DART
As Rinku cradled his arm, wondering about the condition of his enemy, he would be given a very quick answer.
With a rumble and a crash, a man-sized fireball burst out of the ground, spraying rock debris all around him before he stopped in the air, wings splaying out at either side of him, attention falling on the demon.
It appeared like half of the dragoon armor had been shredded apart in the blast, exposing most of Dart’s upper torso and his entire right arm, the skin appearing actually blackened. Half of his face covered in the same darkness as well, right eye booodshot, half of his hair missing. He certainly looked worse for wear, but the Red Warrior wasn’t acting like it.
Dart was the kind of person to fight with every ounce of his strength, even if it all ran out. No amount of damage or fatigue would keep him down for long, not when he was fighting someone he believed evil. The only way to stop him was to kill him.
He’d probably be a lot more chill if Rinku hadn’t revealed his true nature.
“NO RUNNING!” The dragon’s voice boomed before he suddenly zipped down, smashing into the earth with the intent to squash Rinku under the pressure of his weight and the edge of his blade. If the boy were to evade, the ground would erupt with brief kinetic energy around Dart, bursting air outward around him as the already ruined ground split open into a small fissure, jagged rocks flinging up around it and likely into Rinku’s face.
♬♪ The game is over ♬♪
Despite his tenacity, it was clearly evident that Dart was just a bit slower, his hits just a bit weaker. He was slowing down, but with his dragoon form active, that didn’t bring him all the way back down to his base form’s level.
Before Rinku’s eyes, the broken armor would begin to shift and meld, pieces extending like ribs to fill its broken shell. The armor was regenerating itself as though it were living tissue, sealing over the wound created, which would leave only Dart’s head exposed like before, minimizing an area of weakness.
♬♪ No more rounds to play, it’s to pay
Who’s got the joker? ♬♪
Bursting with his weight again, the dragoon would deliver a rapid series of blows meant to overwhelm the boy and finish him off, though for the moment, Dart was holding back his magic. He had a move on standby should Rinku overcome this challenge. A final rush to end this fight, once and for all as far as he was concerned.
KASSANDRA
Some kind of great lizard (no doubt a dragon, given the called out name) made of the same energy Nótt had been blasting around manifested, swooping up vigor. The Spartan took a brief step back, narrowing her eyes up at it. The Sword of Perseus had proven effective against this energy, but she doubted she could simply deflect this one. She’d need to put a little more oomph into this.
As the dragon rushed down, swinging its claws with the intent to main and overpower, Kassandra boosted herself upward in a slight twirl as she too slashed - and cut through the energy with her sword, splitting open the claw and disabling the attack against her, before she completed her spin, throwing the Sword of Perseus like a javelin.
With surprising accuracy (given she had tagged Nótt with he eagle vision), the sword pierced through the form of the dragon, launching through straight as an arrow toward Nótt’s skull, no doubt a surprise when the sword would emerge from the dragon’s back, the entire transaction a very rapid one.
upon landing, Kassandra could feel a third charge nearly built back up. Perfect. Once it was full, she could even the odds a little.
NEPHTHYS
Move after move, play after play, Yami Bakura sure couldn’t shut up. This particular play went on a little longer than the others, and to be honest… the gardevoir had no interest in just standing around politely waiting for him to finish.
With Fearful Earthbound out of the picture, and Kirin now present, Nephthys immediately disposed her idea of justice upon the Raptor-killing goon she so dearly despised. Splitting her glaive down the middle, she hurled either end through the air. They honed in on the skeleton-bound Morphing Jar from two angles, aiming to cleave it in half before the glaive would reassemble inside of it, and just for good measure, spin like a helicopter’s blade to finish the job if it already hadn’t before it flipped back to the gardevoir’s hands.
All in time for the Dark Ruler to get a considerable power-up, and for a Kirin to lose access to her septima. Neph had been banking on that power, and despite her slowly gnawing exhaustion beginning to catch up with her, she overpowered it.
“I hate this card game!” Kirin called. Nephthys very much agreed, but at the moment, it was still allowing her to have boosted power.
<Stay focused,> she told Kirin. <The plan is to exhaust Bakura’s arsenal. He will crumble without his toys to play with. He may believe he still remains in control, but once he reveals his true form, your septima will seal his power away and render him helpless.>
With that out of the way, the Dark Ruler sneered before charging up an attack. His power had increased enough that it was likely equal to the gardevoir, if her math was right. She needed a better method to put that guy out of the game.
Drawing in a deep breath, Nephthys closed her eyes, stabbing the glaive into the ground beside her and brining her hands together in front of her chest, just above her empathy horn.
As this was going on, whether the Morphing Jar had survived the gardevoir’s attack or not, Sans the skeleton would quite suddenly vanish, appearing instead beside the marshtomp just as Empress Judge was moving in. And then she moved toward them. Before she moved forward.
…She rushed forward.
…Didn’t she already do that?
And she was still moving toward them…
Every time the judge got nearer, she would suddenly appear right back where she began as though she hadn’t moved at all, the skeleton’s eye flashing a brief yellow every time this happened.
With a wide grin, the (considerably shorter) OTHER judge reached into his jacket and pulled out what seemed to be a hotdog, ketchup squiggled over the top of it. One end of it seemed to have two nubs resembling ears, with the folded parts of the meat resembling a cat’s face. Steam was rising from it, as though it had just been pulled fresh off the grill. Holding it out to Marshtomp, Sans winked. “here you go, pal, this’ll heal you up. it’s my last hotcat, but uhhh, i think you’ll get better mileage out of it than me.”
<Everyone may want to get back,> Nephthys projected to her allies before parting her hands with a cold hard stare forward, a small black dot appearing between her palms. As she widened the gap between her hands, so too did the gravity well widen, growing larger and larger - before the Dark Ruler’s beam came forth…
And…
It was swallowed by the void.
The gardevoir’s most powerful ability are up the attack, empowering it further as the black hole tripled in size. The room began to shake and shudder as debris from every corner of the battlefield became swallowed up in the expansive maw. Her eyes flared a bright magenta as violet energy began to crackle out of the void.
“GAAAR…” she grit her teeth. “DE-VOIR!!!”
The black hole lurched forward, space warping around it as excess energy poured from it in the shape of purple lightning bolts that shuddered out of it, a few heading for the Empress Judge.
The black hole roared, closing in on the Dark Ruler to swallow him whole. Whether it succeeded or not didn’t matter, as the black hole would surge forth toward Bakura - before suddenly erupting in a spherical explosion of vibrant purple light, no doubt engulfing the bastard and his Dark Ruler.
With a huff, the gardevoir dropped to her knees, wincing, her chest rising and falling quickly. That had to have been enough to put that cocky SOB on the back foot. It had to be enough to give them an opening, for Kirin to regain her septima and seal away the evil power for good.
IRNANE
Kirin collapsed after wobbling a second time. The dunmer woman stared down at her, before awkwardly crouching and repositioning the priestess into a less compromising position. “There. Now it looks like she’s sleeping, like the others.”
She paused, her gaze turning briefly upon Rex Eaptor, who had remained in a compromising position this entire time.
…
She moved toward him and made him more comfortable as well, giving his beanie a small pat before she stood back up, turning now toward Chai.
“You have a talking automaton feline,” she noted. “We have unmanned machines and chatty cats in my world, but never combined. Is she your boss? She seems to have some command over you.”
