Video Game: Kingdom Hearts SOS: The Road To Light

OOC: Split into spoilers once more for precisely the same reason as before.

Spoiler: Actual Character Interaction

Stratos continued to fly away from the large bodies believing that this plan was totally going to work. Wait...Stratos didn't have a plan. This time, when had taken the aggro away from Karina it was not due to some masterful aggro drawing plan, no. It was the product of him having some sort of childish spite fit and not letting her have the aggro at all. While Stratos was usually good at keeping a level head, after letting out that sort of outburst, he had realized that his threshold had somewhat broke, and that now he was basically just doing things out of annoyance. However, regardless of whatever he might have been doing now, his original plan was going strong. All the aggro was on him and Karina, in all her blind fury, was jumping around and letting loose just about every skill she had in the book to kill them all. Well, all but one, but that was at least better than her just taking all the aggro back onto her again. With the one left, Stratos was going to deal with it himself, but he had bigger issues to deal with first. And that bigger issue was a thoroughly exhausted Karina.

While he didn't really understand why she kept declaring to herself that she wasn't weak, he did hear what she was saying about why he was doing what he was doing. Why he had consistently been trying to save her from basically getting herself killed this entire damn mission, when there were clearly so many other people that were "more" worth saving. He simply flew over to her and sighed, trying to calm himself down from the overall break in his patience he had. "Listen, I don't really see why you think there are other people here who are worth more saving than you are. Though, I suppose there is a reason why I'm helping you. First, and probably more obvious, is that you and I are basically a team now. After all, who was it that was tearing through heartless alongside me at east side. Out of the four of us there, was there anyone other than you and I actually doing something productive...the entire time?" He had to add that last part for his other comrade who had magically disappeared after showing up for the very end of the fight. "And neither of us could have done that without the other."

"However, other people already grasp this sense of team collaboration, and so they don't need to be saved as urgently as you do. Karina, you are probably one of the strongest people I know, but that doesn't mean you are invincible." He then decided to conclude it with saying, "besides, you think your life is worthless, and so you use that to justify hurling yourself head first into the enemy front lines and trying to take everything on by yourself. But how are you going to ever feel like your worth something if you keep doing this. After all, what with that extreme rage burst, you don't look like you feel any better about yourself." As he had finished answering all of her self worth questions and stuff, the last large body waddled over to them. He looked at it with an annoyed expression, and didn't really want to deal with this sort of thing right now. In fact, after all this talking, he had realized he had mostly just wanted to rest for a bit. However, the large body was giving him no such quarter. And so Stratos ismply waved his hand and hit the thing with a fireball exploding it into black smoke. "Now then, I know there's still some more heartless to kill, but everyone seems to have things handled for a bit, and I think we should both rest up for just a little bit. After all, we've been going three times as harder than just about everyone here." After that, Stratos laid down on his keyglider to get his breath.

Spoiler: New Challenger Approaches

As the duo had finished resting up after x amount of time, there was a new threat on the horizon. Their next foe that needed to be dealt with, was coming towards them. And this next foe was not one to be trifled with. A large amount of pressure could be felt throughout the entire room as the sixth of the north side behemoths came into view. The behemoth in question seemed to take on the standard appearance for the bipedal behemoths, as it casually walked in on its hind two legs. The thing that seemed off about it was that its body looked to be made of some sort of rock. While the giant metal behemoth that Metal Heart MOTH was also off, this thing's rock body seemed to be made from some sort ancient rock. It looked worn out, scratch marks all across it with any sort of decoration that once covered it to be faded and blended in with the rest of the rock. Furthermore, it didn't look like this thing was made of rock, as in its skin being made of it. Instead, the rock seemed to be more so like some sort of stone plating, segmented and joined together by something.

As the thing breathed, it seemed to do so heavily. It looked at the keyblade wielders with dull eyes, lacking the same luster the rest of the body lacked. Furthermore, the final standing out point of the thing's body was the large keystone like object that was placed right on its chest. Few tense moments passed by, as Stratos awaited just what this behemoth was going to do, it seemed to finally be ready to fight. A heartless emblem suddenly emblazoned itself across the keystone, and the behemoth's eyes started to glow a white blue color. It let out a loud, distorted sounding, roar as the same blue light that was in its eyes seemed to take form across the rest of its body. Blue light trailed across all of the spaces between the segments, until finally the creature's body was lit up, radiating with light. The rock plates seemed to start to drift apart and expand outward, with the keystone being seemingly chained to the pieces around it and being unable to move outward. As the behemoth had finished its transformation, he inside of the beast was revealed. With some sort of glowing white apparition within it, that seemed to stretch the entire length of the body, the being seemed to be connected by seemed to be held together by some sort of energy. From the white apparition with in the body, lightning of the white blue color was radiating from it, connecting the apparition to the rock exterior.

Stratos wasn't entire sure what to make of this new foe, as this one also was quite different from the rest of them. However, if he could take on a behemoth that was made entirely out of metal and a behemoth that move at mach speeds, then he could probably take on a behemoth made of rock and pure energy. Stratos looked to the thing and stared cautiously at it. He couldn't afford to be careless against another foe, and he couldn't afford to lose his cool. Granted that was something that he had lost just moments ago, but he hardly believed that this behemoth would criticize him for trying to help it out. Especially because Stratos probably wasn't going to be helping out this behemoth at all. Regardless, he turned his attention back to the thing and realized that it probably disliked internal monologues as much as Shac had, and was now getting ready to attack him. "Looks like our time for action is calling back to us."

Spoiler: Q

This behemoth, Azima the Xermoth, was some sort of an oddity when it came to attacks. While most behemoths tended to rely on just raw physical might or armaments, this one seemed to be pretty magical. First, it just thrust its palm forward and let loose a small energy bolt that flew at, and seemed to home in on, Stratos. He quickly put up his keyblade to block against the attack, and it seemed to bounce off harmlessly enough. However, something was a bit odd about the impact. Rather than feeling like some sort of magical attack, it actually seemed to bring more of a physical impact to it. Well that was pretty weird. Startos didn't really think much of this, and started to try and attack the thing...wait a second. Where was he supposed to hit this thing. It was, after all, just rock held together by lightning. Sure, Karina's brute force would probably work against just about any surface, hell she probably could have torn apart Metal Heart MOTH without any sort of reaction commands. However, Stratos was not about that whole brute strength life. And he had a single point of MP left, so spamming magic was a bit out of the question.

While he was thinking about this, Azima the Xermoth decided to attack him with its next attack within its arsenal. It raised both of its hands into the air, and seemed to be gathering energy between them. The space between the hands was soon filled with a blue sphere, with white interior light to it. As the attack continued to charge, eventually two green lines formed from where it was to a set distance away from Stratos. However, he was between these lines and realized that only bad things could happen from it. He quickly put up his keyblade to block against the oncoming which strike, which involved the behemoth taking a hadoken like stance and firing a massive linear pulse of energy at him. As the laser connected with the guard of his keyblade, Stratos was able to minimize the overall effectiveness of the attack, though despite this the attack still seemed to pass right through him. Almost as if it was ignoring his physical presence and wanted to keep going. Well, now that was one terrifying ability it had there. He was actually pretty worried about what other abilities it might have if it that just the first of them.

The next attack it preformed was somthing he wasn't actually wasn't expecting in the slightest. Rather keep its distance and preform another magical attack, it sort of walked over to Stratos and while materializing a giant halberd into its hand. That was really different. It then had its hands glow up, and gripped the armament with both of its massive hands. Lifting the blade into the air, Stratos knew what was coming next and quickly dodge rolled the way out of the attack. When the hit landed with the ground it created a little pulse, which made Stratos glad that he wasn't there to get hit by it. It then dissipated the polearm it had, and materialized in another close range weapon. Being a crescent shaped blade, with the grip for the blade stretching between both ends of the crescent. With this new weapon, it spun around, trying to cleave everything around him, but Stratos was able to counter this. Standing still as the attack came out, he quickly took his iaido stance and let loose one singular power strike from his keyblade. Using zantetsuken against this attack, Stratos was able to completely stop it, though he was sent back from the resulting force. The being then changed it up again by dissipating the weapon it had just created and switched it up for another weird attack. An attack in which it pointed its arm at him and fired off this little white pulse thing. Stratos quickly regained his footing, and was able to block the attack, but not able to keep his balance anymore. Falling back, he realized that this was definitely a different kind of behemoth. One who had a seemingly unrelated string of moves that could be used at a moments notice. Well that was great.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 2006 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4290 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 5/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Azima the Xermoth: 270/300

 

The ground shook beneath Ananta, making her stumble slightly. Straightening once again, she looked to see that the Behemoth was so bold to walk towards Ananta and Kross. Although, it looked like the Behemoth was more preoccupied with getting to that barrier that Steel had placed up. Ananta turned to Kross and smiled at him. "One sec." she said, winking. She scooped Kross up, bridal style, and ran away from the Behemoth. When she knew she was far enough away, she placed Kross back on the ground, allowing him to stand once more. "For now, we're going to have to just fight the Behemoth's that are wandering around and not behind a barrier. Steel...Steel can't be helped if he doesn't want the help..." she said, looking down at the ground. Steel's actions confused her greatly, conflicting with some of the things she'd read and also experienced when she spoke with him. It's true that Steel was never really one to talk, but at the same time he wasn't one to just up and start acting out for no reason. The reasoning behind this act had to have been something Ananta doesn't know about. Instead of trying to figure out, she decided that maybe he needed some space or something. That thought alone surprised Ananta, seeing as she was more the type to go up and stay around the person, but if Karina was any indication, Ananta was learning that you can't always help people. No matter how hard you tried, and probably failed, you can't just change somebodies' mind that easily.

Turning around, Ananta looked at the Behemoth and watched it move around. It indeed was focused on the barrier, possibly wanting to free it's friend, and it didn't really seem to care that Ananta and Kross were now gone. Carefully walking forward, trying to be quiet, Ananta watched as the Behemoth slammed into the barrier. Somehow, this barrier was a lot stronger than Ananta thought. It was able to withstand the Behemoth's assault and also cause it to skid backwards. Ananta raised her arms up to shield herself from anything, looking over her arms once she was sure it was safe. The Behemoth was now standing up again and it was peering down at her. "Oh...my..." she gulped, stumbling backwards.

Roaring loudly, the Behemoth lowered it's head down to try and headbutt Ananta. It succeeded, lifting her up with it's head and managing to toss her over it's back. Ananta landed on the ground, hard, and gasped as the wind was knocked out of her. Sitting up, Ananta scrambled to her feet and held her keyblade in her left hand. Her right hand hovered over the hilt as she stood ready to block the Behemoth's next attack. The heartless turned around and powered up a lightning spell, surrounding itself with lightning and attempting to strike Ananta. Holding her keyblade up to block the brunt of the lightning spell, Ananta shoved the lightning ball that had formed at her keyblade to the Behemoth. With a crack and a boom, the Behemoth was hit by the spell. It stumbled, slightly dazed by the lightning, leaving itself open for an attack. Ananta took this chance to jump up and leave a few good whacks before she noticed that the Behemoth had been snapped out of it's daze. Sliding down the heartless' back, Ananta jumped off it's behind to land on the floor. She then ran back towards Kross to try and keep a good distance between herself and the Behemoth. "You can go and fight any time you want, Kross." she huffed, catching her breath.

OOC: DOUBLE BP...FUNTIME? (does it ever end?!)
Heartless Killed/Injured
Behemoth (with Steel) 258/300
Behemoth (not with Steel) 216/300 (42 BP spent)

Remaining
Behemoth: 3 (2 injured) [300 BP each]
Hook Bats: 0
Wyverns: 0
Air Pirates: 0
Air Battlers: 0
Air Knockers: 0
Rapid Thrusters: 0

EXP Writer Bonus
Ananta: 1397 EXP (30 this post)
Steel: 315 EXP
Rain: 74 EXP
Kross: 302 EXP

 

Azima the Xermoth was proving to be quite the interesting foe here. This wide variety of attacks it seemed to have didn't seem to follow any sort of theme in the slightest. Just that hey, looky here, now it had a polearm. And now it fired energy attacks. And now i did other things.He was wondering just what was up with all of these behemoths. Now he had never seen a behemoth heartless before, but he was pretty sure the first one they fought was basically a regular behemoth. At least in terms of appearance. So why was it, that every behemoth there after was something absolutely ridiculous? Stratos, quite frankly, didn't really care for the answer right now. Though he did realize something, and that something was that there was absolutely no way he was going to be able to hit this thing. Due to the wider from variety of attacks than Metal Heart MOTH, Stratos had absolutely no way of approaching this thing. So what was he going to have to do? Well, what he'd like to do is put faith in one of his teammates to help fight this thing while he basically flew around and distracted it for everyone else to be able to attack it. Though really, the person he had the most faith in to attack this thing was Karina because...she did stuff.

Anyway, this behemoth seemed to be starting up another attack on nonsensical proportions. A large ring appeared in its hand, and from that ring, four blades spurted out. It then started spinning the blade around like it wasn't really anything, and then chucked the four bladed, "glaive", like thing at him. As the blade came towards him, Stratos was pretty afraid of it at first...until he realized that the behemoth had thrown it too hard in a linear direction. And since the behemoth was taller than him...well basically the blade flew right over his head. Stratos looked onward as the blade then spun back and returned to its owner like a boomerang. When the blade returned it seemed rather unimpressed at the results, and dissipated the weapon. It then did something...really unexpected. All the segments of the rock plating seemed to expand further outward, and shaped themselves together into a new ball like shape. With behemoth now being basically a ball, it just rolled at Stratos, who had to started running the hell away from it.

Of course, the ball continued to come after him, and he had no real idea what to do about it, until the ball eventually stopped Well, that was lucky. However, he didn't seem to stop with just that. It was then that the behemoth seemed to do something really weird. As it got out of its ball form, it seemed to call forth these little behemoths made of sand, that were also bipedal. However, these behemoths seemed to be toting around a spear and a shield, kind of like a hoplite or something. There was a small tether of sand that seemed to connect both the behemoth and his soldiers together. While Stratos was curious what this meant, the two sand behemoths seemed to then started just striking at him. Having to dodge roll quickly, he managed to avoid the spear strike and create some distance. He was also pretty confused as the sand behemoths did not seem to chase after him in the slightest, and just remained stationary. Eventually the sand holding them up together seemed to fall apart, and they returned to being nothing more than dust in the wind.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 602 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4320 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 5/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Azima the Xermoth: 234/300

 

Kross's lips lightly parted as a sickly yellow aura surrounded the Behemoth they were targetting. The culprit was steel, this shocked him, was he seriously going to face off against that thing alone? He knew the magic of barriers varied among persons, and this barrier had a sinister aura about it. Steel was upset, but for what reason? He learned the hard way that having a keyblade didn't make one invincible, and how was he supposed to help if he couldn't even reach out to Steel? He grit his teeth."No!" he shouted at Steel."Are you crazy? You could get yourself killed! I don't want to lose another close to me!" He shouted out, trying to reason with the stubborn boy. As anti social and quiet as Steel was, Steel was still an ally and a friend of Kross."I can't--Ah!" He gasped as someone Snagged him up, carried him bridal style away from the barrier. It was Ananta. Kross's brown eyes widened as he looked up at Ananta, putting a hand to his chest and the other gripped her, his shy nature returning full force. They got a good distance from the barrier and he looked back, seeing Steel face down the Behemoth. 'Please don't get hurt..' he thought to himself. He was placed on his feet and he had to regain his footing after the impromptu transportation. He looked at Ananta and frowned at her words."That's the thing, he may not want our help, but he NEEDS it."He said. Steel had been an ally since the Beast's castle, and he didn't want an ally to get hurt because of their recklessness and frustrations. He snapped his head at a resounded roar, coming face to face with another Behemoth. Acting on instinct, he skidded back, Ananta wasn't so lucky, being thrown behind the monster. Though she regained her footing and managed to land a series of hits on the Heartless. She went back to meet him and her words made him mutely nod. He brandished his keyblade in a stance and charged. The Behemoth stomped and tried to scoop Kross up to throw him, which was perfect. Instead of being thrown up, Kross jumped and landed on its giant maw. He used the protruding mouth as a boost to throw himself in the air. He then threw himself, shifting in mid air so he was diving upside down. He turned his head and the behemoth was right in his face. It was like a slow motion quick time event. He pointed his keyblade and a blue aura surrounded his being. "freeze!" He cried out, a pike of pure ice slammed the Behemoth's face, making it stumble back in both surprise and agony, trying to shake its daze away. This was the opportunity. Kross reached out his hand and nimbly flipped over just as he landed, on his feet he ended up and skidded a bit. He threw himself around and ran at the dazed Behemoth, jumping up and landed on its head. He poised his blade back and slashed, thwacking the horn and making the Behemoth thrash about. He threw Kross off, the mage beginning to sail through the air, panic entered his mind, he couldn't reorient himself and he would surely slam into the wall.

Spoiler: West Gate

Heartless Injured

Spoiler: West Gate

Behemoth: 38 BP spent

 

The fight between the two had continued onward, with the oncoming pressure of Azima the Xermoth to continually put Stratos on the defensive. There was virtually nothing the young keyblade wielder could do to fight against the behemoth other than stall. Seeing as there were five other people here, all far more capable fighters than he was, he believed that at least one of them would be able to help him out in this fight. Really the only one who he could understand not doing so was Karina, due to her overall exertion. Sure, they had their time to rest after their moment of talking with each other, however this behemoth had seen fit to interrupt their resting period by just sort of starting to attack them. Regardless, he would persevere against the threats that all of these behemoths clearly were. As he was thinking about this, he saw Azima continue to float there, looking as if it were higher than any other being here. He didn't realize that heartless were capable of really expressing emotions, but Shac seemed to enjoy everything it was doing, while Azima looked as if it were extremely full of itself. Well, all the more reason to bring this thing down. It was then that, despite probably happening awhile ago, Stratos then knew all about Karina's past, and why she was who she was. Well if she was sharing backstory then he probably would have to too. However, that would come for after the behemoth fight was done. For now, Stratos just had to draw its aggro away from his partner while she did the pulverizing.

Stratos quickly got on his keyglider to try and strafe around this thing and lead it away, however, before he could summon it something felt off. His body felt like it was moving way slower than, almost as if there was some sort of weird aging process within his body which made him go all the slower. It was then that Azima created his polearm again and lit up a purple light over the bladed part of it. Gripping the weapon with both hands, it proceeded to do an attack it had previously. Stratos managed to be able to force his body to preform Zantetsuken, and counter the attack in much the same way he had previously. After that had been done with, the aging effect seemed to be gone from his body, and everything seemed to be normal once more. It was then that Azima proceeded to just dissipate the polearm, but still waved his hand to the side, creating a large purple circle over the area where Stratos was standing. As light shot up from it, Stratos could feel himself getting damaged and his defense stat dropping. He thought this attack was actually pretty similar to one of Da'Ve the Voidmoth's attacks, and so he dodged it in exactly the same way he had against the aforementioned behemoth.

After dodge rolling out of the circle, he felt the pain subside and his defense stat return to normal. He then saw the energy like behemoth follow it up with hurling a ball of black and blue energy straight at him. He quickly put up his keyblade to block the strike, and while he did block a good deal of the impact, he still felt as though his body was stunned afterwards. Thankfully, Azima did not follow up with any sort of actual attack, and so Stratos was able to become unstunned and could swiftly get away from it. Now all that was left was for his partner to go in and beat the ever living shit out of it now.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 613 Words, 30 EXP
Total:4350 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 5/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Azima the Xermoth: 154/300

 

Raisor watched and waited while the final Large Body walked forward. This was going to be the last one, and then Raisor could finally work on the Morning Stars as well. Plus, he wouldn't have be hitting against a giant pinball again either. Though, maybe that might not be the case, because the Morning Stars spin around all over the place as much as the Large Bodies when they run around like mad men; or in their case, mad heartless. It wouldn't be hard to take care of this final heartless, but Raisor was wondering if it was going to be stupid like some of the others, or just completely worthless, being maybe 2 or 3 out of the stupid ones. It really didn't matter too much, but at this point, his mind was all over the place, thinking about useless things, trying to kill time.

The Large Body finally finished walking forward to face Raisor, and he wondered how it had taken it so long just to get into the circle. Maybe even for a Large Body it was out of shape? Either way, with that finally done, Raisor got ready for this final confrontation with his enemy. He didn't want it to carry on long, since he felt like getting rid of the Morning Stars quickly, but he should remember that "quickly" was relative, and in the South Side's case, it probably wasn't too quick. The Large Body finally charged forward, leaving Raisor jumping to the left to get out off the way. Unfortunately, this Large Body didn't just stop after it passed through. The Large Body kept running and managed to turn itself around, and run straight back toward Raisor. Since the other Large Bodies mostly stopped after the initial run forward, Raisor was not expecting this particular one to just do a U-Turn and keep on running. The most he had was the two Large Bodies earlier that were running around all over the place turning themselves into heartless pinballs, and that was annoying enough. If these things could actually control where they were going when running, Raisor was glad it that this last one was the only one to control itself.

Trying to see how long the Large Body would run before giving up the chase, Raisor began dodging left and right, seeing if the heartless would get tired. After about six more passes, the heartless did indeed calm down, but Raisor had to take deep breathes to make sure he didn't fall down. He was not expecting to do consecutive jumps like that, and given that he was already worn out from the rest of the day, it was not going to be fun if that continued again. Raisor figured that if the Large Body started running again, the only time to attack it would be after dodging and right before it turns around. If he could manage to dodge and turn himself in the right direction at the same time, he'd be able to attack the enemy without any problems. Thinking it was worth a shot trying instead of doing nothing, he waited for the Large Body to prepare for its next attack.

Like Raisor thought, the Large Body began to run toward him yet again, with gut out and all. There was really only going to be one good chance to do this, since if Raisor failed at the first dodge, he'd have to try and position himself again, which would not be much time before the Large Body began its turn-around. The heartless got ever closer, and Raisor prepared himself. As it neared him to the point of impact, Raisor jumped to the side, quickly twisting his body while in the jump. The heartless began to pass by him, and Raisor realized he had turned too soon, too quickly. Trying to take what chance he had, he shoved his arm and keyblade out, and let his body carry them, swinging the keyblade wide and hitting the Large Body on the back just as it passed his. In his twist, Raisor spun too hard also, it seemed, and kept spinning a few times while knocking against the heartless. It seemed to take effect though, since the Large Body began to reel from the impacts, and felll down. Raisor managed to plant his feet on the ground, but his vision kept spinning. He grabbed his head with his hands and waited a moment for his eyes to settle. After they did so, Raisor looked at the Large Body on the ground, hoping it was going to go away. Though it didn't seem so, because the Large Body because to get back up, and Raisor quickly ran on top of it and started slashing at its back, keeping it down. After a few, he jumped off, and the Large Body collapsed, then vanished. That was the last Large Body on the South Side.

Unfortunately for Raisor, that meant he had to deal with a new group of heartless; and just as he had feared, a Morning Star began to walk in to the circle to fight him. The Morning Star begun to spin and run around the circle. Raisor wasn't sure what it was planning, but he wasn't going to be turned into roadkill by this thing, that was for sure. The Morning Star kept spinning around him faster and faster, and Raisor had to stop following it with his eyes and face forward, trying to keep a beat with the times the heartless passed by him. Just as got the cues for when the Morning Star passed his ears each time, it began to spin closer, and Raisor tried to get away, but the heartless got behind him while he was moving out of the way. In an instant, the heartless popped out a giant mace on both hands and spun around at Raisor. Raisor put up his guard on one side, and managed to block the attacks, but he kept getting hit rapidly. After a second, the Morning Star stopped and began to spin the other way. Raisor tried to switch his guard, but was slightly too slow, and got hit in the side by the attack. He fell to the ground, and gripped his left side. He stung like a tree hit him, and he was not looking forward to the bruise after. While he was down, the Morning Star jumped up, and Raisor took the chance to attack. It hurt his side to move so suddenly, but he managed to get up and attack the heartless while it was in the air, and knock it down. As he dropped, he grabbed his side again in pain, and was hoping it would get numb faster.

The Morning Star got up from the attack Raisor made, and prepared to jump again. Raisor was sure he could stop it again, but he didn't want to try jumping. As the heartless jumped, he stumbled a little and moved out of the way, just in time for the Morning Star to fall down right where he was standing. In the split second after it fell, Raisor swung his keyblade with his arm backwards, and knocked the heartless as hard as he could. It was so hard, in fact, that the Morning Star got lifted off the ground and was sent flying over the Assault Riders. While flying, it began to dissipate, and the heart it held vanished. Raisor was not expecting such an effect from his attack, but maybe he figured they just became really light when they jumped or got weaker. Either way, that was one down, and a bunch more to go.

OOC: 1200+ words, 30 exp (1290 total)
Large Body - 1
Morning Star - 1

Spoiler: south side

Behemoth: 1 - (155/300)
2 (Dubbed Bertha, more names to follow) - (231/300)
3 - (299/300)
4 - (299/300)
5 - (299/300)
Defender: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Assault Rider: 7
Morning Star: 10
Shadow: CLEAR
Black fungus: 13
Bolt tower: 14
Crescendo: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR

 

Stratos was rolling around at the speed of sound, like he had places to go, and had to follow a rainbow... except he wasn't going that fast...and he wasn't rolling. Regardless, he was still flying around on his keyglider trying to not get killed by Azima the Xermoth. So this was a bit of a tricky situation as he had been able to see that it could still do even more attacks than he had previously seen, as shown with it fighting Karina. The first thing he had to be afraid of was that it was using these hyper long range attacks that were zoning him out completely. And even in close range it could still let loose a wide variety of skills against him. Man this just wasn't really fair right now. Regardless, he had to keep up his dodging antics and let Karina do her thing in order for the both of them to skillfully take down this behemoth. However, while this behemoth was aggroed onto him, it summoned more Sand Behemoth Hoplites and did something new with them. It pulled itself closer to Stratos by using its tether with sand warriors and then followed this up with a linear energy burst, knicking his glider and forcing him to fall. It was then that the sand hoplite behemoths charged forward at him, and then proceeded to stab at him once more. Stratos got up quickly and guarded against the spear strikes with his keyblade, but was still sent back by the attacks regardless. Well this seemed to be quite the fine pickle he was in. While the behemoth warriors crumpled away, Azima still looked like he was ready to kill Stratos. When all hope seemed lost, Karina came in like a wrecking ball and proceeded to bring the opponent down.

With keyblade in hand, she managed to piss the thing off enough with her variety of attacks. Though the final straw was an attack of epic proportions, one that Stratos had basically been abusing this entire match, though had stopped once he got to North Side. Man, he'd probably have to try and finish something off with it during one of these behemoth fights. Regardless, after Karina had used Trip Around the Sun against the ascended behemoth, it was now thoroughly pissed at her. Well that was good for Stratos to do his minimal damage against it. And so, he flew towards the behemoth and awaited a good time to strike. Though he didn't take long in finding this opportunity, he quickly closed the distance between the two and began his onslaught of attacks against the behemoth. Granted, he had barely anything in way of attacks, but that wasn't going to stop him here just yet. And so, he flew to the behemoth's horn and started to hit it with an air combo strike against its horn. After the third hit landed, he proceeded to chain in Vorpal Blitz, he and after that finished he proceeded to do another air combo, ending his attack string against Azima the Xermoth, he got the attention of the behemoth alright, as it turned to face him. The magus ascendant emperor behemoth then decided to attack him with just its giant crescent blade, only the blade seemed empowered now. Guarding in mid air against the attack, he was sent hurtling through the air, and felt stunned from the attack as well. Despite hitting the ground, hard, he was still in a favorable position as Azima couldn't actually follow it up with anything. After recovering, Stratos started to fly away and now had the aggro on him, allowing Karina to do stuff.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 610 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4380 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 5/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Azima the Xermoth: 76/300

 

Ananta looked up at Kross while he fought the Behemoth. He was brave and sure of himself. Obviously a far cry from Steel. However, Ananta could tell that even Kross was troubled by some things. That became apparent when she had talked with him previously. He didn't say much, but the way Kross spoke made Ananta very aware that more people than herself had pretty bad experiences on their own worlds. "I'm so dumb." she said, chuckling to herself. Looking back up, Ananta started to think. How would she be like today if she had not been tossed around by her family when she was a child? Would she be cold and not able to trust anybody else like Karina? Or would she simply be overconfident and think she was better than everyone? This troubled Ananta. It felt weird, trying to think what her life would have been like if she was just normal like everyone else on her own world. If she didn't have to grow up and be a Sage, would she still be on her world or would she be gone, along with everyone else, when the world was destroyed? It scared Ananta to think like that, and she would have rather been out fighting than being out right destroyed.

Ananta frowned at the Behemoth and joined Kross in his attacks on the heartless. While Kross was using Ice spells, Ananta would use Fire spells. A good choice, because opposite spells being used at once might actually cause there to be more damage dealt at the same time. Ananta jumped high up, around the same height as Kross, and she readied her Fire spell. As the blue aura surrounded Kross, a red aura had begun to surround Ananta. As the power, energy, and heat of the spell gathered at the tip of her keyblade, Ananta smirked. In unison, Ananta and Kross both yelled their choice of spell. "Burn!" she yelled, unleashing the Fire spell and watching the Behemoth become dazed by both of their attacks. Ananta managed to land on the head of the Behemoth, considering she had more control with how she approached the heartless, and she began to attack the large heartless' horn. Kross joined her moments later and assailed the Behemoth with his own keyblade attacks.

The Behemoth began to thrash about, causing Ananta to stab her keyblade into the Behemoth's head. A bad idea. The heartless had managed to throw Kross off, sending him sailing towards a wall. Ananta saw the panicked look on Kross' face, her heart sinking as she realized he'd be badly injured. Standing up, Ananta ran down the Behemoth's back as fast as she could. She managed to get ahead of Kross a little and so she jumped up to where he was going to hit the wall. As soon as Kross was close enough, Ananta cast an Aero spell around them. Her arms locked around Kross as she turned just enough so they would both hit the wall. When they hit the wall, Ananta looked at Kross as they began to fall. They slid down the wall and Ananta landed on her knees on the ground with Kross in front of her. Her arms still clung to him as she looked him once over. "Gotcha." she smiled, hugging him tightly. "Will you be alright? Do you need a healing?" she asked, her hands still gripping his clothing. Noticing she was still holding onto him, Ananta let go and placed her hands onto her own leg, feeling a little weak in the legs from all of this, but otherwise she was fine.

OOC: DOUBLE BP...FUNTIME? (does it ever end?!)
Heartless Killed/Injured
Behemoth (with Steel) 258/300
Behemoth (not with Steel) 136/300 (42 BP spent)

Remaining
Behemoth: 3 (2 injured) [300 BP each]
Hook Bats: 0
Wyverns: 0
Air Pirates: 0
Air Battlers: 0
Air Knockers: 0
Rapid Thrusters: 0

EXP Writer Bonus
Ananta: 1427 EXP (30 this post)
Steel: 315 EXP
Rain: 74 EXP
Kross: 329 EXP

 

Well, Beuce for whatever reason had been in some kind of stasis. He thought what could possibly be the cause of this strange phenomenon. The first thing that came to mind was the most logical and reasonable explanation. Rienzel was too lazy to post. Was this the right answer? Much like the number of licks it takes to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop, the world may never know...Or yeah that was totally the reason. Snapping out of his coma-like state, he turned to see what had to be his favorite Behemoth so far. It seemed to be some kind of combination between a bunch of ascended animal people and one lightning rock thing and it was totally badass. This strategy had worked so far, so he'd try it one more time. Racing forward, light cloaked his body, creating a protective hexagonal barrier around him and allowing him to shoulder charge into the Xermoth. However, things didn't go as he had planned. The behemoth let out an emperorly roar, and from the ground, sand spiraled upward and formed a wall of mini behemoths, each holding a shield. As Beuce crashed into them, they didn't budge, but instead simply threw him back, protecting their master.

From behind the barrier of sand behemoths, Azima let out another roar, summoning up the sand around him and transforming him into a higher form. It grew larger and more threatening. It gained a purple glow around it as the sands spiraled furiously around it, battering and wearing down anything that was unfortunate enough to be caught in their path. Wow. Beuce wasn't even mad at this point, that was just cool. Marching onward, it passed through the wall of servants which disintegrated back into the sand from whence they cam upon their leader's passing. Blasts of arcane energy rained from the sky around Azima at Beuce as it marched toward him. Its tusks began to glow with an otherworldly power shortly before they plowed into Beuce's torso, sending him flying. The wind was knocked out of his lungs from the sheer force behind the hit, and he ended up plowing into Karina, knocking both of them over. He'd expected the behemoth's attack to hurt, but not nearly that much. There was something about that glow that just increased their damage by absurd amounts. Maybe this wasn't the first fight that the behemoth had been in, and he'd been farming his Q on all kinds of things over the course of years! My god...

He was gasping for air, as all the oxygen had since left his lungs. After struggling to find his breath, he managed a few words through his panting "Sorry about that..." He said as he helped Karina back to her feet. "That thing kinda caught me off guard. It- Look out!" Beuce yelled as he tackled her to the ground. Where they had been just a moment ago, a mass of highly concentrated arcane energy crashed to the ground, creating a large explosion. Azima now hummed with pure magic magical energy, and he seemingly rooted himself to the ground to do so. Another shot was fired at their location, he grabbed Karina and rolled out of it, just barely escaping. The third shot however, wasn't going to be so easily evaded. In an act of desperation, he stood and spread his arms. The burst of energy crashed into him with intense force, causing him to cry out from the pain. Karina, however, had been spared from the hit. So, the purpose of taking the hit had been fulfilled. He dropped to one knee, obviously worn down from the damage he'd taken. Healing magic would keep him going for the moment, but the damage he'd taken was serious.

630 words
920 Exp

Spoiler: North Side

Behemoths: 5/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Azima the Xermoth: 34/300

 

Steel pulled his Umbrella and Llama Head from the base of Behemoths horn. Leaping off the Heartless head and onto the ground, he dodged another kick and ran to the side of the barrier. It was there he saw the other Behemoth smash it's head against his rather luminescent wall. He smirked to himself; now he was helping even when he wasn't acting. He turned to see The Behemoth charging towards him, so he resumed his previous plan of running up the wall. While it was a little more difficult without the momentum he had built up, it still wasn't much of a problem. He stepped just above the Behemoths head as it smashed into the wall underneath him. As it skidded back a few yards, he ran just a bit higher before doing a backflip and landing on once again on the Creatures head.

He aimed each slash precisely; covering the horn in a barrage of powerful slices. He leaped from the head once again as it made an attempt the throw him off, this time grabbing for one of the monsters tusks with his keyblade. He kicked forward as he latched on, using to the momentum to circle back towards the Behemoths face. As he came around, he stabbed his right keyblade into the Behemoths' right eye. The monster wailed in hideous agony as streams of darkness rose from the injury, sending out another sound wave that sent Steel flying against the wall. He sunk to the ground in a small heap. He took the moment to consider the situation: Of course the Behemoth would scream like that if he stabbed out its eye. He should have thought his position through a bit more thoroughly before attacking. His keyblades were still near the Behemoth, Umbrella having fallen to the ground, and Llama Head still stuck in the creature's eye. He might have pitied the creature under normal circumstances. But heartless were made of shadows, not flesh and blood; no matter how broken and bruised the heartless was, the person would be untouched upon their return. To that end, he might as well go all out.

He rose from the ground and summoned umbrella to him with a flick of his wrist. Having decided to leave Llama head where it was for now, he slowly started to stalk towards the creature, but only got in two or three steps before the creature roared again. This time, Steel watched as the sound wave hurtled toward him; the visible matter rippling chaotically with harmful message it would send to unprepared ears. For that is what sound, at its basest, was: matter. Like all matter it had physical representation, it was just too small for most people to know how to interact with. He knew how of course. He could see every grain, his mind calculating as an idea was formed. Needing a second sword, but wanting to keep Llama Head where it was, he summoned his rapier: Necrophobus. He then leaped at the soundwave and charged into it head on. As it came near, he sent a slice towards his upper left, interrupting the path of a single speck of sound. Steel increased his speed and became a slicing whirlwind within the collection of matter. Continuously hacking and slashing, he manipulated the sound waves as he saw fit. Cutting some pieces off and moving others, it eventually reached the point that Steel judged it acceptable. He backflipped again and kicked upwards. The sound moved with him, pushing outwards and causing Steel's project, a voice, to echo the word 'Screamarch' throughout the area. Steel had named the Behemoth come up with this name as a cross between the words 'Screaming' and 'Monarch.' Mainly in reference to it's dangerous voice and large size. It might now have been the most creative title, but he didn't mind that too much. Heck, there were flaming Behemoths, Clown Behemoths, and Magician Behemoths. This one was relatively normal compared to all those.

Continuing his dash towards the Screamarch, he leaped forward and stabbed Necrophobus into it's remaining eye, dodging to the side as it unleashed another furious roar. He rolled back into a standing position when he hit the ground and clenched his empty fist, causing Necrophobus to vanish from the existence with a small explosion of black smoke, slightly damaging the Heartless. He summoned Llama head back to his right hand as he finally took a moment to consider his comrades actions. Kross and Ananta both seemed particularly upset that he had locked himself in for a cage match with Screamarch; as was to be expected. He didn't know exactly what they saw in what he had done, but it didn't really matter right now; what's done is done. He started this, so he would see it through to the end. He felt a little bad about it: he had been rather spontaneous about all this and they didn't know what they did wrong at all. Nevertheless, closure between the three if them would have to come later. This was just something he had to do; he had set out to learn from his prior mistakes. If he just up and went back now, nothing would change much.

He brought his attention back to the Screamarch. It was temporarily blinded thanks to him, though the dark energy would likely regenerate the eyes soon enough. In the meantime, it was screeching aimlessly in multiple directions, trying fruitlessly to find Steel. Dodging a sound wave that nearly hit him, Steel ran around to the creatures back, like one does with Behemoth type heartless. When he jumped onto it and the horn was in sight, he threw both keyblades towards it. They span rapidly and cut across the target before returning to his hand. He then ran forward and resorted to stabbing his keyblades in again, only this time, he twisted them as he pushed deeper, creating a gaping wound in the heartless head. He pulled the keyblades back out and once again leaped from the creatures head as it plummeted towards the ground.

OOC:
Words: 1,015
EXP (Post): 30 (MAX)
EXP (Total): 345
42 BP spent on Screamarch

 

Spoiler: Beuce Dies

Stratos had continued flying around, trying to make sure this behemoth didn't do anything to his partner while she got ready to attack. And so, with the plan set in motion, Stratos continued flying around, taunting the opponent as he went. Azima the Xermoth seemed to completely want to destroy Stratos, and so all he could really do about this was not die. Simple enough, really. Azima, though started off going really strong on him. Raising its arms to the air like it just couldn't care, it first sent out this giant death bolt of white and blue energy straight at Stratos, just as it had normally. However, Stratos was able to continue seeing the path of where the linear burst was going to go, and thus he could completely avoid the strike. It was then that the behemoth followed up with creating a small circle around him, and letting loose a meteor of arcane energy drop from the ceiling and towards the center of the circle. Thankfully, Stratos had managed to completely avoid the strike by...not even entering the circle in the first place.Well that was lucky of him. Though, he knew that the fight wasn't just over yet, and that'd there'd be more strikes to evade coming up next.

It was then that the attacks started coming from his partne- actually it was Beuce. Well that was really unexpected. He watched as Beuce came in, only to get completely shut down by Azima's next skill. It created a wall of phalanx sand behemoths, pushing the keyblade wielder back and knocking him away. It then let loose a strike that seemed exactly the same as the one it had used previously with a polearm, only with its tusks this time. Hitting Beuce away, Stratos continued to watch in horror as both of his teammates seemed to be getting a barrage of raw energy attacks flung at them, it was then that using his own body as a shield he managed to spare Karina from taking a hit. Watching the scene happen before him, Stratos was only able to stand there in silence. Was this the extent of what he could actually do? Maybe Karina was right in the fact that he couldn't save everyone. And maybe he was wrong for thinking that he could save a single person. After all, he was nothing more than a puppy in a pack of wolves.

However, none of that mattered anymore. The entire scene had rattled him and sort of broke his calm demeanor. The expression on his face seemed to be blank, but pure rage was filled in the eyes of this young keyblade wielder. His entire body felt dumb to the world around and suddenly he had some sort of tunnel vision happen, as all he could see before him was Azima the Xermoth. The others didn't quite matter right now. What mattered was the fact that this behemoth was trying and succeeding in hurting his comrades. Thinking back on it, this same sort of thing happened to Karina earlier, though he was too busy fighting to realize what had happened. To realize fully how he had nearly failed at his single goal. So it wasn't quite Azima to blame for this situation. It was the entire behemoth race as a whole. They were nothing more than detestable beings that needed to be killed if everyone was ever going to be safe. He flung the keyglider out from under him at Azima, grabbing the attention of the behemoth and having it turn to face the keyblade wielder. He stared directly into its eyes, with nothing but a feeling of malice being directed towards the being. If he couldn't save everyone from them, than maybe he could get revenge for them.

Spoiler: The Empire Got Struck Back

The finale between the keyblade wielders and Azima the Xermoth had begun. The behemoth, was still glowing in a purple light and had grown much large than before, decided to ascend ever higher. It grew larger, even more so than it already was, and even more changed about it. It's ancient rock like plating that seemed to cover it seemed to grow scales over it, and a larger dust storm seemed to gather around the ascended behemoth. While it had looked far more terrifying than before, Stratos continued to just stand there on his keyglider, unflinching and undeterred. The behemoth, having become much larger than normal, than spawned in its pole arm weapon that it had been using thus far. It empowered the head of the blade with a purple light as it brought the blade into the air, gripping the handle with both hands. The attack seemed to have only grown stronger in terms of raw strength, and single hit from this would surely mean the end of Stratos.

The boy still didn't seem to have a change in expression as the blade was fully raised and about to come down on him. Stratos raised one of his hands, with his heart blazing with some sort of raw energy. A mini sun seemed to form in his palm, though the boy just stood there with that attack in his hand, ready to collide with something. As Azima the Xermoth brought the axe head down, Stratos simply put his hand with the sun in it to intercept the blade. As the large glowing weapon landed with his Trip Around the Sun, the sun exploded into a large dazzling and brilliant golden and red color, flaring all over the place. The sun seemed to expand so that it only enveloped the blade, and as Azima pulled the handle out of the sun, it was actually surprised to see the results of the attack. His axe head was no more, and with that, the pole arm had effectively become useless. Having taken such a large amount of damage from the attack, the pole of the weapon started to grey and crumble away into nothing more than dust in the wind, never to be used by this behemoth again.

As Stratos stared at the creature, completely unimpressed by the display, Azima seemed to become enraged at the act that the boy had just done. Azima called forth its second close ranged weapon. The crescent shape blade radiated with purple light and was much much large than before, it too being affected by the ascended state of all the behemoth. Azima was no longer trying to show off and thus it did a spining strike to cleave the boy in two right from the get go. However, Stratos had managed to jumped off of his keyglider and land on the blade as it was spinning around. The behemoth seemed stunned at the display of reaction timing, but Stratos remained stoic as he landed on the blade. He then raised his hand to the sky and in a flash of light, his keyblade had returned to his hand. With crimson rose petals falling from the sky, as opposed to the usual cherry blossoms, Stratos looked at the blade he was on and spotted what he needed to see. In a single, blindingly fast strike, he had managed to split the blade in two, with it suffering from the same fate as the pole arm, crumbling into nothing more than dust in the wind.

Due to his action, though, Stratos had started to free fall, only for him to summon his keyglider back from underneath him. He then created a short amount of distance between both him and the behemoth. His stoic, yet enraged, face continued to stare deep at the behemoth. The boy who had absolutely no strength, the weakest of the lot, seemed to be tearing all of its tools apart. Azima actually seemed to be somewhat frightened of the mouse it had backed into the corner, and thinking that he was going to try some sort of technique on his keyglider, he called forth the legion of sand warriors he had used earlier. Creating a clear divide of shields out of the sand behemoth phalanx, the behemoth had felt fully safe from his attacker. However, the keyblade wielder didn't seem to care about the wall at all. In fact, something strange had happened again. The blood red petals started falling once more, and Stratos seemed to get ready to attack once more. The only thing that this behemoth couldn't stop with that wall was an unstoppable dash. And with that, Stratos had appeared on the other side of the behemoth, keyblade now in hand, with a giant slash going through the behemoth.

He watched as Azima seemed to be in some sort of shocking agony from the singular strike, and started to erupt with energy every which way. The purple aura it had gained, the sandstorm that was trailing around it and its massive size increase all seemed to dissipate as the behemoth's stone plating skin seemed to close in on itself. When the plated had all been joined back together once more, they grew black, letting out wisps of smoke from them. The behemoth slowly melted into nothing more than a pool of darkness and black smog, as its heart seemed to fly out from it and ascend to the sky above. Just like all other hearts before it had, this one soon seemed to be collected by some sort of dark smog and vanished. The other large quantities of darkness spawned from this behemoth all seemed to disappear as well, leaving Stratos as the victor against Azima the Xermoth, and dwindling the behemoth number to under half of their original amount at North Side.

Spoiler: The Backstory Stuff

Stratos, however, was not feeling alright after the fight had been finished. In fact, in his blind fury, he forgot to not do something that he had previously decided on. He had used Zantetsuken twice in a row without worrying about its cool down in the slightest. And so he started to gasp for air as he collapsed to the ground. The fatigue was starting to get to him, but his job was far from over. There were still more heartless that needed to be slain, and so he had to pick himself back up once more. It was then that he looked over to see that both Beuce and Karina were still alive, and while the former was a little worse for wear, were somewhat fine. Picking up his raging inferno of a sore body and dragging it over to the two, he sluggishly cast cure on both of the wielders, though didn't have enough MP for himself to do so. He soon collapsed onto the ground near them and was wheezing pretty hard. It took him a bit to catch his breath, but when he did, he managed to turn himself over and look at both of the party members.

"So," his words were more directed towards Karina, "you kept wondering as to why I refuse to let anyone here die. It's much simpler than I tried to make it sound, seeing as I was trying to individualize rather than just give you the core of the ideal." He sighed as he recounted memories of his world and said, "so I guess you could say my situation back home was one that belongs in fairy tales and the like. With my world being constantly engulfed in a never ending war, a boy who appeared out of nowhere toting a magical weapon is pretty darn special. So special that everyone expects something of you. There's a certain standard you have to meet as a sort of hero figure. The only problem was," he gestured at his clear fatigue, "I'm pretty weak. No matter who needed help or where, I couldn't do anything to help anyone. Despite whatever made me special, my life was only answered in failure." The image of a masked man with some sort of gleeful darkness behind it continued to haunt him as he said this, "and so when I left to try and help all the other worlds out, I guess I had gotten sick of all of my failure, and figured that if I truly tried my hardest here, that maybe I could be successful in that goal." He sighed finishing saying, "but I'm not entirely sure how well that's worked out here."

OOC:
EXP Writer: 2054 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4410 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 4/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:

 

Stratos was lying there on the ground. Well he had dun fucked up here. Looked like if he was ever to do anything himself than he seemed to have to put all of his being into just a single fight. Granted, that wasn't even entirely all him. Really without Karina or Beuce that fight would've ended poorly, well more so than it already did, for the young keyblade wielder. He was lying with his back on the ground, staring at the ceiling. His vision was slightly foggy and he could barely get any sort of focus no matter how hard he tried. Drenched in sweat, he simply heaving from the overall exertion he had put on his body. He had known what he was doing was stupid, but just like Karina, he lost himself in his rage. He put way too much into fighting Azima and now he was paying the price. His muscles were screaming at him, continually reminding him of what he had just done. Well, this was a problem. In his fatigue he turned over to see that Karina had also broken back out into a rage like fit and had started pounding on another behemoth.

He could hardly blame her or try to dissuade her at this point. If he did, he'd probably look like some sort of hypocrite, that is if he didn't already. But as things stood, he couldn't just lie down and wait for everyone else to do all the fighting. He needed to get back into the action to help everyone, though in his current state he was doubtful of how much that'd actually be. Regardless, he started to get back on his feet rather shakily, and looked onward. He stumbled a bit as he finally managed to stand up, and had to use his keyblade as a support to keep him from falling. Damn this was terrible. He had no strength to fight, even if he really wanted to now. There was no way he could help out Karina in this state. If anything he'd just get in the way, get injured, and cause some sort of break down again. Well that was a huge problem. He couldn't just stand back and do nothing though. After all this time that he had fought for, to be done in by his own over exertion. Pretty funny when you think about it. It was as he was beginning to give up on himself, that he felt another force from within just cast cure on him. No, this wasn't just cure. This was something way stronger. Overall, he was pretty confused as to where it came from, but it felt like it had been given to him with the same sort of annoyance that the voice from earlier spoke with.

Regardless, his body felt like it could, at the very least, move again, and Stratos was ready to get back into the fight. Looking forward he saw the behemoth before him to be something of a different one. Its body was that one of that seemed to be almost ghastly in apperance, being made of some dead looking black gray material, and its innards to be quite like Azima's. In that there was no physical presence within them. In fact, the only thing within the behemoth was some sort of large green fiery mass, and the behemoth seemed to have some sort of extremely haunting aura to it. Keys jingling on its waist, because it had those for some reason, this behemoth seemed to be one that felt as though it wanted to detain them more than catch them. Stratos imagined a raven perched on its shoulder for a second, but quickly shook the notion of that being there away.

As Stratos walked over he didn't really know what to say to his teammate. There were no words that came to mind, no matter how hard he tried to think of them, and it was probably one of the worst feelings he had had in awhile. All he could really say was, "I'll take the aggro now." All that he needed to do now was fight and kill these behemoths. That was it. If he could do that, then he could hopefully not let anyone die. Though, he wasn't entirely in charge of what these behemoths did, as evident of what happened to Beuce, he could do his best to try and make sure that no one else had to take any punishment from them. With this sort of mindset there, he quickly got on his keyglider and took off towards the new behemoth. He flung his keyglider out from under him, knocking it into the face of the the behemoth and drawing its attention away from whatever it was paying attention to before.

The behemoth created a chain from its arm, with the end of the chain holding a sickle there. The chained weapon seemed to be extremely large, and this was proved further when it tried to strike Stratos down with the weapon.The attack seemed to come at him extremely fast, though thankfully he was able to use his keyglider to block the attack in time. The chain then seemed to recede back into the ghastly flame and Stratos noticed something about this behemoth. It had the ability to use its arms...but it was also on four legs. What the hell was this thing? Regardless of that answer, the behemoth created a large glaive in his hand, (the actual pole arm kind,) and then let loose a roar and started to charge at Stratos. He knew behemoths were fast, but this one seemed to be outpacing his keyglider, which only Derpy had done thus far. As the ghastly behemoth closed in, it leaped at Stratos, who responded to the attack by flinging his keyglider at the blade. This caused the behemoth to simply swat away the glider instead of its rider, and so Stratos was able to warp his vehicle back and fly away to safety.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 1007 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4440 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 4/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Thrisle the Wardmoth: 222/300

 

Beuce watched as Karina began to panic, asking over and over why he would save her. Well, Beuce knew the answer right away. He looked over to see an enraged Stratos laying into Azima. With Zantetsuken, he had managed to breach the wall of soldiers and destroy the sand behemoth, who faded into darkness as all other behemoths did. Stratos looked like he was worse for the wear from that fight, He had to be slowing down. Yet, he cast a cure spell on Karina and he. "Heh. We're all gonna get ourselves killed protecting each other..." He said under his breath as he stumbled to his feet. With the cure spell, at least he was in a condition where his injuries weren't screaming at him to lay down on the floor and stop trying. He got up, and that was what mattered. Walking over to where the fight was going on as best he could, he listened to Stratos' story. Honestly he felt sorry for the poor kid. For him, the keyblade had been a blessing. His invitation to the lime light, but for Stratos, he can only imagine what a curse it must have been.

"You want to know why i saved you?" He said, reaching Karina's location. "Why you? You think your life isn't worth anything, so why did i risk my own to stop you from losing it? Well the answer to that is pretty simple." He said, summoning his keyblade to him once more. "Because we're the same. I can see it in your eyes." He told her in a sincere voice. A look in her eyes had caused him to take the blast of arcane energy for him. However, if she wanted him to elaborate, she wouldn't get the chance to ask. Before anything else could be said, a bolt of light shot past his head. What was that? He turned to see a second behemoth, on top of Thrisle the Wardmoth, attacking them. Well, that was a first. You'd think they would have done that more often. This behemoth held in its arm hoof things two white rectangular pistols in its hands. This behemoth too was solid black, however, in a different way than the spectral one. While the spectral behemoth looked more like it was wearing a ghostly robe of some sort, this behemoth had its skin that color. It was either black or a really dark brown. A second shot was fired at him, which he dodged. "Looks like we've got company...If you two can handle the other one, i'll do what i can to take on this one. Although, it might not work out that way if they work together." Beuce cautioned.

His words seemed to ring true. The battle carried on for a few moments, Beuce dodged a couple of shots as he returned them with strike raids of his own. Occasionally, he came into melee range and swiped at the behemoth a few times, but it evaded the attacks with some kind of short range dash. That was odd. As soon as he went forward to attack the gun wielding behemoth again, a lantern flew across the north side and landed next to it, granting it a shield of some kind. It didn't look very strong, but upon grabbing the light source, the dark skinned behemoth was immediately whisked away toward the first behemoth and landed firmly next to it. It gave the other a glare, as though it had some dislike for it, while the other just seemed plain sadistic. If there was bad blood between them, that would be their downfall.

606 words

950 exp

Spoiler: North end

Behemoths: 4/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Thrisle the Wardmoth: 222/300
Lucda the Purimoth: 258/300

 

In the time Kel had spent doing well nothing really, things had taken quite a turn, both positive and negative. Two behemoth were successfully taken out which was a good thing and Beuce had gotten himself injured while protecting Karina. Karina didn't react all t well to that and who could blame her. While she wasn't the most problematic person that Kel has ever worked with, her general attitude was an issue at times, doesn't help that there have been some other influences aside from whatever makes Karina like she is, it was clear that someone deep inside her she actually cared about other people. Why else would she attack the behemoth responsible for injuring Beuce. It may have been in blind rage, but least it wasn't caused by something stupid or someone doing something stupid.

Now that Kel's lazy break was hopefully over (provided Moksha doesn't get distracted/procrastinates posting) it was time for him to re join the battle. HIs timing couldn't have been any more perfect for he'd just saw the new behemoths that they'd be facing. One of which was wielding was appeared to be a sickle it its hand. That would definitely increase the range of its attacks so it would be something to look out for. Then came the behemoth...sitting on top of the other one. Okay? The behemoths really did start to get weirder once Karina and Stratos had arrived. Whatever. This one appeared to have two different pistols in each hand. Least its body wasn't white, then would be a curious idea as to what else it could do. Of course, Kel didn't want to face the possibility he was thinking of. As the second shot was fired towards Beuce, Kel took this chance to join along side the other wielders.

Four of them and two behemoths sitting atop one another. fighting them two on one would probably be the best idea at this point. Though that could be a difficult seeing as how they were on top each other. If they could separate the two of them from each other, then things might be easier for the four of them. "Sorry for doing well doing for a bit, though it seems like I picked a good time to get back into the fight. " Beuce was the first person to move in and attack the gun wielding behemoths in which it revealed some interesting and unexpected abilities that it possessed. Short range dashing and apparently teleportation with the aid of a lantern. Both of which would be annoying to deal with, even more so if you facing them alone so Kel then ran over to where he two behemoths were. HIs actions hadn't gone unnoticed for the gun wilding behemoth had noticed him and fired off two well timed shot. The first one Kel was able to dodge, but at the rate the other one was heading for him, he didn't have enough time to dodge it. So he quickly summoned his keyblade in front of him to deflect the bullet. Fortunately it seemed that the behemoth could only fire two shots before having to reload, that would give not only Kel, but mostly the others an opening that they could exploit to defeat the foe. As soon as Kel had gotten within range, he leapt into the air and prepared to strike the heartless. Despite how many hits that he could deal to the heartless, he'd only managed to get in two hits before its dashed backwards. As annoying as that was, and would most likely be, Kel didn't let that stop him from charging at the heartless once more. Still despite knowing of a potential opening that the heartless left them, there was still two variables that he hadn't accounted for. One was the other behemoth, who'd fortunately hadn't attacked him at all while he was fighting the other behemoth and the other was the reload time the gun wielding behemoth took. Kel was about to attack it once more right when the barrel of the white gun was aimed right at him. The blue haired wielder stopped dead in his tracks before leaping back away from the two shots that were fired towards him. Yet another problem to deal with while facing this behemoth, but least it was still something that he could deal with so long as he paid attention to it.

OOC:
Words: 735
EXP: 30 Total: 648
Injured: Lucda the Purimoth - 44 BP dealt

 

Okay, so things had gotten a lot weirder as Stratos was flying around, trying to distract Thrisle the Wardmoth. Sometime in between him having to dodge between all of the sickle attacks, that Beuce had joined the fray once more. Well it was good to see that he was back in the job. However, with him came a new behemoth. It was a dark skinned behemoth, bipedal as well. Well that seemed to be the new standard of the behemoths. Ones that walked on all fours were just not in style anymore. Though looking at Thrisle,he supposed that all fours wasn't really all their legs that they could have either. However, despite this, he still looked onward at the new enemy. Within both of its claw hands, it held two pistols, that seemed to be capable of firing bullets made of raw light. Well that seemed to be pretty interesting. It was then that the boy watched as someone else joined the fray. Someone he was expecting just as much, maybe less than, Beuce rejoining in. It was Kel. Well, with the four wielders now against these two behemoths, there was nothing that could stop them. Stratos flew over to the trio of keyblade wielders.

As he got next to them he said, "okay, so I'm just guessing here, but I'm pretty sure the big guy with the twin guns is the main damaging threat. So all we need to do is get rid of him first. However, based on the skill set of the spectral one, it's probably going to try and keep it alive as best as possible. So one way we could do this is have them get tunnel vision essentially. Just one of us going in and making it so that they focus so much on that one person that they forget to keep track of the others." Thinking about it he said, "our best bet for that kind of a person would be someone who doesn't deal all that much damage and who has knack for pissing off heartless." He then looked at the three of them, and then the realization hit him harder than his palm to his face possibly could have. Sighing he remained on his keyglider and said, "welp, I shall do my job to best of my ability, so good luck on the damage front." With that, he saluted the trio of keyblade wielders and flew off into the sunset...or just imminent destruction. Either one worked really.

So anyway, Stratos had now decided to go along with his own plan in which he had inadvertently assigned himself as live bait. Well this wouldn't be the first time, however it would be the first time he did this against two behemoths at once. So anyway, he quickly flew over to them and decided to start things off with a bang. Letting his heart flare up, he quickly had a mini sun form in the palm of his hand, and then threw it straight at the behemoth with the guns. It quickly shot the solar flare out of the air with a twin burst of light from its guns but it had managed to still engulf the both of them and damage them. He then saw the spectral one start to swing its chain sickle around and threw it straight at Stratos. The hook then got around the keyglider, and he could feel a tug on it. He then jumped off the keyglider forseeing a terrible attack, only to proven right as the behemoth pulled itself towards the keyglider. Well that was terrifying. Warping the keyglider back to beneath his feet he quickly took off with the Purimoth and Wardmoth in hot pursuit.

OOC:
EXP Writer: 622 Words, 30 EXP
Total: 4470 EXP

Spoiler: North Side List

Behemoths: 4/10
Red Nocturnes: CLEAR
Blue Rhapsody: CLEAR
Yellow Opera: CLEAR
Green Requiem: CLEAR
Shadow: CLEAR
Soldier: CLEAR
Large body: CLEAR
Trick ghost: CLEAR
Book master: CLEAR
Surveillance robots: CLEAR

Injuries:
Thrisle the Wardmoth: 202/300
Lucda the Purimoth: 200/300

 

Kaida listened to Max's explanation and she could understand where he was coming from. Picking up other people's slack tended to be common for her anyway and since he wasn't doing anything wrong (in fact he was doing more good than harm) she had no problem with it. When he told her to follow him because it wasn't the ideal place to talk, she kept her keyblade out in case anything showed up and ran after Max, following him to wherever hangout he intended to bring her.