, as the orb fired a bolt of lightning at where he previously was. Seeing this, it had seemed the five orbs were all charging up and kept firing lightning at them from different angles, which made Stratos have to hop skip and jump all around to not get hit by them. Also Dumbo was still attacking the end. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 88% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 226/1000 (20 BP worth of mines)
As the rain continued to fall, Stratos continued to be unable to lift himself up against the weight of the rain. Not only was this the first time in his life that a rain drop and he were on equal footing in terms of size, but he was also so weak that he'd probably have a difficult time even if he wasn't being pelted by the rain, it'd be pretty hard to stand up. As he lied there, just kind of waiting for something to happen, he heard a thundering sound getting closer and closer and was pretty nervous as to what Larry was going to do now. As it came right up next to him he then realized that it wasn't something the bloticle had conjured up. Rather it was just the strides of a one armed who was incredibly gigantic. As he spoke to him, his voice was way louder than normal, and Stratos couldn't even really tell what he was trying to tell him in the first place. As he tried to convey this, he found his own, rather weak voice, being drowned out entirely by the rain. Being small sucked. Thankfully, the purplely pink light sort of just faded away from him and he just sort of returned to normal size and fell out of Beuce's hand, and onto the ground. Standing up, because he was able to now, he then said, "man, I don't know if you've ever seen things through the eyes of a bug, but I came pretty damn close just then. It isn't fun." As the rain continued to obscure their view, Stratos said, "well, if we're going to fight this thing, we need to do something about this rain first, right?" Saying an idea that he had completely thought up himself, he then looked at Beuce and said, "alright, I got an idea, and it just might be crazy enough to work. What if, we used Gravity, to reverse the fall of the rain? Now obviously, in our current state, we can't do it. But if we used our magical powers at their prime, there just might be a chance." Man, Stratos was smart sometimes. Other times, he totally could plagiarize other's ideas even when he knew they sounds dumb. With a black and blue light surrounding him, he back in his black form as he then directed his keyblade to the sky. "Ready when you are." Meanwhile, Dumbo was shooting water at this thing like no one's business. Praise be to Dumbo. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 258/1000
As Stratos had continued to hop across the elephants, the sky seemed to darken, and the area they were in seemed to become more a storm then a light shower. As his vision obscured and the area around him became far darker, Stratos could tell that something bad was going to happen soon. The bloticle seemed to be generating an enormous amount of electricity and the rain seemed to be pick up, until soon enough, Stratos couldn't even see the bloticle anymore. When things started taking a turn from bad to worse, Stratos tried to hop across the elephants, only to realize his jump had gone way less distance than he was initially intending it to go. As such, he completely missed his jump and fell straight to the ground, landing with a bit of a thud. To make matters worse, it had seemed that the time of the pink elephants had ended as one by one, they just seemed to start popping. He couldn't really see all of them, but hearing the popping noise, he could tell that the limit had ended. Well, that was a bit of problem. As Beuce called out to him, apparently they were only able to see five meters ahead of themselves. Though, Stratos wasn't entirely sure how long a meter was as his home world of course used the imperial system, at least the dark part of it did, just by what he could see alone, he could tell that it wasn't really that big of a distance. As heard a lightning bolt hit his friend dead on, he was almost definitely expecting one to come his way. And so it did. Thankfully, Stratos had managed to dodge it. Not by any merit of his own, no. It was because he was half the size he was when the bolt first struck. As a second bolt struck at him, he had now become a fourth of his original size, thus dodging it again. The unfortunate part of this was that he was now so small, and thus so weak, that the rain itself was beating him down into the ground, and he couldn't really lift himself up under the pressure. While he wondered how he was going to bring this creature down, he simply heard a slashing noise and the roar of the bloticle. He had no idea what happened, but was thankful that it did. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 310/1000
Larry had kept up its assault, unsure of which of the targets to actually hit or where they even were. It kept firing in seemingly random directions, and only when either Stratos, Beuce or Dumbo seemed to hit it did it actually seem to respond by firing in a place they might actually be. Thankfully, the bubble storm kept the confusion piling on so even if it had a lead, it had no definite area. Nevertheless, Stratos didn't stop moving as he jumped from bubble elephant to bubble elephant, using them somewhat as stones that lined a river to skip across. Each time a bolt came at him, he jumped to another elephant, avoiding the attack and causing the bloticle to lose its target again. As Stratos was going to attack it once again with magic, he seemed to be fresh out of the stuff that fueled it. As such, he was going to have get in up close and personal to this bloticle. As lightning was pulsing across the body of the beast, Stratos started hoping across the bubbles to get in closer. As he did, he saw that the pulse was starting to subside when he remembered what Beuce had told him two posts ago. He would only get in enough time for two strikes, and after that would have to retreat. And so, Stratos jumped off the bubble and dashed through the air, through use of sliding dash, straight at the creature, slicing into it. He then unleashed the six hit combo that was Splattercombo, restoring a good chunk of magic power, before kicking off the creature and going back to a bubble that was safe from the thing. It was just in time too, as the creature had started pulsing with lightning once more. It was a good thing "hitting it" wasn't a very specific term and thus he could just interpret that as using two skill commands, otherwise he'd be in a bit of trouble. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 362/1000
With the bloticle being thoroughly confused and and completely unable to hit them, it seemed to change its tactics for close range attacks. Firing off pulses of lightning to anything that stood near it, Stratos then heard Beuce give an analysis of the whole thing's gimmick and how to approach it with keyblade strikes. Stratos was also pretty impressed in how Beuce managed to completely assess the whole attack pattern almost instantly after it started using it, but then again Stratos had been subject to some pretty interesting conveniences so far, so he wasn't going to bring that up. However, while he did understand what Beuce was trying to say, there was one thing about it that seemed to be neglected from the whole thing. Calling back to the white haired man, he said, "yeah, I could. But...I have an elephant. That shoots from a range. From its trunk, this guy is awesome." Dumbo trumpeted in joy at the praise it received. As it did, the bloticle seemed to fire a bolt of lightning in their direction, to which Stratos jumped above the elephant, the bolt going between the two. As he landed back on the creature, he let out a sigh of relief and said, "alright let's split up for a bit." Nodding at his suggestion, Stratos jumped onto one of the pink bubble elephants, channeling magic through his keyblade, causing ice to form on the tip. Firing off a blizzard spell at the thing, the chunk of ice seemed to be repelled by the pulse of lightning but the bloticle seemed to tell where the attack came from. Firing off bolts of lightning at the boy, it seemed to just harmlessly be absorbed by the bubbles as it was weakened by redirecting the power to its body. This however, gave Dumbo the chance to fire off jets of water at the thing, causing it to groan in pain as the water exploded on impact with its electrocuted body. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 414/1000
The Decree of the Thunderlord was having a bit of a rough time taking on just two keyblade wielders, (and special guest star Raisor.) It didn't seem at all happy when it got hit by the sudden explosion of a thousand suns...or one, and its body seemed to start charging up with more electricity as it roared at them. Expecting some new super powerful attack that would completely take them out in an instant, Stratos was a bit disappointed by what actually happened. What did the bloticle do, one might ask. Well, if you guessed "shot lightning" then you'd be absolutely correct. Because that's all this boss ever does. Now, it didn't help that the rate at which it shot lightning started to ramp up exponentially, but that didn't really matter since Stratos was able to dodge the lightning like it was his god given right. He had no idea how he was managing to dodge lightning so well, but felt some divine force probably made it possible to do so. However, just dodging wouldn't damage this thing. So instead, Stratos decided to use a limit of his own. As the thought crossed his mind, his heart glowed with a green light, far more pure a green then the one he had used with Guardian's Rush. However, as he went to use it, it appeared that he couldn't. Well, not so much couldn't as it was had zero idea what he would even do with it. As these thoughts of confusion surface, the light faded from his heart and was instead replaced with a blue and gray one. Well, if he couldn't use that one, then he'd just have to use one he did. Grabbing the light of his chest with his free hand, he slammed the light onto his keyblade, and then struck the keyblade into the air. As if a scene change had occurred, Stratos was no longer standing where he was prior, and was instead on top of a flying elephant. Standing on top of his old friend that he had never actually met outside of summons, it was as if spotlights were directed on to him. With some sort of thick Japanese accent he had gained out of literally nowhere, Stratos threw his hands to the side as he said, "Radies and Gentremen! Otanishimi wa kore kara da!" After saying a phrase that was probably incomprehensible to most, pink bubbles started to form out of nowhere and everywhere. The bubbles soon took the form of elephants, all of which seemed to be spraying more bubbles that caused the bloticle to become incredibly disoriented, just sort of firing lightning at anything that moved. His voice returning to normal, he patted the elephant on the head as he said, "alright buddy, let's do this." Standing straight up, he pointed at the bloticle, shouting, "fire!" What came next was not fire. Instead, jets of water from the trunk of the elephant sailed to the bloticle, striking it and causing the areas struck to spark with electricity. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 466/1000
Whistling at the sight of whatever it was Beuce had actually done, Stratos was definitely in awe of the combination attack. Catching his keyblade without much hassle, he said, "man that was pretty awesome." He then looked to see that the injured bloticle still seemed to not even be half dead yet. He sighed, "if only our damage wasn't exactly the same regardless of looks." Nevertheless, the bloticle was definitely starting to feel the pain by the combination of attacks that Beuce had let loose, and Stratos had decided that he would try and see if he could mimic the attacks at all. One of them, the one that actually acted as his transit, seemed way too complicated and expensive to just learn at a glance. Nevertheless, he got some of the basics down of some of the other moves he had seen, and decided that he was good to go on the offensive. Getting down into a running position, Stratos sprinted at the bloticle, going at full speed. Of course, the injured bloticle didn't want him to be close, and thus started firing off bolt after bolt of lightning at Stratos. However, if there was anything fighting Larry had taught him thus far, it was how to dodge lightning itself. Continuing to hop out of the way of each bolt, Stratos threw his keyblade forward with the power of strike raid. After the blade cut across the tentacle's body, he summoned it back to his hand coated it in fire. Striking the body with the flaming keyblade, he then followed up with another assault of three slashes imbued with ice. Having across the body now, the bloticle fired a bolt where Stratos would be, however, the boy completely changed his course. As if all of his momentum was stopped in one direction, he quickly slashed forward through the air in another direction, cutting straight into the bloticle and causing sparking ink to spray out of its wounds. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 518/1000
After Stratos began the next post with the word with "after," he was still doing nothing but dodging. Yep, that's all that going on here. Dodging lightning bolts for hours on end in a seemingly boring and mindnumbingly excruciating challenge. But this was important. He had to dodge the lightning. Not just because getting hit by lightning sucked. No. He had to do it for some reason not even he could fully comprehend. With the mental count in his head hitting the number "89" he could feel himself getting ever closer to his goal. Soon enough though, he head Beuce yell out to him that they should get going and start their counter attack on the creature. Nodding back to the man, as he continued to leap around the field, he shouted back, "on it!" And with that, instead of just focusing on not getting hit, the boy's focused shifted to moving forward and trying to attack the bloticle. As Beuce had unleashed his onslaught of attacks, he then caught his keyblade and for a moment, time seemed like it was frozen. For once, not because of Zantetsuken. No, this was because Stratos was trapped in an internal monologue. He had zero idea what they could even do with a combination attack, as they had pretty much never practiced one before. Furthermore, how did having two keyblades even really help him all that much? It wasn't like he was ambidextrous, and he certainly wasn't strong enough to make use of both of them. Hm, this was quite the predicament. However, watching the faith pillars go further away from the creature, genius struck Stratos. Or pure idiocy. They were often indistinguishable really. As he got out of his internal monologue, time seemed to stop again, this time for the more obvious reason though. Passing through the creature with his Zantetsuken, Stratos created an X-slash on the body the creature. However, the creature was not the only thing his attack had hit. A cross slash appearing on each and everyone of the faith pillars, they blown backward by the force of the attack. All four of them headed straight back towards the creature, colliding and exploding into one blinding white light that seemed to cause the creature great distress. After that was done, Stratos yelled back, "finish it up Beuce!" And with that, Stratos threw both of the keyblades to Beuce so he could do his own finisher. However, after he threw both of them, his expression turned less jovial, and he just murmured a bit of an apologetic, "whoops." Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 570/1000
After Stratos had struck down the orb, it looked like the beast was using it was changing it up with its attacks once more. Firing off a few disks of wind charged with lightning, Startos managed to roll out of the way of them, completely avoiding the attack. Unfortunately, it was not relenting with just a few disks. It continued to fire out more and more disks. Each disk seemed to belong to a pair, and both of them seemed to converge from either side of their target as they charged the boy. However, this was not the only thing that made this attack a pain to dodge. Just because the bloticle had used a new attack did not mean it had completely forgotten about its other attacks. Firing off more bolts of lightning at the boy, Stratos continued to try and hop around, avoiding the bolts and rolling out of the way of the lightning disks. As Stratos did this, he then pointed his keyblade back at the creature firing off magic whenever he could in retaliation whenever there was an opening available. With water gathering at the tip of the blade, Stratos fired off four bubbles of water, one after the other that seemed to home in on their target. Weaving their way past the aerospark disks, and completely avoiding the bolts of lightning, (because hot damn these bubbles could maneuver well. As they smashed into the bloticle, they exploded with watery might, becoming a part of the ongoing rain of April Showers. The bloticle didn't really seemed phased by this whatsoever, though, and continued to fire off more and more bolts of lightning disks of electrified wind at him. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 89% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 622/1000
Stratos, being a bit on the small side, was not having a fun time. No. There was lightning, pretty much everywhere. This lightning, the bolt streams that was, were all roughly twice the size of the young keyblade wielder, in both height and width, and they had never quite seemed as deadly as they did right now. Thankfully, Stratos was gifted with an amazing ability. That was the ability to fly...on his weapon, because keyblades were more like swiss army knifes than any other tool. And so, getting on his keyglider, the young boy started to take off in flight towards anywhere that wasn't lightning, and was having a pretty problematic time outpacing raw heat and light. Eventually though, the lightning seemed to no longer be interested in him. Rather, it had taken to attacking Beuce now, as all the bolts seemed to converge on the white haired man. Stratos was a bit beffudled as to who Beuce could take all of those hits at once, but figured that trying to question anything in this mad mad world was completely futile. And so, while Beuce was going on the defensive, Stratos would then go on the offensive. Flying as fast as his tiny keyglider would allow him, Stratos had made his way straight to the orb that was firing off the lightning. Jumping off the keyglider and calling the keyglider back to his hand in blade form, Stratos sailed towards the orb of lightning when he realized something. He had zero idea how he was going to damage this lightning ball, and didn't think anything he did, at least in his current state, would be enough at all. Thankfully, fate seemed to step in his favor once again. The pink light soon surrounded his blade once again, morphing his star seeker keyblade into the vorpal sword. Bringing his new found blade down on the orb, it let out a noise that Stratos had zero idea how to explain, and cut straight through the orb. As the orb exploded from the slash, the lightning had stopped flowing towards Beuce, and the creature seemed a bit dazed. As Stratos landed on the ground, both his size and blade returned to normal as he said, "well that solved itself pretty quickly." Spoiler Wasteland 91% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 674/1000
After Stratos had used his Vorpal sword to leave a nasty wound across the body of the bloticle, he was delighted to see someone else rush into the fray as well and attack the bloticle. After Raisor had struck the creature with his own attack, Stratos then turned back to face the lightning themed bloticle. As Stratos begun to go on the offensive again, the beast seemed to start charge up lightning at the tip of its tentacle body. While it had been firing nothing but straight lightning bolts and exploding lightning mines this whole time, now it seemed to start doing a different kind of attack. From the orb formed on the tip, it fired out lightning that struck the ground at separate spots. Stratos had the x button ever ready, and managed to dodge the attack in time, only to see that the lightning hadn't gone away just yet. Instead, it continued going in a constant stream at the ground, electrocuting the floor wherever it struck. The bloticle then proceeded to rotate the lightning across the ground, causing the stream to become a bit of a carnival attraction...of death! Regardless, the obvious answer to this apparent problem was taking out the orb that was producing this lightning. And so, Stratos decided to go and focus said orb. But before he could, the pink light went around him once again. Looking at himself, and then back to the bloticle, he noticed something a bit strange about the two. The bloticle was way larger than before....come to think of it, everything around him was significantly more massive. Taking a once over again, Stratos then realized it wasn't that the entire world had just grown in size, but more so that he had just shrunk...considerably. This shrinkage was so debilitating that he couldn't really feel like he could cast spells as well any more, though his strength felt pretty unchanged. Sighing at the turn of events, Stratos got ready for whatever incoming barrage of attacks would come his way during this time. Also guillotine blade out of nowhere damaging bloticle, post done. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 91% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 726/1000
After Stratos had performed his whole limit thing, his brief increase in power and size seem to fade away, as the pink light seemed to draw away from him. Back to his normal size, all Stratos could do at this point was dodge blasts of lightning that were continuing to come at them. As he dodged them, it seemed he needed to put more effort behind his dodging in order to fully get away from the attacks. As the lightning struck the ground and exploded, Stratos tried to look for a way to get close to this thing. As he did, the pink light seemed to encroach on him once again, but rather than actually do anything to him, instead gathered around his keyblade. Looking at the weapon, it seemed to transform itself into what appeared to be a pretty simple silver blade, though it seemed to radiate with some kind of amazing power behind it. Gripping the blade in both of his hands, Stratos felt a surge of power rush through him as he just charged straight at the bloticle. As he ran forward towards it, he continued to roll out of the way of each boltstrike, with the mental tally in his head stating, "56." Stratos would normally be weirded out by the fact that he had managed to keep track of fifty six lightning bolts, but didn't dwell on it now as everything about this fight started making less sense. As Stratos got to the bloticle, he leaped into the air and brought the blade down on the creature, with a snicker-snack accompanying it. Stratos had zero idea what a "snicker snack" was, but he definitely heard it with this blade's use. As the sword cut straight through the creature, the bloticle thrashed about in pain, as the blade left an extremely clean cut across it, the cut now seeping ink. As the attack ended, the sword glowed pink, only for the light to fade and the sword to return to the normal state of the keyblade. Stratos didn't really question why that had happened, and instead just looked towards attacking creature again. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 92% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 775/1000
After the whole, nearly getting his head chopped off by an axe (and basketball?) he looked to see something that garnered his immediate attention. The bloticle had apparently trapped Beuce in some sort of electrical sphere, that didn't look all that pleasant to be in. And so, with that in mind, he had to immediately go on the offensive against the thing to free his friend out of the orb. However, as he started to run at the bloticle, some thing started to get in his way. The bloticle seemed to be not only firing rapid fire bolts at him, but also seemed to be summoning some form of electrical barrier to completely stop him in his tracks. Each time Stratos tried to approach this thing, a barrier appeared in his way, and so he had to stop and trying to run around it. As he continued to run at the creature, more barriers seemed to spawn and his path towards Beuce didn't seem like it was getting any shorter. Stratos was a bit at a loss as to what he needed to do, and thought it would be really convenient if he had just some way of getting straight to where he needed to be in an instant. His eyes lit up as the realization of what to do hit. In an instant and an cherry blossom storm, Stratos had appeared right next to the source of the electrical cage. Something seemed to be off with Stratos when he got there. However, this time, it was a good kind of off feeling. As the pink light seemed to flow around him, Stratos's body grew to nearly double its original size, and the boy felt some kind of middling strength and an immense magical increase in power. Knowing that he still wasn't strong enough to do what he needed to do, Stratos then flared up the light in his heart. Hitting his fist against his chest, his body seemed to be crackling with green lightning as he then held out his keyblade in front of him and used cover on Beuce, appearing right in front of the lightning source, stopping it entirely. As the attack was now focused on his keyblade, Stratos simply swung it away as he then followed up with a swift rush that struck the bloticle and knocked it a bit away. Spoiler: Count Wasteland 92% Left Living -Blotlings: 900/1000 -Bloticle: 9/10 Injured: Bloticle 2, Decree of the Thunderlord - Larry: 828/1000
