Fite 71- Breakfast of Brawl Champions (FITE WEEK 2! General Cleft vs. Doomrider)

We’ve reached the middle of FITE WEEK 2, so what better way to celebrate this middle point than a bout between champions? The recent winner of the Big Bar Brawl 3 never got to take a crack at the previous Brawl’s champion, so he has issued a challenge to prove once and for all who really is more deserving of our praise and admiration. General Cleft, the Patriotic Pebble, the Raging Rock with a Revolver, and current undefeated Big Bar Brawl champion shall be fiting the Prince of Pleasure, the Ruler of Revelry, and former champion of the Brawl, Doomrider!

Let’s get it on!

For a battle between two brawl champions, we decided to have our holosseum take us back to a simpler time and a simpler arena. Tonight’s fite shall be in a faithful adaptation of the arena from the original Big Bar Brawl, with all the anthills, chunks of missing reality, and pony-created tornadoes such an arena entails. Since our battle is between champions, our two fiters shall enter the arena like champions.

General Cleft comes on the scene clad in a star spangled robe and an Uncle Sam hat. Hail to the Chief blasts over the arena speakers as Cleft showboats as best he can without hands to move or muscles to flex. Cleft twirls his Diamondback revolver confidently, but as his entrance music peters out, a few assistants take the robe and hat out of the arena. Cleft didn’t want symbols of his nation getting tarnished in this match. Doomrider’s entrance is a lot less patriotic and a whole lot more crazy. A burst of purple flames erupts and ushers in a few demonic imps who carry in a banner with Doomrider’s face on it. Rather than crashing through the banner like a high school football team, the servant of Slaanesh bursts forward from a portal in the open mouth of the painted face. Doomrider stands atop his bike, giving the devil horns as his bike tears through the dirt of the arena, leaving behind a trail of crystal meth.

Cleft grimaces at the indulgent display, but Doomrider is forced to cool his jets for a moment as Refbot insists that both fiters be still until the match begins. Doomrider lies across his bike on his side, waiting for the announcement of the fite so he could get back to being Doomrider. Refbot drags out the opening a bit longer than usual as if to spite Doomrider, but eventually the robot signals for the match to officially begin!

Cleft wastes no time as he fires all six chambered shots of his revolver directly at Doomrider, but the Daemon prince sees the fired shots more as a challenge of his skill rather than a direct attack. Doomrider’s head jerks around at break neck speeds, his neck moving about illogically so that Doomrider could bite down on each bullet as it came towards him. The Daemon Prince grins, revealing that all six bullets had been caught between his pointed teeth. The bullets look like metal fillings now that they were crushed into Doomrider’s gums. Cleft hastily tries to load a new clip into his revolver, but the servant of Slaanesh whips his tongue between his teeth to dislodge the bullets and spits them at Cleft like they were watermelon seeds.

Unlike watermelon seeds, the bullets were spit out with enough force to embed themselves into the rock hard hide of the general and make him look like he has a strange cluster of metallic freckles. The Moon Cleft is surprised how quickly his hide has been compromised, so instead of providing the rider with more bullets to spit back, General Cleft charges forward for a physical assault. Doomrider pulls a purple cloak out of thin air and dangles it in front of the general, and as if he was the bull in a bull fight, Cleft runs right through it. Doomrider zips around Cleft on his bike, still dangling the cloak and now shouting “Toro! Toro!” The rock was not happy to have missed his opponent the first time, but now that his opponent was speaking the language of another country, he is furious. The General charges towards the cloak again, but he deviates his path so instead of passing through the purple cloth, he slams his spiked head right into the wheel of the Daemon Prince’s bike.

The normally tough wheel of the bike begin to spew out a smoky steam of air, causing the General to back off to avoid what smelled like an illegally smoked substance spraying out of the rear tire. Doomrider hopped off his bike to investigate the leak, and realizing it was such a tiny hole, he quickly mended it with a blast of warp energy. During this brief moment of demonic bike repair, Cleft pulled up his gun once more. A frontal assault would lead to more bullet spray coming back at him, but the demon rider shouldn’t be able to pull the same trick with his back turned. Cleft unloaded his gun once more, the bullets embedding themselves in the back armor of the rider. The armor was too tough to penetrate though, and Doomrider didn’t even realize he had been shot. Cleft reloads his revolver yet again, and when Doomrider turns around to resume the fite, he is disappointed to see his rocky opponent trying to use the revolver again.

“You need to loosen up man. This fite can be so much more if you get creative!” Doomrider’s sentence is punctuated with an explosion coming from his bike’s many exhaust pipes. Geysers of cocaine spray out of the bike’s pipes, no doubt meant for the General to consume so he could relax and get some “inspiration”. Cleft is not amused by this though. He tries to back away from the fountain of cocaine, but as the powder begins to rain down all around the arena, the General realizes that there will be no escape from the cocaine downpour. Cleft saw nowhere safe from the encroaching tide of coke, but he still tried to escape the powder by fleeing out into the arena. The tornadoes were now full of cocaine as they spun around the increasingly white arena, but the General reasoned that a tornado would be a much safer place from accidental drug consumption than being buried beneath kilos of the stuff. Cleft leaps into a tornado, and Doomrider shuts off his cocaine fountain in response. His bike returns to its normal state, although it is coated in the white stuff. The Daemon prince quickly licks the important parts of his bike clean of the drug and then roars off after Cleft, giddy at the prospect of fiting in a cocaine tornado.

Cleft is not quite as happy to be in one though. He has no control over the direction he spins in the tornado, so he is understandably quite grumpy when Doomrider drives into the cyclone and shows off by flying by on his bike like the Wicked Witch of the East. Doomrider spins around in the air completely oblivious to the force of the tornado, but eventually the cyclone spits Cleft back out and into the arena, the entire floor coated with cocaine. Cleft is not happy to be in what looked like a Cokehead’s Winter Wonderland. America has been waging a war against drugs for decades, and the whole arena was a reminder of how little leeway his favorite country has made in their battle against the drug trade. Doomrider lands nearby with two handfuls of cocaine, holding one forward for the General to partake of. He thought the Moon Cleft had loosened up when he leaped into the tornado, so as the Daemon Prince snorted his own handful of coke, he was surprised when Cleft shot the pile in Doomrider’s hand with his Diamondback.

Doomrider looked down at his hand surprised, partly from the shock of the rejected offer of free coke, but also from the fact that he had finally taken some damage. Doomrider sighed and began to spark with the crackling energy of Chaos. “Alright, I tried to have fun, but you can't just be a bro and let me have it. You want a fite?”

Purple flames roared out around him, the aura of fire frying all the cocaine around Doomrider. Cleft starts to back away as the jovial Prince of Pleasure begins to appear much more demonic and fearsome.

“YOU FUCKING GOT ONE!!!”

Doomrider hurled a massive fireball of eldritch energy at General Cleft, sending the General sailing through the air. The stone seemed unaffected by the flames itself, but Doomrider quickly tore his bike around to the other side of the arena to catch Cleft as he fell. Doomrider may be putting in a lot more power, but his drive to indulge in revelry compelled him to play a strange game of catch with himself. He conjured up a battle axe and hoisted Cleft up, smacking the stone with the weapon’s flat side to simulate a baseball player’s swing. Cleft goes flying through the air again, this time visibly cracked from the impact of Doomrider’s attack. Doomrider drove over to where Cleft was going to land and prepares to bat it back to the other side of the arena, but Cleft had enough time to angle himself in the air so his spikes were heading directly towards Doomrider. The battle axe still managed to smack into Cleft, but the rock’s spiky head digs in enough to the axe to reduce the strength of the smack. Cleft is lodged in the weapon only briefly, but it is enough to make it so he went into the ground rather than into the air.

A puff of cocaine explodes into the air as Cleft is hit into the ground. Doomrider dives in after the stone, swimming through it and completely ignoring physics as he paddles through the cocaine sea. Doomrider continues to push through the powder in his search for Cleft, but he instead runs face-first into the cold barrel of the rock’s revolver. The Daemon Prince quickly tries to bite the barrel of the gun off to disable the “un-fun” weapon, but as he opened his mouth cocaine spills in instead. The disturbance in the cocaine surrounding him clued the otherwise blinded Cleft in that Doomrider was near, and he pulled the trigger of his handgun. Doomrider may have chewed on the first few bullets that came his way, but this one he swallowed.

There is another burst of eldritch flame as Doomrider reacts to having a bullet launched into his body. The drugs around the two melt into a messy ooze, but General Cleft can now see his opponent and is able to open fire confidently. Doomrider’s armor absorbs many of the bullets again, but as Doomrider reels in pain he doesn’t have the presence of mind to dodge the attacks. Soon though, the rider’s screams of anguish turn into laughing. The sadomasochism of Slaanesh was present in him as well after all, so rather than bemoaning his injuries, he beckoned to Cleft to shoot him more. The General was quite uncomfortable with this demand, so for now he holds off on the pistol shots until things got a little less weird.

But when you fite Doomrider, thing are always going to be weird. Doomrider realizes Cleft won’t shoot him anymore, so the rider decides to resume the battle. The melted cocaine around him flows into his hands and transforms into a glaive, and Doomrider comes at Cleft with his hellish battle axe and his polearm of drugs. Cleft can’t do much to dodge or block the fast and furious Doomrider, and the Daemon Prince begins to chip big chunks of Cleft’s stone body off with his ethereal weapons. Cleft tries another charge, and this time the rider is too occupied with his new weapons to conjure up a mock bullfight. Cleft rams into the legs of the demon, knocking the rider off of his feet. Doomrider did not hit the ground though. The servant of Slaanesh floated parallel to the ground, and if it wasn’t for his shadow, loud crackling head fire, and probably a myriad of other obvious tells, Cleft might have not noticed Doomrider was floating right above him. The spiky stone tries to leap up to puncture the rider’s chest, but Doomrider is hovering just out of reach of the rock’s jumps. Doomrider drops his two weapons and picks Cleft up, squishing the revolver against Cleft’s body so it could not be angled up to take a few potshots as the rider held him.

Cleft struggled, but his strange anatomy made it near impossible to wriggle out of the firm hold Doomrider had on him. Doomrider begins to press in on the stone, his incredible might causing fissures to form in Cleft’s body. Cleft felt like all might be lost as he felt a pressure somehow greater than the one he felt in Moron Mountain’s core, but this patriotic pebble will not go gentle into that good night. Cleft opens his mouth to bark out some last words, but as he opens he realizes that almost his entire lower half of his body is his jaw. Some of Doomrider’s fingers slip into the mouth of the Moon Cleft from the movement of his jaw alone, so when Cleft closed it back up, he was able to bite down hard on the rider’s fingers. Doomrider stops putting the squeeze on the stone and begins trying to shake him off of his fingers, but the rock won’t let up on his bite. Instead, now that he has his revolver free again, he begins firing wild shots in Doomrider’s direction. Most miss, but enough hit for Doomrider to justify calling his bike over to help dislodge the general from his hands.

The Doomrider’s ride of doom roars over and hits Cleft from the side, causing the general to fly off of the rider’s fingers and into yet another bed of cocaine snow. The Daemon Prince gets back on his bike and revs it, a cloud of various energies twirling around the bike. Appearing like a comet full of lightning and fire, Doomrider drove his bike towards the prone Cleft. The coke around the arena turned to mush as the bike’s aura of eldritch energy incinerated everything in its path. Cleft fired the last few Diamondback bullets he had at the Doomcomet, but the bullets melt on impact. The ball of imminent death was moving too quickly for Cleft to come up with a reasonable plan to deal with it, so he instead switches into his Rock Form. Appearing like an ordinary rock may not be a great plan, but the defensive boost it provides him might just be enough to withstand the attack…

The massive forces of the energy aura hit first, but the rock’s usual resistance to fire plus his Rock Form allow him to weather all of it except for the actual force of the blow. It is a wonder he hasn’t shattered into gravel yet, but as the aura passes over him, Cleft makes the riskiest move he has made all night.

Perhaps he's being tactical, or perhaps he finally managed to ingest some of the powdery drug that surrounded him, but once he was within that huge comet of unearthly energy, he returned to his normal form.

The spikes atop the General’s head popped back out just in time for the front tire of the bike to slam into them. The bike wheel came to a screeching halt, but the Doomcomet still had way too much momentum to just slow down. Cleft is pushed along the ground, but eventually the bike itself flips over. The bike tips over General Cleft’s head and Doomrider comes crashing down into his own comet of powerful energy. Even for a being accustomed to flame and lightning, the Doomcomet was built up of the strongest stuff that the servant of Slaanesh can conjure, and once its power was released on Doomrider, the force of the blast alone was enough to decimate the Daemon Prince.

Cleft walked away from the enormous fireball of Warp energies and began to kick at the cocaine all around the arena. He would clean up this entire mess himself if he had to. He had already proven he could defeat the warrior who made the drugs, so now all he has to do is finish his part in the War on Drugs.

Either way, our American cobblestone has proven he is indeed worthy of the title of Big Bar Brawl champion. General Cleft has trounced Doomrider by turning his own inestimable forces against him, and now he will get to test his strength to see if he can be champion of FITE WEEK 2. We’ll see you tomorrow when either Moosh or Briar will earn the same right to fite in the free-for-all.

Fite 70- Orion's Bout (FITE WEEK 2! Platinum Blonde vs. Ariel in Orion)

Greetings folks! We are moving into the third fite of FITE WEEK 2, where a battle over honor shall be taking place. Antoinette “Platinum Blonde” Albertine has challenged the still injured Ariel Sierra to a match to avenge her boyfriend Scorched Earth, but Ariel sees Antoinette as just another Society member trying to ruin the planet of Porphyrion. Whose honor shall be defended: the boyfriend’s or the planet’s? We will find out tonight as our fiters battle in a recreation of the bustling metropolis of Detroit, Michigan. This once proud but now bankrupt city’s still somewhat polished downtown district will serve as the arena for Platinum Blonde and Ariel’s huge mech suit Orion to do battle in. Time for these two to test their metal and their mettle!

Standing in the middle of the streets of the fake city is Antoinette in her human form. Orion is not far away, but even as the fite began Ariel did not fire upon her opponent. She knows Antoinette is trying to bait her into attacking by leaving herself vulnerable, and the archer was not going to fall into such an obvious trap so early in the match. To be safe, Orion still readies its first arrow, keeping the giant bow’s string taut as it waited for Antoinette to give up on her plan. Orion slowly starts to walk towards the superhuman, closing the distance it would need to fire in order to beat out the transformation time the woman needs to turn entirely metal.

The superhuman is not stupid though, and when she sees her own plan will not work, she immediately changes tactics. Antoinette runs forward, and Orion leases its first massive arrow right towards her. The superhuman turns full metal before the arrow reaches her, but even without the metal skin she would not have been harmed. The arrow hits the road instead, forming a small crater that trips up Platinum Blonde’s approach. Orion begins to back up and draws another arrow, and without the element of surprise to protect her, Platinum Blonde is pegged directly by this attack. The metal woman is shot down the avenue, leaving a line of ground up tarmac in her wake. When she comes to a stop, the arrow clutters down in front of her, only for it to be immediately picked up and chucked back at Orion.

The mech dodges to the side, but the street is not large enough to accommodate a 15 foot tall robot dodging about. Orion slams into the side of a building, sending up a cloud of dust and rubble. Platinum Blonde charges forward, hoping the unexpected demolition of a building will keep Orion distracted, but the giant mech crushes her hopes when it crushes her with another enormous bolt. Rather than being shot down the street by this one, Platinum Blonde is forced down into the street, her body showing visible denting due to the strength of the shot. The machine emerges from the cloud of debris and continues firing arrow after arrow into the increasingly deep hole in the road. Platinum Blonde is pressed so far into the ground that she almost breaks out of the simulated ground and into the actual arena floor, but thankfully the pit soon becomes too crowded with giant metal bolts for Orion to fire anymore into it. Ariel has Orion peer into the hole and carefully reclaim a few of the giant arrows to put back in its quiver. She can’t see where Platinum Blonde is because of how deep the hole has gotten, but her focus on trying to find the superhuman at the bottom of the pit makes her oblivious to the true location of the metal woman.

Antoinette had wrapped herself around the end of one of the giant arrows, and since Ariel was so distracted looking for her, the archer didn’t think to check the ends of the bolts as she put them back into Orion’s quiver. The rectangular quiver is a tight fit for Platinum Blonde, but the dented up superhuman manages to squeeze in without arousing suspicion. Before Orion could reclaim all its fired arrows, Platinum Blonde thrusts her fist through the quiver and into the mech’s back. The superhuman continues to pound into the back plating of the robot to try and get inside, but warning sirens alerted Ariel to the pressure on Orion’s back. Ariel guides the machine’s free hand to rattle its quiver to try and cease the assault, but Platinum Blonde continues to hammer into the robot’s back unimpeded.

Orion is forced to rip its quiver off of its back to end the onslaught, but as it continues to try and shake Antoinette out, the superhuman refuses to leave the quiver. Orion turns the quiver upside down and dumps out all the arrows and one super human who has nothing to hold onto to prevent herself from falling out. Once she is out of the quiver, Platinum Blonde immediately pilfers a few lost arrows and starts jabbing them towards Orion like spears. Orion leaps back to avoid being impaled, but the mech’s arsenal was now at the Society member’s feet. If Ariel wanted a way to fite back, she would have to have Orion take the risk of reclaiming its lost arrows.

Orion tries to feign sidestepping around Platinum Blonde, but the superhuman knows that the robot can’t get around her without risking injury. She twirls the arrows around confidently, but almost simultaneously the two female fiters realize that Ariel is not necessarily out of ammo. The streetlamps that lined the road won’t be the best ammo, but in a pinch they would work well enough as arrows. Orion pulls one out of the road and prepares to fire, but Platinum Blonde plunges one of her arrows into the ground and uses it to pole vault up and onto the giant mech. Orion is forced to ditch its street light ammunition to try and swat Platinum Blonde off of its body, but the superhuman jabs the arrow she still held directly through the palm of Orion’s free hand. The new stigma in its hand would not impede its performance, but it did affect Ariel’s confidence enough to have her pull back to avoid more injuries to the hand.

This hesitation led to a huge bolt being rammed directly through the cockpit of Orion. Ariel manages to duck under the incoming arrow, but now Platinum Blonde has a nice huge hole to enter the cockpit through. The control panel of Orion sends out a shower of sparks as Ariel desperately tries to use Orion to protect herself, but Platinum Blonde does manage to crawl into the cockpit. The superhuman prepares to knock Ariel’s block off, but the sparking control panel electrifies the metal woman. As the power surges through her body, Antoinette freezes up long enough for Ariel to get a hold of the controls and tilt Orion forward. Platinum Blonde falls out of the cockpit and into the open palm of Orion, almost slipping out of the huge hole in the mech’s hand. Before she can regain control of her body, she finds herself pressed into a giant bowstring. Orion takes aim for a high-rise and fires the metallic woman like an arrow.

Platinum Blonde slams through the walls of the high-rise with so much force she bursts through the other side and breaks through into another nearby building. By this point the metal woman is dented up so badly that she looks like she had volunteered to be a punching bag for Rocky, Muhammad Ali, and Jake LaMotta all at the same time. It did not seem to impede her attitude or abilities though other than slowing her down a bit. The Society member stayed within the building for a while, watching out the hole her own body had made to try and track Orion. Since firing her off into the distance, Orion had gathered up its arsenal and Ariel had taken the precaution of placing a simple Protect spell over herself in the exposed cockpit.

Orion moves towards the building that Platinum Blonde had flown through first, expecting to find her within. Rather than trying to look for her opponent, Ariel decided to jab one of the mech’s arrows into the open hole and prod around the building in hopes of smacking the metal woman. Platinum Blonde saw an opportunity to attack an unsuspecting opponent, but there would be no easy way for her to approach the giant machine. Jumping down was risky in her bent up body and would probably be loud enough to give her away. She was fairly certain the elevators in the building were there for decoration and weren’t functioning in this simulation, and the stairs…

Well it looks like she will have to take the stairs. Platinum Blonde shifts briefly to her human form, revealing how much the damage actually had done to her. Now she actually looked like she had been in the ring with those three aforementioned boxers, but her human body was much swifter and quieter, so she would need it to make her sneak attack possible. Antoinette sprints down the stairs and runs out into the city streets before shifting back into her metallic form. Even though she spent less than a minute as a flesh and blood human, the effect of letting the wounds sink in as a regular person wore her down more than any attack Orion had delivered so far.

Ariel was growing impatient with her fruitless prodding, and since this facsimile of Detroit was not a real world location, she was able to justify the complete demolition of the high-rise building. Orion pulled up three arrows and swept them across the floor that Platinum Blonde had crashed through, destroying the support the upper levels still had and sending them crashing down onto the bottom floors. The archer figured even the tough metal form of her opponent couldn’t survive a collapsing building, but when Ariel looked towards Refbot for a kill confirmation, she was baffled to see the robot ref refusing to confirm a KO. The reason became quite apparent when Platinum Blonde finally caught up with her opponent and crushed one of the mech’s feet with her bare hands.

Orion topples over, but Ariel still manages to pull the machine’s bow around and draw an arrow before it reached the ground. Orion tries to launch the arrow, but Platinum Blonde begins to push the arrow back before the string could be released. The giant bow begins to moan as its string is warped by the pressure, and in an attempt to prevent the string from snapping completely, Orion drops its bow. The abandoned bow clatters and the arrow slips out of the string and knocks Platinum Blonde off her feet. Orion tries to reclaim its weapon, but the superhuman is faster and pulls it away from the mech’s grasp. Platinum Blonde hefts the huge bow above her and pulls it apart, snapping it like it was one of its feebler wooden cousins.

Ariel seems to have a bad relationship with her bows, getting them stolen or broken quite often. But even though losing her weapon distressed her, she still had her mighty mech to rely on. Orion pushes itself up, and even though one of its feet was heavily damaged, it still was able to support itself decently enough. The robot reached into its quiver and pulled out an arrow for each hand, using Platinum Blonde’s earlier attack method to protect itself.

Antoinette tosses aside the broken bow and prepares to continue the fite. She was quite fatigued from being bashed around so much, but she had destroyed her opponent’s main attack method. Neither Ariel nor Platinum Blonde are at their best, but both still had a strong desire to win in their hearts.

Because of its foot injury, Orion could not really move around with the same freedom it used to have. Instead, Ariel was forced to keep the robot in one place and defend that spot with all she’s got. Platinum Blonde maintains a safe distance from Orion, trying to think of a way to get within attacking range without being attacked herself. She feigns charging in to test the reach of Orion, and the mech swings one of its arrows forward like a staff and throwing the other one at Antoinette after. It is not quite as powerful as when the bow was firing the bolts, but the blow is enough to dent the superhuman even more. Orion pulls another arrow out of its quiver with its empty hand, but the tossed arrow is quickly pulled up by Platinum Blonde to use as a weapon as well.

Antoinette starts swinging the arrow forward with both hands, trying to knock Orion’s bolts from its hands. When the Society members smacks into the arrow held by the broken hand, the force of the blow cracks the hand's strained joints and it loses its ability to maintain a grip on the arrow, but the focus on the right hand allows the left one to bring its weapon around and clobber the superhuman’s head. Platinum Blonde is on the ground again, but this time it wasn’t a hail of arrows that pressed her into the ground. Orion propped itself up with its arrow and brought its injured foot down on the metallic woman, the exposed wiring conducting on her metal body once more. Ariel tried to grind her opponent into the road by twisting the broken foot, but the movement of the leg caused more damage to it than the woman underfoot. Ariel had Orion lift its foot so she could get at Platinum Blonde with the arrow spear, but the electrified metal woman was tangled in the mess of wires protruding from the damaged robot limb.

Orion tries to use its arrow to pry Platinum Blonde from the wiring, but the giant metal arrow ends up getting trapped in them as well. Orion’s odd position and only one working leg for balance did not bode well for the machine, and the giant mech came toppling down. The fall did manage to free Antoinette though, and after her recovery from the shock, she pulled herself back up. She is quite dizzy and dazed by now, but even as her vision blurred, she could still see a giant prone robot in front of her. Platinum Blonde plunged forth, lodging herself into the robot’s waist. Orion stands back up and starts swatting at her as she begins tearing apart the inside of the robot’s lower regions. Before long, the entire body from the waist down is entirely disabled due to the damage, but with the signals to the lower body severed, Ariel has no objection to using her arrow to jab right through the machine’s waist. Platinum Blonde is forced out of Orion’s innards, but it is not hard for her to scale up the robot’s legs to get back to fiting.

Antoinette tries to scale up to the cockpit, but Ariel makes Orion abandon its single arrow in favor of bringing the entire quiver around. The mech’s left arm slammed the quiver against the superhuman repeatedly to discourage her ascent, so Platinum Blonde abandons that course of action to go for a safer alternative. The waist of Orion was barely supporting the rest of the mech’s body. Platinum Blonde plunged back into the open hole from earlier and began to root around again, but she was not trying to do more damage. She was waiting for Ariel to try and pull her out.

Sure enough the long rectangular quiver came around to push her out of the machine’s insides, but this time Platinum Blonde was able to grab the probing equipment. Orion struggled to pull it away, but Antoinette shook the quiver about, hitting it into the last few bits of the machine that kept its waist up. The robot’s torso fell down onto the waist unsupported, crushing Platinum Blonde but also causing the machine to crumble into itself like the building it had destroyed earlier. As the machine falls apart into a fiery mess of scrap, Ariel tries to pull herself out of the cockpit, but her injuries from the Big Bar Brawl still hinder her flexibility. Ariel manages to get out of the cockpit, but she falls right into the path of the robot’s collapsing body.

Both women are crushed beneath the broken body of Orion, and at first it is unclear if either survived the robot’s demise. The pile begins to move as someone claws their way out of the wreckage and to the top of the pile. One woman had survived, and she now stood victorious atop the scrap heap.

After revealing herself to still be alive, Platinum Blonde tumbled over the side of Orion’s body, exhausted and close to death herself. Ariel was not so lucky, and the Fite Yer’ Mates medical team makes sure to retrieve the lifeless archer from the wreck before the still burning mech body could cause any more injury to the fallen environmentalist.

“Vous avez payé pour ce que vous avez fait pour Jackie. J'espère que vous avez appris à garder vos idéaux dans leur domaine propre à partir de maintenant.” Antoinette Albertine says as she returns to her human form. Of course, Ariel was dead and doesn’t speak French, so this probably meant nothing, but I think Antoinette has taken one too many hits to her head this match to care about such things.

Today’s battle over love has been concluded, with Platinum Blonde proving her strength and earning the right to move on. Come back tomorrow when our battle shall be over the championship title, as the two champions of the Big Bar Brawl face off to see which one is the true king of the Brawl!

Fite 69- Summoned Beach Battle (FITE WEEK 2! Gloria vs. Oceanus)

Welcome to fite 2 of FITE WEEK 2, and welcome to a beautiful simulated paradise! Gloria and Oceanus shall be fiting on the coast of a beautiful uninhabited tropical island where the sun is shining and people feel a strange compulsion to name sports equipment. But our fiters aren’t castaways here, they are here to fite to the death to earn a spot in the final battle royale between FITE WEEK 2 victors! Gloria and Oceanus, it’s time to Fite Yer’ Mate!

Both fiters begin the match standing on the warm sands of the island facing each other. Oceanus can hardly keep still, eager to get back in the arena and prove his might. Gloria is much calmer, waiting for Refbot’s call for the match to begin. When the signal is finally given, both fiters immediately act. Oceanus launches a Dive Missile, anticipating an early dodge from Gloria, but the summoner does not run. She conjures up her first summon, and the homing missile crashes into the summon instead. A brief smoke cloud masks the creature that was summoned, and Oceanus cautiously changes his cannon's set weapon just in case. It turns out the beast that was summoned was no beast, but a recreation of Garland the knight.

After leasing her summon, Gloria retreats to the island’s brush, relying on Garland to do battle with Oceanus for now. The knight’s armor was slightly cracked, but he seemed otherwise unfazed by the blow. Garland hefts his large sword and charges towards Oceanus, but the robot immediately blasts him back with a powerful Noise Crush. The sound waves push Garland back, but not far enough for Oceanus to be out of range of the knight’s huge blade. Garland swings it around, and Oceanus is forced to toss himself to the ground to avoid it. Garland doesn’t let up though, and immediately brings it down on the prone robot, cracking the chassis of Bubble Man.

Oceanus tries to stand up, but Garland continues to slam Oceanus into the sand. Oceanus pokes his arm cannon forward and fires with the Ice Wave attack. The sand around Oceanus freezes and Garland’s feet are trapped in the frost wave. Garland lets up on his attack to try and break his feet free, and Oceanus tries to use the break in attacks to get up himself. Problem is, the sand froze around him as well.

Good thing his hand has a built-in flamethrower. The oil-based flames burst forward, melting much of the ice and coating Garland with the liquid fire as well. Garland is not harmed by the flames at first, but the oil stuck to his armor keeps them burning to the point he is getting cooked alive in his steel plate. Garland runs towards the water to wash off the burning oil, giving Oceanus the time he needs to get on his own feet and give chase. Garland submerges himself to put out the flames, but before he can get back out of the water, Oceanus has dived in feet-first and slams his jagged flippers through the knight’s armor. Garland tries to punch the robot, but his movements are slower in the simulated ocean and the robot of the sea has no trouble avoiding the attacks. Oceanus balls up his fist, the knuckle spikes popping out in anticipation of a face punch, but the knight gives up on the underwater fite and swims to shore. Garland pulls himself out of the water and onto the beach, avoiding any further underwater assaults from Oceanus. Garland turns back to the water and prepares some lightning magic. Electrified water has hurt Oceanus in a fite before, but Bubble Man was not in the mood to face any more of it today. Right as Garland sends the electricity towards the water, Oceanus propels himself out of the water fist first right towards Garland.

Oceanus’s nitro propelled, knuckle spike enhanced, super strong punch to Garland’s face is enough to destroy the summon entirely. His foe destroyed, Oceanus scans the beach for Gloria. Her robes blend in with the foliage, but that big red summoner’s horn on her head gives away her position. Oceanus pulls his harpoon up and fires right towards it, but the harpoon does not make contact. It instead clanks uselessly against the front of a freshly summoned Phantom Train, which begins to roar right towards Oceanus. Oceanus begins to run away, not willing to test his fist or weaponry against the front of a train today. His flipper feet make his retreat slow and goofy-looking, so he activates the nitro in his feet to try and speed himself up, but something else within him activates as well.

Oceanus goes spinning up into the sky, his nitro propelling the Top Spin to new heights. The spin goes up high enough to dodge the train completely, but when Oceanus comes back down he lands right on top of the locomotive’s engine. The train begins to spin around in circles, trying to hit a target that is out of its reach. Gloria considers summoning another beast to help the train, but for now she chooses to conserve her mana in case Oceanus tries anything tricky with the spirit train.

And he does. Oceanus begins to shoot Bubble Lead into every opening along the train he can find, and the train reacts violently to the intrusive lead. Fires erupt from the openings, and soon the train is out of control, a flaming locomotive ripped straight from a nightmare. The Phantom Train loses all control of its direction and begins roaring right towards Gloria, Oceanus riding it like a cowboy riding a nuclear bomb.

Gloria does not move as the train roars towards her. Oceanus laughs with glee, but soon his laughs are cut short as the train dissipates beneath him. The summoner did have a way to call off her summons after all. Oceanus falls through the air and scoots across the sand on his butt, landing a foot or two in front of Gloria. The robot looks up a Gloria and shrugs, and Gloria give him a playful tap on his head with her staff for his failed attempt at running her over. But she did not forget she was in a fite, and immediately twirls around to try and bring up more summons, but Oceanus reacts quickly with his head nozzle. A strong spray of water blasts into Gloria’s face, cancelling out her summoning ritual and pushing her back into the island’s jungle. Oceanus follows her into the foliage, his own green body providing camouflage as well as the two took their battle off the coast and into the forest.

Oceanus was now too close to her for comfort, so Gloria decided to use some of her mana on a defensive spell. Gloria conjures up a shield around herself, and her mechanical opponent caught up with her just in time to test the strength of it. Thing is, this was not Protect or Shell, this spell was Reflect, and Oceanus found that out the hard way as he fires a Noise Crush right into the reflective shell. The sound waves bounce off of the shield and are returned to sender, sending the robot flying back and into a tree. A few coconuts comically fall off the tree and hit Oceanus on the noggin, but he is not afflicted with amnesia, he does not start seeing birds fly around his head, and he does not say a non-sequitur in a goofy voice. One advantage of having a robot head is the immunity to such cliche comedy set-ups.

Gloria uses the extra time to conjure up some summons, but she found herself to be rather low on mana. She can only conjure up two low cost summons: Spider and Icicle. Oceanus is back on his feet as the two appear, but he does not want to waste his time on the two low level summons. He fires his spiked fist forward, bypassing the Reflect’s spell projectile deflection barrier and hitting Gloria in the chest. The summoner is knocked back, but the Spider summon clambers onto the fist’s cable and holds it to the ground. Oceanus does not retract his fist in an attempt to avoid pulling a spider right into his face, but he immediately pays for it when the Icicle uses its ice magic to freeze the fist to the ground.  Oceanus tries to pull it back now, but the ice holds strong. He tries to shift his unattached hand to its flamethrower setting, but Icicle quickly makes sure his prized fist would no longer be a factor by cutting the cable with its spear-like arm. The severed hand spurts oil and fire uselessly, unfreezing itself but now disconnected from its owner.

Oceanus does not retract his cable after losing his prized punching hand though. Instead, he whips the line around, dislodging the Spider who had been hoping to ride it towards him. Gloria is back in the battle just in time for the cable to whip towards her, but she pulls her staff up to catch the swing. The cable twirls around the staff, and before it can become untangled Gloria urges the Spider to spray some silk at her weapon. The cable is coated in the spider’s web, and now Gloria has Oceanus’s cable under her control as well. She begins to tug Oceanus towards her, but the robot master was not going to be pulled towards his doom. He uses his harpoon to cut the line, cutting his loses so he can get back in the battle.

He runs towards Gloria and her two summons, but he decides his first target will be the Icicle. Oceanus unleashes a Gyro Attack, the propeller spinning towards the Icicle’s head. The summon floats upwards in an odd dodge attempt, causing the propeller to embed itself in its chest rather than in its neck. Gloria uses the very last of her mana to put Shell spells around her two summons, so when Oceanus continues to fire Gyros at the Icicle, they are slowed down enough by the magical shells to not even cut into the ice creature’s body. Oceanus is forced to completely give up on his projectile weaponry and charge in towards the ice creature, thrusting his harpoon forward and into the ice creature’s body. The harpoon digs in deep, but the Icicle is not mortally wounded by it. Instead, it begins to use its own sharp arms to jab at Oceanus’s face. The spray nozzle activates again, pushing Icicle away before it could do any serious damage, but the harpoon was so deeply embedded in the ice that it was pulled along with the repelled summon. The cable is forced out, and Oceanus is now tethered to one of his opponents.

Gloria is standing nearby watching the battle, completely drained of all her magic power. When Oceanus shifts his attention off of the Icicle, Gloria is startled and unable to think of a good counter. The robot charges towards her, the cable dragging out more and more as he gets further from the Icicle. Gloria attempts to run away, but Oceanus catches up with her and clotheslines her with the line. Gloria is slammed down into the dirt and Oceanus comes around to trample her with his spiky flippers, but before he can, something leaps up onto his back and starts biting into the back of his head.

The Spider summon was still around after all, and it was trying its best to protect Gloria from Oceanus. Oceanus reaches up with his fistless left arm to swat at the bug, but the attacks are too weak to dislodge it. The spider’s bites were also too weak, and its venom did nothing to the robot’s systems. The bug is forced to switch its attack methods, and it begins to spin its web around Oceanus. Gloria stands up and gets out of the way of the cable as Oceanus tries to resist the silk cocoon that is being formed around him. Gloria calls Icicle over and the ice beast severs the line between it and Oceanus under her instruction. Oceanus is soon wrapped up entirely in the web of the Spider summon, only his head left unwrapped. Oceanus’s spray nozzle begins to spray erratically, but without any way to move about he could not point it in any proper direction.

Icicle floats over to Oceanus, preparing its spear like arms to attack the vulnerable robot. Oceanus squirmed within his silky prison, and his spiked flippers begin to cut away at the bottom of the cocoon. By the time the summon has reached him, Oceanus has completely dislodged his legs from the silk. The robot master stands up and begins to flee, but Gloria swings her staff forward and smacks Oceanus in the back. The force of the blow cracks the wooden staff, but it also sends Oceanus back onto the ground. The Spider tries to crawl over and fix the webbing on Oceanus’s feet, but the bulky robot master rolls over, squishing the arachnid and forcing it to disappear. The Icicle had not stopped floating towards him though, so as he rolled over the spider, he found himself looking up at the two pointed arms of the summon coming down on his head.

This time, Oceanus was not quick enough to stand up and run.

The Icicle had hit the internal systems of Oceanus with surgical accuracy. The robot powers down, and Gloria thanks the Icicle before she calls it back.

“Looks like I won this time Oceanus.” Gloria tries to help her fallen opponent out of the arena for repairs, but he is much too heavy. She might just have to drink an Ether and have a summon do it for her. Now that she has defeated Oceanus, perhaps she can summon him to carry himself out of the arena... But that might be a bit too creepy.

Either way though, Gloria will be joining Daniel and Carol in the battle royale! Tune in tomorrow for more FITE WEEK 2 goodness!

Fite 68- Raven Mutant Bounty Hunters (FITE WEEK 2! Samus and Utsuho vs. Daniel and Carol)

Greetings fite fans, and welcome to the second, not quite annual, week-long event of daily battles and bloodshed! To begin this fantastic week of fiting goodness, we are reviving the untouched art of tag-team fiting which hasn’t been seen since Spy and Alex took on Gezora and Hanz back in our first year. After spending some time working out their arm cannons together, Samus Aran and Utsuho have teamed up to take on the mutant duo from the future: Daniel and Carol. We will be using the same single elimination rules we used before. Once a fiter dies while still tagged in, they’ve lost it for their team.

I can’t think of any better way to begin the week than to have these two teams duke it out. Without further ado, let’s begin FITE WEEK 2!

VS.

Tonight the holodeck arena has been set to simulate a gritty old scrapyard where large piles of rusty old metal might serve either as cover or as precarious heaps just waiting to be knocked over. The comrades in arm cannons choose to have Utsuho begin the battle, relying on her advantage of being the only flying character to enter this match. Daniel and Carol, on the other hand, have chosen to send in Daniel first despite the fact he is locked to the ground and lacks any ranged attacks. Samus is confused by this choice and keeps a close eye on Daniel, but Utsuho does not see anything odd about their choice and is eager to start the battle.

Refbot gives the signal, and the fite begins!

Daniel quickly dives behind a pile of scrap, accurately predicting Utsuho’s immediate reaction of unleashing a barrage of tiny blue pellets. The balls singe the stacked metals, but Daniel is completely shielded from their power. Utsuho flies around the pile, trying to adjust her aim, but as she circles it she is unable to locate Daniel. The mutant has crawled into the pile of metal, ignoring the sharp corners that jabbed into him as he sought cover. Utsuho hovers above the pile, scanning the arena for where Daniel might have run off to, but she did not think to check beneath herself. Daniel pushes himself to the top of the pile and leaps up, grabbing Utsuho by her legs and startling the raven.

Utsuho begins to fly frantically as she tries to shake Daniel off of her, but Daniel refuses to let go. The mutant’s bone spikes jut out, but in his position he is unable to do anything with them. The Hell raven begins slashing at Daniel with the Sword of Hisou, but Daniel blocks the blows with his bone spikes. Each block involved a perilous maneuver where he let go of one of Okuu's legs, and Utsuho's frantic flapping through the air starts to make things difficult for Daniel. He can't hang on forever after all.

On the sidelines, Samus’s attention shifts away from the battle to Carol. The young technopath is not standing by waiting to be tagged in. Instead, Carol is in a corner of the arena removing a panel from the holodeck’s wall. Samus senses trickery and begins to walk over to investigate, but as soon as the panel is removed Carol gets to work rewiring the arena’s holographic projector. The scrapyard begins to disappear, and the battle suddenly shifts to an unlit road tunnel.

Utsuho was not expecting the arena change, and with so little room to fly about in the tunnel the nuclear raven accidentally slams her head into the tunnel’s ceiling. Utsuho and Daniel crash into the ground and the mutant quickly uses the opportunity to get on top of her and begin slashing her with his bone spikes. Utsuho tries to block the attacks with her fuel rod arm, but in the darkness of the tunnel only the faint light of her own nuclear glow lights up the battle. Samus has no trouble seeing the battle with her visor’s Heat Vision setting, and she begins making her way over to Carol to try and prevent further arena tampering.

Despite the constant barrage, Utsuho manages to pull her sword to bear and evoke its weather controlling powers. She tries to form a heavy hailstorm to pelt Daniel with, but her lack of knowledge with the weapon and the distraction of constantly being slashed leads instead to a flurry of graupel pouring down on the battle. Daniel initially mistake the graupel for hail though and tries to shield himself from it, but as the tiny snow pellets lightly bounce off of him, he realizes there is no threat. The short distraction does give Utsuho an opening though, and she slams the side of the Sword of Hisou into Daniel’s waist.

Daniel is forced off of Okuu by the blow and she immediately takes to the air now that the opportunity arose. Daniel lies on the ground clutching the huge new gash in his side, but now that Okuu is in the air she is unable to see where Daniel is in the darkness. Utsuho decides to bring on the sun and bring in the light by unleashing one of her mini-super nova attacks in the direction she last saw Daniel, and since the mutant was still suffering from his fresh wound, he didn’t really have the time or energy to move away.

The dark may impede some people, but the technopathic Carol was able to run on knowledge and insight alone to continue fiddling with the holodeck controls. Before the mini-sun reached Daniel, the arena shifted again, this time into an approximation of the LegoLand theme park. Instead of burning Daniel to death, Utsuho’s attack slammed into a scale model of the Space Needle and sent a shower of melted plastic out across the arena. Daniel is pelted by the tiny plastic bricks, but he is spared the stronger blast.

LegoLand is much better lit than the tunnel, and with the light back on we can see that Samus is right behind Carol. The bounty hunter pulls Carol up into the air by the back of her shirt’s collar. Carol begins flailing around, not really able to attack Samus due to the way she was being held. Refbot beeps out a warning, indicating that the two would not be able to fite unless they were tagged in, so Samus pulls the technopath over to the still suffering Daniel.

“Why don’t you take five Daniel? I’ve got some business with your friend here.” Samus tosses Carol onto Daniel, which I guess counts as a tag in some way. Utsuho flies down to see what is happening, but before she even had time to find out what the situation is Samus slaps her hand to tag herself in. Carol helps Daniel up and he walks over the sideline, but Utsuho takes a bit longer to realize she has been tagged out.

Samus shoos her off, and preps her own arm cannon to battle Carol before the technopath could further fiddle with the holodeck’s projections.

Carol pulls her Pomson 6000 up to begin the battle, but Samus begins firing a rapid stream of weak Power Beam blasts at Carol as soon as the tag in is official. Carol is forced to cartwheel away and the young mutant immediately seeks shelter behind a meticulously crafted Lego sculpture of an elephant. Samus’s power beam shot blasts chunks of tiny bricks off of the sculpture, but blasting through the brick beast’s thick flank is a time-consuming endeavor. Carol pokes out from the side of the giant statue’s leg and fires a few pot shots at Samus with her Pomson, but the bounty hunter has no trouble diving away from the Pomson beams’ paths.

Carol pumps the Pomson to reload, but Samus messes with her own gun as well. Her beam weaponry shifts to Plasma, and as Samus opens fire the heavily damaged brick elephant in the way of her attack becomes inconsequential. The plasma beam passes right through the plastic pachyderm and burns the young girl on the other side. Plasma beams continue to shoot through what was once safe cover, so Carol flees to find safety in some other part of the park. Samus pursues, turning her X-Ray visor on to see through the many brick monuments and buildings that Carol might try to hide in. Samus spies a skeleton over near the outside edge of the arena, but when she runs over to see who owns it, she ends up running into Daniel rather than Carol.

Before the bounty hunter can resume her search, four Pomson blasts rip into the back of Samus’s Varia Suit. The blasts did not manage to hit Samus within the suit, but there was now a giant gaping hole in the back of the bounty hunter’s armor. Samus curls into a morph ball and rolls away, trying to avoid any further sneak attacks. As Samus rolls about and Carol hides within the park, there is a stretch of time where neither side attacks. Utsuho begins to get impatient with the slow pace of the fite and takes to the air to spot where Carol is hiding.

“SAMUS! She’s on the big ship! The battle cruiser! I think that’s what it’s called…” Refbot beeps a warning at Utsuho, but there is no rule against spotting for your ally technically. Daniel tries to do the same, but Samus was already rolling towards the water portion of the park. He can only warn Carol that Samus is coming.

Samus unfurls from her morph ball form just in time to see Carol leaping off of the boat and onto her. Samus is too surprised at first to strike, so Carol begins to pound her fists into Samus's armor, but she is not strong enough to do any damage to the tough suit. She pulls her Pomson up instead and tries to fire, but Samus has had time to recover from the shock and manages to smack the gun's aim away from blasting right through her visor. A shoulderpad is sheared off by the beam, but Samus grabs the side of the Pomson to prevent it from aiming anywhere else. Samus yanks the Pomson away from Carol, leaving the young technopath with no way to really hurt her foe and Daniel much too far away to tag in. Carol starts to scramble around Samus's body like a spider, and despite Samus's attempts to swat her she eventually ends up on the back of the bounty hunter. Carol almost abandoned her foe to make a mad dash for Daniel, but the open hole in Samus's armor beckons to her. Carol makes a split second decision and reaches into the suit to fiddle with the suit's internal systems. The Varia Suit runs mostly on the movements of Samus, but the complexity of things such as the morph ball and the necessary systems for life support allow Carol to reach and gain some semblance of control over the bounty hunter.

Samus begins to move around jerkily like she was ripped straight from The Grudge, and as Carol gets used to the controls, the bounty hunter begins to walk over to Utsuho. Utsuho nervously watches her puppeted ally approach, not quite sure what to do in this situation. Even Refbot is at a loss on the legality of this maneuver, but Utsuho quickly hedges her bets and rockets forward, slapping Samus’s hand quickly to make sure at least a tag in was official. Carol had not expected to need to use her strange mount for combat, but as Utsuho gets up in the air again, Carol does her best to get Samus to aim her arm cannon at the Hell Raven.

Utsuho considers which moves she might be able to use without harming Samus, but as Carol gets more and more used to Samus’s suit machinery, she discovers the lock-on feature. Plasma beams head directly for Utsuho and blast her out of the sky and into a lego building. The lock-on feature loses track of the Hell raven after she crashes into the building, so Carol just blindly fires the plasma beam through the walls of the establishment. Utsuho remained on the ground though, letting the beam pass over her as she pondered a plan of attack.

The Sword of Hisou called upon the weather again, but this time a dense mist rolled in. Not quite as thick as New England fog, but still thick enough to make Carol unable to see more than a few feet ahead of her. Carol becomes even more uncomfortable with the awkward situation she is in, but now that a dense mist has rolled in, she has no choice but to remain in control of the Varia Suit. Samus’s visors could sort out the situation, but Carol is not able to use them herself. Carol sees a faint glow in the mist though, and believing it to be the nuclear glow of Utsuho, she urges Samus towards it…

Only to discover it’s Hell’s Artificial Sun.

The false star begins to pull Carol and Samus in with its gravity, so without thinking Carol immediately unloads Samus’s arsenal on it in the hopes it might prevent a fiery death. Samus’s super missiles are what do the trick, but the impact of missile against sun leads to a large explosion, blasting Carol and Samus to the ground. Carol’s hands are too tangled in the suit to be forced out now though, and Samus is still a prisoner of her own armor. Okuu does use the distraction to sneak up on them though, and before Samus could get back on her feet, Utsuho brings her sword down to try and decapitate Carol.

Samus is still set to fire super missiles though, and Carol could see Utsuho well enough to quickly aim a blast right into the Hell raven’s stomach. Okuu is blasted away and badly injured, but she’s not down yet. Samus awkwardly stands back up, Carol still clinging to her from the hole in her back. Samus’s armor may not be under her control, but her body still belonged to her.

“Utsuho!” Samus calls out, “Hit us both. Take us both out instead of letting them win!”

Carol looks down at her unwilling mount with a bit of terror, having forgotten that Samus still had a biological side that wasn’t under the technopath’s control. Once the mutant looked back up from Samus, she sees Utsuho jamming her fuel rod arm into the dirt. Carol tries to urge Samus to run away or pull her own hands out of the tangled mess of wires, but a Nuclear Blaze Geyser shoots out from the ground beneath the two women before they can escape.

At full strength maybe the two women would have been fried by the blast, but not even Utsuho could bring herself to fry an ally. The Varia Suit did crackle and complain though, and Carol was badly seared from the geyser. Carol did not even look up as Samus’s sparking cannon arm jerked up and charged up its Power Beam. Utsuho tried to take to the air again, but she still ached from the super missile blast. Utsuho was hardly in the air when the fully charged beam blasted into her. Okuu falls out of the sky and near Samus’s feet. The Hell raven is hardly able to stay conscious, and she was only able to pull herself off the ground by propping herself up on the Sword of Hisou. Okuu’s hand slapped forward lazily, skimming Samus’s own normal hand, signaling a tag in. Before she passed out completely, Utsuho raised the sword one last time and called on a downpour. The nuclear woman then fell to the ground, still holding her sword upwards despite being completely unconscious. Her last second tag in did mean that the battle still continued, but Carol was not afraid to fite an opponent who was unable to strike back…

But the rain was not called on just for the sake of a moody demise. The downpour seeped into the open wiring of the Varia Suit, and an electrical malfunction is ignited. Both Carol and Samus receive a nasty shock, but the electrical jolt is enough to finally force Carol off of the bounty hunter’s back. The malfunction is too much for the suit to handle though, so even though her hijacker was finally dislodged, Samus is forced to ditch her power suit and go Zero Suit.

“This really needs to stop happening every time I enter a fite,” she says as she looks at her abandoned suit. Samus had no paralyzer this time though, but Utsuho still held the Sword of Hisou. Samus takes her fallen ally's weapon, even more clueless than Utsuho was about how to activate its hidden potential. Carol, meanwhile, was still suffering from the past few blows. She couldn’t even move after that jolt, and the burns of the geyser still ached. If Samus came back with the sword, she would be unable to fite back.

A rough hand clasped Carol’s unmoving hand. Carol’s eyes moved to see Daniel tagging himself in. He was still clearly bothered by his own wound, but there was raw determination burning in his eyes. He could ignore his pain for now if it meant avenging Carol. Daniel’s bone spikes jutted out once more as he marched over to where Samus was picking up the blade. Carol let out a weak cheer for her ally as the two faced off to decide who will move on to the GRAND FITE WEEK 2 FINALE.

Daniel keeps his arms at chest level as he approaches Samus, the bone spikes jutting out like deadly scythes. Samus holds the Sword of Hisou uneasily with both hands, trying to tap into its secret powers as Daniel gets closer and closer. She tries to wave it around like she saw Utsuho do once, but rather than conjuring up any useful weather, the downpour disappears and becomes an aggressive heat wave. Neither fiter is dressed for the warm front, so by the time they begin fiting they are already sweating like they had been exercising non-stop since they woke up.

Daniel begins his attack cautiously, alternating swipes with his bone arms so that one is always protecting his body. Samus parries the incoming attacks well enough, but it is quite clear that she is more of a ranged attacker than a close-quarters combat girl. Samus swings the blade towards Daniel, but the mutant has no trouble hitting the blade aside and using the opportunity to scrape the bounty hunter across the face. Samus jumps back to avoid decapitation, but now that she was open, Daniel moved in with blind fury. He swings both arms wildly, Samus only able to block one arm as the other slashes into her Zero Suit. Samus tries to kick Daniel away from her, but the mutant is quick to extend his knee spikes. The bone jabs into the bounty hunter’s incoming kick, forcing her off balance and onto her knees.

Without missing a beat though, Samus places the Sword of Hisou through Daniel’s legs and pulls it upwards. Daniel is forced to press his elbow spikes down to prevent a rather uncomfortable upwards bisection, but since his hands were still free he grabs the hilt of the sword and begins to try and tug it from Samus’s grip. The bounty hunter gets back on her feet to try and get a better position to pull from, and Daniel quickly steps over the blade to make sure no “accidents” occur during the tug of war.

As the sword is jerked around, the weather begins to turn erratic. Wind whips around, carrying everything from snow to sand to full blown fish. Tornadoes are born and instantly die, only to be replaced by typhoons that give way to weak little dust devils. Neither fiter lets up on their grip though, weathering the weather with stoic resolve. Soon though, like all storms, it comes to lightning and the bolt of electricity hits right by the two fiters. The first bolt startles them, but as more and more lightning crashes around them, the two fiters begin to try and factor it into their battle. The battle shifts from a tug of war to an attempt to push each other down with the sword. The back and forth eventually ends when Daniel lets up on his grip of the sword. Samus did not expect the sudden shift and falls down and right into the path of a thunderbolt.

Samus will be joining the club of people who are lucky enough to survive a lightning strike, but she is not terribly well off after absorbing the lightning crash. Samus stands back up, but her body fells numb and she can hardly move her limbs. Daniel does not do anything at first, convinced a stiff breeze might be enough to finish Samus off, but the bounty hunter swings the sword around and slices into the wound Utsuho created earlier. Daniel didn’t take this strike lightly and charges towards Samus. The bounty hunter lifts the Sword of Hisou to defend, but Daniel smacks it aside with one bone blade and slashes Samus Aran across her stomach.

To a woman already struck by lightning, it didn’t take much to push her over to the other side of death. Maybe she won't be able to join that club after all.

Samus keels over face first into a dirty puddle of sand, dust, and Legos. Refbot signals the battle's end, and Daniel goes over to help Carol up. Both were exhausted but healthy enough to survive the battle, and with a bit of medical care both fiters should be in tip top shape!

Which is good, because both Daniel and Carol will be moving on! Daniel and Carol have won the first fite of FITE WEEK 2!

Fite 67- The Big Bar Brawl 3

Pimps, players, and pain purveyors! Welcome to the 3rd annual celebration of a most glorious occasion where murder is on the menu and mayhem is the complimentary side dish. This year we managed to snag forty willing participants and their friends to participate in the biggest blood bath you’ll ever see, and we’ve provided the bathtub for them. Here on Moron Mountain, these fiters will be fiting for your respect and entertainment. May I welcome you, to the BIG BAR BRAWL 3!

High above the grey crust of the strange amusement park planet this year’s master of ceremonies Mr. Swackhammer looked out over the coliseum he had built just for the occasion. The ground was made of the native soil, but the walkways framed in the purple and red sky were made of tougher alien metals. The gravity boosters hummed as they awaited contestants to use them like wallless elevators. The roar of the crowd in the bleachers drowned out most of the machinery noises though. Groups of scrawny little aliens called Nerdlucks scampered about finishing the last minute preparations: manning the cameras, selling concessions, collecting the massive bets of high rollers.

Swackhammer sat silently even as the crowd demanded that the brawl begin. Refbot sits by waiting for the signal to start the brawl. The group of Nerdlucks serving as his assistants for the event are getting anxious themselves. Eventually, one could not help but pipe up.

“Are we going to begin?”

“Give it a second. Build them up to the boiling point, and then…”

The arena spotlights shoot to life and a microphone drops down from above.  Our portly alien host seizes the microphone and yanks it towards his mouth.

“Are you ready for the Big Bar Brawl?”

A roar from the crowd answers in the affirmative.

“Well here they are! Your brawlers for the evening!”

Right on cue, a set of doors open up, allowing in our huge cast of contestants. The flying fiters immediately rocket into the air, except for Moosh who simply doesn’t have the strength to fly that fast and Widow Maker who has the sense to not fly until she needs to. Shrieks from the crowd welcome some of the contest's biggest names.

“WE LOVE YOU SAMUS!!”

“KILL ‘EM ALL HALE!”

“BE CAREFUL OUT THERE ARIEL, THE WHOLE FAMILY IS CHEERING FOR YOU!”

The crowd gets suspiciously quiet though when Spider-Pig walks out. The pig looks around a bit, snorts, and continues his walk into the arena.

Dirk is posing for the crowd and is bathed in shutter flashes for his showboating. Aevar walks into the arena and snarls in disgust at the spectacle on display.

A few fiters begin stretching; others just try to keep their knees from trembling. Ariel clambers up onto Moosh as in their agreement before the fite. People like Chet and Ulrika immediately went to the gravity boosters so they could start up on the walkways rather than in the main arena.

Swackhammer drags this part of the event out as well. Every fiter is introduced and allowed time for the audience to hoot and holler at them, but as the last few brawlers enter the arena, the audience is wheezing and hacking from the constant cheering. Tak-Sin and Morgan enter the arena to what sounds like the after-effects of tear gas at a riot.

“I’m not used to such an afflicted audience…”

“Yar…”

They weren’t the last fiter to enter though. A giant box made of hellish metals with two peepholes for ominous red eyes to peer through is wheeled in by and old fellow who clearly should have retired a few decades ago. Thank goodness for anti-gravity dollies I guess. Once the box is in the middle of the arena, Swackhammer gets back on the microphone.

“There they are, your forty fiters for the night! Before we get to the bloodshed though, a fiting veteran will be singing the traditional Fite Yer’ Mates Anthem!”

A giant Jumbo-tron above Swackhammer comes to life, and on it is the familiar face of the first ever Mystery Fiter, Mac Tonight. Housed up in what he has so cutely called his “Brawl-Proof Bunker”, Mac Tonight prepares to play a song for the 3rd occasion of the event where he has already died twice.

"When the brawlers, come to kill friends
A major bloodbath, Murder! –don’t be late!
Yeah, at Zoofights, the voters will fight – killer!
On Moron Mountain! Showtime, it's Fite Yer’ Mates!"

“Have fun you cool cats! So ‘sorry’ I couldn’t make it this year!”

The moon-faced shape of Mac Tonight disappears and is replaced with a huge table of information on all the fiters.  Swackhammer’s booming voice comes over the speakers once more,

“Alright folks, one last piece of business before we can get this show rolling! To introduce this year’s mystery fiter, please welcome to the arena a big Fite Yer’ Mates fan, a Mr. Arthur Bishopfish!”

A literal bishopfish walks into the arena and waves to the crowd. He and the Episcescopalian Church have paid a lot for this honor, and as he approaches the box, he pulls out a personal microphone he has been given.

“Greetings fite fans, if I may have a moment of your time I’d like to tell you about-“

A loud grumble comes from inside the box. Arthur drops his mic in surprise and turns around. A simple hook and eye lock held the door of the box closed, and all he has to do is unhook it to reveal the mystery fiter. Unfortunately, he came with an agenda, and that is to preach an obscure fish-based branch of Christianity. He picks up his microphone and prepares to resume his proselytizing.

Apparently our mystery fiter is just as eager as us for the fite to start! A single metallic arm pierces the bishopfish from behind and pulls him into the box. There are a few moments of terrible screaming and then silence…

Swackhammer can’t believe what he was seeing. More importantly, he can see the mystery fiter is still inside his box.

“If one of you guys down there could just go over there and undo the lock. All you got to do is remove the hook…”

But at the sound of the word “Go”, Refbot signals for the match to begin!

“No you hunk of bolts, that wasn’t the signal!”

It was too late for Swackhammer’s protests to be heard. As soon as Refbot had given them the go ahead, the fiters leap into action!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the third Big Bar Brawl has officially begun!

With such a huge cast of characters, our competitors are spoiled for choice for who they want to attack first. The fiters spread out quickly though, the more careful ones choosing not to pick their first fite before they knew what everyone else was up to.

But it seems like the ill-fated bishopfish wasn’t the only one who came with an agenda to the arena today. The moment they got the signal to fite, Yahoo Bot and Bing Bot began moving around the arena as quickly as they could scattering fliers and playing 30 seconds ads with no skip button for their parent companies. Fiters who are preparing to showdown are swamped in leaflets saying why both search engines are “So Much Better Than Google!” and inviting them to go to a website to participate in single-blind trials meant to influence you into switching your search engine.

These tiny spambots quickly earn the ire of almost every contestant, but their advertising is mostly ignored for the sake of participating in serious battles with other competitors.

There is one droid though that will not stand for the tomfoolery of these robots. Hater, being trash can shaped, has been on more than one occasion mistaken for a waste bin, and he has had more than one experience with people who tried to toss out leaflets in him. R7-H8R rolls up to Yahoo Bot, who had been stopped by Ariel for a lecture on the wastefulness of paper pamphlets. Yahoo Bot does’t seem to be listening, but Hater had a way of getting Yahoo Bot’s attention.

The sudden jolt of electricity causes Yahoo Bot to fly forward in a panic, plowing right past Ariel and her mount and kicking up a wake of fliers. Hater’s blaster pistol pops out from within and begins to take aim. Calculations are quick for the astromech droid, and the predictable nature of a fellow robot allows him to shoot off a shot that Yahoo Bot would float right into. The shot makes contact, but Yahoo Bot takes only surface damage. This spambot is built to last.

Bing Bot ceases his search engine hocking as soon as it notices the ruckus Yahoo Bot is kicking up. Hater’s blaster shot clues the blue robot to the source of Yahoo Bot’s craziness, and Bing Bot begins a dash towards the astromech droid. Fully expecting retaliation from Yahoo’s ally, Hater twirls around and trains his blaster on Bing Bot. Bing Bot quickly searches for information on his opponent’s model in his internal engine, but by the time he’s reached the page that actually had information about R7-H8R model droids, the blaster fire has already reached him.

Bing Bot’s more humanoid design came at a high cost. His shell is more susceptible to the laser blast than Yahoo, and the shot penetrates the chest plate of Microsoft’s chosen spambot. Bing Bot tumbles to the ground, but most of his vital systems are spared from the blaster fire. A sound like a lawnmower failing to start begins to roar from the robot’s chest as its noisy search engine is exposed to the elements.

Yahoo Bot’s mad dash comes to a stop when it receives a message from Bing Bot. The specs of an R7-H8R model are included in the e-mail, and Yahoo Bot analyzes them and adjusts itself for battle. Hater takes aim at the injured Bing Bot and fires, but Yahoo Bot is quickly back in the fray and shoulder checks Hater. Hater tips over dangerously, but the blow was not enough to topple the droid. Hater’s shock prod pops out again and sizzles. Hater is ready for the two adbots.

Bing Bot gets back on its legs and charges towards Hater as Yahoo Bot comes from the other side. The blaster rotates around on top of Hater so that the prod is facing Yahoo and the gun is facing Bing. It begins to open fire on Bing, but now that he knew how his opponent worked, Bing is able to dive out of the way of each shot. Yahoo Bot is zooming towards Hater without worry though, since the shock prod will only be a problem when it reaches the droid.

Right before it was within range of the prod, Yahoo Bot smacks one of the buttons on his panel. Hater’s blaster stops firing at Bing Bot and the prod’s electricity quickly dissipates. R7-H8R has been paused, and the two adbots use the time to close in and begin an attack. The two robots begin ripping the plating from their foe and quickly pull out an important set of wires. Yahoo Bot begins to vibrate, signaling that the pause was wearing out. Before they ran out of time, the two machines managed to reprogram Hater a bit, and as soon as it pops back into the present the adbots gets a nasty and wild shock from the exposed wiring.

Hater begins to malfunction wildly, spouting nonsense binary and retracting his blaster and prod repeatedly. The droid begins rolling about, and the sudden unpredictability of their opponent means Bing Bot and Yahoo Bot can’t dodge properly. Hater crashes into Bing Bot and begins to drive all over the blue robot. Yahoo Bot flies over and begins trying to pull Hater off his ally, but the droid was much too heavy for Yahoo Bot’s weak arms. Bing Bot’s own exposed wiring gets caught in the wheels of his opponent, and soon Hater is unraveling the innards of Microsoft’s minion.

Out of Bing Bot shoots a wave of tiny black medals. These worthless Bing Rewards bounce right off Hater though, so Bing begins throwing all it has at Hater. A dictionary, a calculator, tons of maps, but all of them are much too weak to do any damage to Hater. Hater’s systems begin to stabilize, but as soon as it realizes it is tangled up in Bing’s wiring, it decides driving repeatedly on it was not the way to finish the battle. R7-H8R rolls off, dragging Bing behind him by the wires. Sparks shoot out of Bing’s chest as he is dragged around, and Yahoo Bot has no idea how to save his ally.

Yahoo Bot decides to try super speed. Pressing its Fast Forward button, Yahoo Bot quickly catches up with Hater and begins to punch it repeatedly. Hater tries to stab his opponent with his shock prod, but Yahoo Bot is too quick to hit. The rapid fire punches did not slow Hater down though, and it kept driving forward in spite of the damage they were doing to its chassis.

Suddenly there is a loud snap and a shower of sparks comes out of Bing Bot’s chest.

Bing Bot’s systems power down. The severed wires that now spun around within Hater’s wheels were part of some vital systems, and without them Bing Bot can no longer function. Yahoo Bot’s Fast Forward ends and it floats over to its fallen ally. It presses a button on the broken robot to try and reboot it, but Bing Bot is out of service. Yahoo Bot begins hammering the reboot button, but to no avail. It even presses its own rewind button in the vain hope that it might rewind someone else, but instead Yahoo Bot just reverses through its past few attempts at revival.

Hater does not care about the scene of one spambot trying pathetically to revive the other though.  It rolls up to Yahoo Bot like it did earlier and is preparing to perform its shock prod backstab once more, but Yahoo Bot quickly turns around and seizes the prod with its hand. The shock passes through the robot, but it still manages to perform its intended function properly. Yahoo Bot bends the prod backwards and into one of Hater’s own open systems.

Hater whirls about as a result of the shock, but disabling it quickly puts an end to the spinning. Hater spins a bit more to face his remaining opponent, but Yahoo Bot is preparing something strange. The white robot jams its hands into the open areas of R7-H8R’s body and begins to shoot ad after ad into the astromech droid.

Dozens of spam e-mails and viruses enter Hater’s systems. There is no visible sign of it besides the blinking red eye of the robot, but within the droid its systems are being overwritten with great deals on cars in its area and single girls looking for it. Hater begins spouting a string of 0s and 1s that, if deciphered, will lead its listeners to a free trial of Netflix. The system overwrites continue, but luckily for Hater there is one newly added system that is hard for them to crack.

The blaster atop the droid takes aim and begins firing at Yahoo Bot’s arms. Unlike the main body of the robot, Yahoo’s arms were easily destroyed by the blaster fire. Unable to channel the spam through its arms, it begins to spray banner ads all around the arena. Hater’s systems can’t pinpoint the spam fountain too well, so Hater fires the blaster wildly in the general direction of Yahoo Bot. The shell of the robot is still safe, but the gaping holes that spam sprayed out of are eventually hit.

Needless to say, Yahoo Bot’s internal systems don’t particularly agree with laser fire.

A fire erupts from within the robot’s shell, and Yahoo Bot is down. Hater can’t quite confirm the kill because of the ads that have replaced his vision, but the sound of crackling fire is enough for him to believe he has won.

The sound of the robot fite had attracted more than a few eyes, but only one contestant saw it and decided to step in after it ended.

“Alright minion of Doctor Mechanico, prepare to get stomped!”

To a skateboarding snake with a mind trapped in video games, Hater looked an awful lot like the kind of enemy you might find moving back and forth endlessly in a factory level. Killing two other robots was enough for Wheeler to believe that Hater was in fact an enemy hired by his arch nemesis Dr. Mechanico. I mean, Hater’s mechanical, and Dr. Mechanico sounds like “mechanical”, how could they not be in league together?

Wheeler skateboards towards Hater, but the poor droid has no idea what was going on. Its sensory systems are almost useless now, but the spam had managed to avoid corrupting one part of R7-H8R: his hearing. The sound of a snake announcing his attack and the subsequent scratch of skateboard wheels on Moron Mountain’s hard grey earth is more than enough to help Hater judge Wheeler’s next attack.

Wheeler leaps into the air and prepares to bring his heavy tail down on the dome of the droid, but the blaster on the droid’s head has different plans. The gun begins to fire a volley of red lasers at Wheeler, but the snake was used to dodging lasers. These lasers didn’t have the same patterns as the ones found in Mechanico’s many lairs, but a quick 360 Melon was enough to spare the snake a few new holes. Wheeler lands and turns around, but it appears Hater could not track him well enough to figure out where the snake landed. The blaster is still pointing upward, waiting for the snake to try again.

“Bogus! It’s like those enemies with the spikes on their heads.”

“Don’t be judging the spikey head method boy! It got me outta more tight pickles than you can imagine!” General Cleft happened to be passing by at the time, but he wasn’t interested in a snake and a malfunctioning droid. A huge commotion is happening near the middle of the arena. Deadhead had been singled out by many as their first target, and for good reason. Moron Mountain’s soul selection is pretty much all Nerdlucks, but the deceased aliens are perfect for Deadhead. Their will is easy to bend and they are more than willing to be flung at the other competitors on cue. Many feared the undead Nazi’s potential, but General Cleft just wanted to kick some Nazi ass.

The battle against Deadhead at the moment is mostly just a bunch of dodging of scrawny Nerdluck souls (which Utsuho predictably has no trouble with), so for now let’s focus on this little microcosm of action between Wheeler and Hater.

In most platform games you simply skip the enemy whose head you can’t jump on, but Wheeler isn’t in a game right now. He had free range to move about, and he was going to use that to his advantage. Wheeler begins to drive in circles around Hater, digging his back wheels hard into the ground to try and make as much noise as possible. Hater can pinpoint the snake’s location based on that sound now, but a few tactical algorithms ran and it is deemed more fruitful to continue protecting its head. After a few noisy rotations, Wheeler went in to strike!

The kicking snake’s board kicks forward and slams against the droid. Hater teeters, but stubborn programming kept him from striking back. Wheeler scoots around to where the chassis had been torn off and tries an attack there. A pop signals some serious damage done, but all of a sudden Hater’s gun was down and aiming at Wheeler. Apparently the snake had fixed the droid’s sight. Remember kids: hitting electronics is a great way to fix them!

Wheeler begins to dance about on his board, showing off his serpentine flexibility as he dodges the laser blasts. Hater’s sight was back, but his targeting systems are still kind of wonky. As the game mascot danced about, it slowly slithered closer and closer towards Hater until he could wrap himself completely around the droid. Hater could not aim the gun at the proper angle to shoot off the constricting snake, but Wheeler was not putting the squeeze on him. Not every snake is a constrictor after all.

Instead of squeezing his foe, Wheeler stuck his mouth into an open spot and began to bite some electronics.

It wasn’t a very good idea.

Wheeler falls to the ground around Hater, but the angle is still too low for Hater to hit. It tries to roll backwards, but the snake’s body is still in a loop around it on the ground, and the tires just can’t get over a bump that big. Wheeler has more than enough time to recover from the shock, and once he does he slithers back to his skateboard, all the while dodging the resumed blaster shots of R7-H8R. Wheeler prepares to jump again, and Hater’s gun instantly points upward in anticipation.

Wheeler’s jump turns out to be a deceptive little bunny hop, but after doing so the snake grabs and end of the board with his mouth and swings it around. Hater was pretty quick on the draw, but not quick enough to reangle his gun before the skateboard slams into it. The gun was connected pretty tightly, but the force of the smack is enough to knock the gun into a useless bend. Hater fires his gun repeatedly, but he could no longer rotate it, so it just continuously fires off into the distance.

Hater begins to rotate so he can at least point the bent gun in the proper direction, but once he reaches where he thought Wheeler was, the rad snake is already in the air. Perhaps in better shape he could have survived a 185 pound snake and a skateboard crashing down on his head, but in his condition Hater caves in like a plastic trash barrel, except for the loud popping back into shape part that would happen to a plastic bin afterwards.

Hater’s body crumbles into a collection of mechanical scrap, and the robotic corpse he leaves behind is a bit confusing for Wheeler.

“Isn’t the enemy supposed to disappear after I do that?”

Wheeler skates off rather slowly. He watches the pile that once was Hater closely. He had seen many skeleton enemies pop back up after he had stomped on them, so since the body didn’t disappear he couldn’t shake the suspicion that Hater was actually some sort of robot skeleton.

Wheeler rolls passed Clint and 17 as he goes to seek another enemy to stomp. Clint and 17 are low to the ground, eying Permafrost in the distance. The mammoth had chosen to pick on a few small timers to start with, so Grutz, the Custard Kittens, and the Coneheads are quite busy testing just how fast their tiny legs can run. Whenever one would run off from the main group, the others would follow to try and keep the heat on the fleeing fiter, meaning that no one was ever going to shake the mammoth while they shared the same level of cowardice.

“atTACk?” 17 asks Clint.

“Not yet, he’s tiring himself out, and to be honest I wouldn’t mind those little knights getting squashed”

Unlike their other running companions, the Coneheads had a bit less cowardice and lot more idiocy. Rather than continuing their escape, the Coneheads turn to face their pursuer…

And are quickly flung aside by the beast’s trunk. The 3 Coneheads went flying off into the arena, but the brief distraction had given the kittens and the imp time to escape the mammoth’s sight. Permafrost looks around for them a few times and lets out a huff before he lumbers off.

“nOw?” 17 asks.

“It’s now or never!” Clint got off his belly and begins to charge, making sure his footsteps are both fast but as quiet as possible. 17 scuttles after him, hoisting his weapon up and down in eager anticipation of the hunt.

Like a hunting party of cavemen if cavemen wore heavy armor and kept pet crabs, the two came upon the revived wooly mammoth. Their approach is somewhat of a surprise, but once they got to a certain point the combination of hard ground and metal boots made it impossible to mask the sound of their approach. The monster hunter and alien crab lash forward with their weapons, but the mammoth’s trunk whips around and smacks the weapons aside. Clint manages to keep a hold of his, but the strong blow startled the tiny crab and the lance flew out of his hands.

17 quickly scurries off to claim his weapon, leaving Clint to face the giant mammoth alone. Permafrost jabs his tusks forward in a show of strength, but Clint had seen the many bluffs of much stronger creatures, so he does not back down. Permafrost trumpeted out a loud blow from his trunk, but again Clint stands his ground. Permafrost didn’t need to be told after that that his intimidation tactics will not work on this monster hunter.

Permafrost charges forward, but Clint dives to the side and points his weapon out to the side. In classic pachyderm style, the mammoth’s path is straight and the beast ran its own legs into the blade. The blade cuts the skin, but the attack isn’t meant to do serious damage. Clint was making sure the beast would not charge again. He was trying to teach it tactics just so he could deconstruct them later to his advantage.

17 retrieves his weapon and returns to the mammoth hunt. Positioning his gunlance like a rifle as best he could with big meaty claws, 17 begins to fire blasts into the legs of the mammoth. An immobile mammoth is a less dangerous mammoth after all.

Apparently Permafrost wasn’t picking up on the tactic suggestions though. Permafrost charges forward again, and Clint positions himself for another series of leg slices, but 17 had not jumped out of the way. Apparently his limited understanding of English made understanding Clint’s plans a bit difficult. 17 continues firing at the mammoth’s legs and Clint almost decides to leap out and try to help the crab, but the monster hunter was not the crustacean’s friend, merely an ally for the brawl. 17 would need to be eliminated at some point after all if Clint intended to win…

Luckily, this thought process was for not, because a heavy blast to the front leg causes the living fossil to slide onto his knees and cease his charge.  Clint leaps into action, scaling up the beast’s back and running towards the head of the mammoth. A strange upheaval from within the mammal's body makes Clint trip though, and as Permafrost stands back up, Clint slips off the beast’s back.

Clint curses his luck. He had no idea what tripped him up, but he immediately got back into battle mode, which was good because the mammoth’s tusks are swinging towards him. He lifts his Wyvernator to block the tusks, but the force of the swing sends Clint onto his back. 17 is too short to get hit by the swing, so the little crab instead goes for a lance jab into the dangling trunk of the mammoth.

You don’t have to guess what happens next.

The trunk of the living fossil wraps around the lance and hoists 17 in the air. The crab hangs onto his weapon for dear life and tries to fire the weapon, but to try and reach for the gunlance’s trigger would risk him falling off and losing his weapon. Permafrost begins to shake the crab around in the air as it marches towards Clint. The monster hunter is quick on his feet, but another swift swing of the tusks floors Clint again, but this time he did not manage to absorb some of the blow with his blade.

Rathalos armor is tough, but a heavy hit to the chest will still bruise you. Clint can’t get up as quickly this time, and the heavy plodding feet of the mammoth are coming towards him. A trample is imminent if the monster hunter can’t find a way to get out of the path.

Or he could be saved if a group of bitter small fiters who decide to be opportunists. The Custard Kittens leap onto the side of the mammoth and begin nibbling on the beast and jabbing their thermometer into his meaty sides. That alone wouldn’t have been enough to slow the mammal's charge, but Grutz had conquered some of his fear seeing the kittens were okay after their attack and jabs his pickaxe into the mammoth’s heavily wounded front leg.

Far away in the arena, I’m sure the Coneheads are also offering their moral support between moaning about how much that trunk slap hurt.

The charge ceases and the trunk of the mammoth quickly swings around to pry off the hitchhikers, but the crab wrapped up in it was preventing the nose from reaching the foes. Repeatedly the kittens and Grutz strike, and the mammoth just decides hurling the crab away would be a safer bet than letting these four small creatures hack him apart slowly. He loosens his squeeze on the blade and tosses 17 aside, but the crab is quick to act and seizes one of the pachyderm’s tusks. The force of the toss did mean he spins around on the tusk a few times like an Olympic gymnast spinning on a bar, but without all that weird leg stuff those athletes do.

The kittens and Grutz quickly leap off the mammoth and run away once the trunk begins swatting at them. Clint was back up as well, and he is prepared to ignore the chest bruising long enough to kill an extinct mammal. Before either Clint or Permafrost could act, 17 jams his lance into the trunk of the mammoth.

A disgusting trumpeting sound of pain accompanied the puncturing, and 17 is quick to abandon-mammoth afterwards. The mammoth stamps about, a new fury burning in his prehistoric heart. His trunk is too wounded to move, but his tusks are still strong. He waves them wildly as he limps towards Clint and 17, but the animal is much slower now. Neither have any trouble dodging the beast’s ivory.

Clint signals to 17 and runs off to the side. 17 begins to fire his gunlace once more, not really trying to do too much damage but trying to keep the attention off of Clint. The monster hunter reaches the back of the beast and seized the pachyderm’s tail. The mammoth immediately tries to rotate around and attack Clint, but a gunlance blast in the side made Permafrost decide that 17 is the bigger threat right now. Clint scales up the tail of the mammoth and this time crawls on all fours towards the beast’s head. He felt the small bumps from last time push up against him again, but he noticed they were frenzied and random. He didn’t care what was causing them as long as they didn’t knock him off again.

Clint reaches the head of the beast and slides down to where he is hanging right between the beast’s eyes. Permafrost shakes his head hard, but Clint hangs on and rears his weapon back. 17’s volley has ceased for fear of hitting Clint, but the ceased volley also meant the Permafrost was not afraid to advance. A painful and desperate charge began, but Clint pulls back his sword and jabs it right into the skull of the beast.

The charging beast falls to the ground right on top of poor 17. 17 isn’t crushed to death, but it is a rather unpleasant experience navigating his way out from under the dead creature. Clint is busy trying to tug his weapon from the beast’s head, but it is stuck in there quite good. Between panting and tugging at the sword, Clint gives a brief “good job” to 17, who begins to hoist his gunlance up and down in the air again in celebration.

Off in their landing spot, the Conehead Brigade has finished complaining about being tossed long enough to notice Samus very carefully walking around the arena. It was clear she is hunting a competitor, but the Coneheads are hunting for something too.

HOT BABEZ.

The arena for the Big Bar Brawl is rather open, but thankfully a big unopened box provided a rather big piece of cover for Samus as she stalks her prey. The giant turtle Gamera reminded her of a few too many foes she had fought in her time, but he seems to be carrying himself with a jovial air that confused Samus. Gamera is leaning against one of the arena walls and talking to WALL!! Samus was still too far away to hear what the two of them are discussing, but she would probably only be more confused if she could hear them.

The Coneheads are slowly approaching Samus. One checks his breath and another puffs his chest out, even though the armor made it so he doesn’t look any different. The other Conehead crosses his arms and tries to look disinterested.

“Girls love a guy who’s hard to get.”
“Not as much as they love a buff, brawny guy!”
“Doesn’t matter if your breath smells like fish guts!”
“Hey, we don’t know that fish guts breath doesn’t work!”
“We don’t know what does work!”
“I’ve got a checklist I’m going down!”
“Anything checked yet?”
“Nope!”

The group hushes up as they approach Samus. One clears his throat to get her attention, but the group jumps back as Samus turns around and shoves her arm cannon into their faces. When she realizes who they were though, she pulls her arm back and immediately went back to watching Gamera.

“Hey lady don’t ignore us!”
“We’re here to protect you!”
“Yeah, can we see your Zero Suit?”
“No! You weren’t supposed to say it yet!”
“Does Zero Suit mean you get naked?”
“I think that’s birthday suit.”
“That makes sense. I celebrate most of my birthday’s naked!”

Samus tries her best to ignore the Coneheads, but they continue rambling on and requesting to see her Zero Suit. Samus points her gun behind her and fires a few weak power beam shots to try and scare them off, but they just jump back a bit before they go back to hassling her.

“We passed your test!”
“Can you at least take of your helmet?”
“I’ll go Zero Suit if you go Zero Suit!”

The Coneheads begging grabs the attention of someone else who was passing by. Mr. Daniel is a very slow fellow, and his travel across the arena would make even Tank the Tortoise grow impatient. He had been eyeing the ancient soul of the revived mammoth, but after the monster hunter and his ally had make quick work of the beast, he had to seek a new soul that hadn’t already escaped the body.

Seeing the Coneheads nearby, Daniel can’t help but salivate at the prospect of what seems like an easy kill. If he could just rip out at least one of their souls he would be pleased.

There are many creatures in the arena, and even though the mammoth had fallen Daniel still believes he has quite a menagerie to pick from. The hat atop his head begins to mutter and Mr. Daniel begins to chant. Dark energies begin to float around the man. Elsewhere in the arena a few competitors begin to feel a compulsion to abandon their actions and move towards Mr. Daniel. Moosh begins to flutter over, but Ariel starts snapping her fingers and mentioning some delicious meals, and the bear’s mind is immediately back under his control. Barkle almost scurries off as well, but Ariel grabs the dog before he can leap of the bear’s back. Gamera almost began to walk away from WALL!! as well, but the strange weapon WALL!! had brought seems to disrupt the call to order Mr. Daniel was emitting towards Gamera.

Mrs. Commanderson, Gunter, Rainbow Dash, Tank, Wheeler, the Custard Kittens, 17, Spider-Pig, and even the strong-willed Widow Maker all follow the strange call. Widow Maker’s subconscious was screaming at her that she was getting roped into another possession, but the bug’s body no longer obeyed the bug’s mind. Once the group of creatures arrive, Mr. Daniel’s ritual ends. His animal army has arrived, and it is a bit of a weird bunch.

Widow Maker is compelled to cloak and sneaks up on the Conehead brigade. Without the other two noticing, Widow Maker snatches a Conehead away and carries him over to Mr. Daniel.  Meanwhile, the other two Coneheads keep prattling on.

“Come on, no one is attacking you!”
“You don’t need armor if no one is fiting!”
“We won’t attack. We’re allies!”
“Did we not mention we’re allies?”

The two Coneheads stop speaking for a moment. The silence drags on, and at some point even Samus can’t help but grow curious as to why the talking stopped.

“Hold on…”
“Weren’t there three of us?”
“Let’s check our numbers.”
“Your back still says 1”
“And yours says 4”
“Where’s 2?”
“Or 3 for that matter?”
“I’m sure we came here with 2 though”

The two Coneheads turn away from Samus to search for their lost ally, but it doesn’t take long. Trapped in a circle of animals, the captured Conehead has nowhere to run when Mr. Daniel jabs forward with his fork and yanks the Coneheads’s soul out of his body.

Mr. Daniel's smile seems to spill off his face as he admires the ripped soul. He spins it around in the air as his hat sings a dirge for the fallen Conehead. He continues to spin it about and admire how it struggles to get free, lost in the pleasure of claiming his prize. The two remaining Coneheads are steamed when they realize what has happened, and drawing their swords they charge towards Mr. Daniel.

But Mr. Daniel’s posse leaps into action. Most of the animals bite uselessly at the armor of the two knights or swipe at it with their claws. Even the ones with weapons seem to treat them more like clubs than use them as intended. Without Mr. Daniel’s guidance, they attack wildly and stupidly. The Coneheads flail about frantically trying to shake the animals off of them, and eventually one of them dares to conjure up a bomb. The animals without direction don’t seem to acknowledge it until it goes off and knocks them away from the two knights.

“Let’s get that creepy guy!”

The Coneheads hop, skip, and jump by the animals as they recover from the explosion. It didn’t do much damage, but the smoke was bothering quite a few of them due to big bug eyes or great animal senses that were now backfiring. Mr. Daniel is still lost in his admiration of the soul, but the hat atop his head had the sense to keep a lookout during the ritual, and it now spotted the approaching Coneheads. The hat seems to inhale deeply, and then it blares forth with a scream that would make a banshee wince in pain.

The scream does not even last a second though.

Far off on one of the walkways, Chet had been watching the battlefield to try and snipe anything that may be troublesome for Ulrika. He had heard of what trouble Mr. Daniel’s hat could cause, so as Daniel did his little soul-ripping ritual, Chet managed to target the headgear and blow it away. He had considered just killing Mr. Daniel, but he did not know if the hat and man were tied in spirit.

Mr. Daniel’s reaction did seem to support that theory a bit. Immediately his attention was shifted to the tattered remains of his hat. He does not know of the sniper far away, so he immediately pins the blame on the two tiny knights who are a few feet away on the ground clutching their ears. The Monster Handler immediately compels his beasts to attack, but with no control over their senses after the explosion and the added pains of the brief hat shriek, none answered the call. Frustrated with his pets, Daniel instead chooses to conjure up something different.

When the two remaining Coneheads uncover their ears and look up, they do not see Mr. Daniel. They were in the audience of some event. They look around, and eventually they see a banner that really excited them.

“Can you see that?”
“You bet your cone head I can see that!”
“We’re at a swimsuit competition!”

The Coneheads begin bouncing in their seats eagerly awaiting the contest’s start. Rather than adhering to the decorum of a contest, all the swimsuit models immediately come on stage and begin posing. The audience is hooting and hollering, but the Coneheads are dead silent.

“WE’RE AT A MALE SWIMSUIT COMPETITION”

Surrounded by a bunch of old women cheering for the scantily clad men, the Coneheads cannot escape their seats. They try to close their eyes, but they were unable to and are subjected to stare at a parade of hunks showing of physiques that are the complete opposite of their own. For some reason, the announcer for the competition also makes a point of listing all the girlfriends these models have had in the past.

Mr. Daniel had conjured up their worst nightmare, and although he was more used to dealing in grotesque shows of violence, he was surprised that the Coneheads are reacting even worse to these burly men than most of his victims reacted to unfathomable beasts of other realms.

Daniel’s animal army slowly begins to rejoin him in a circle around where the first Conehead had died, but now the two others had joined their fallen comrade in the circle.

“I’ve never had the chance to try, but perhaps I can fit three soulssssss on my fork at once…”

Mr. Daniel prepared to do his soul-ripping ritual once more, but within the nightmare the Coneheads are becoming a bit desensitized.

“It’s just a bunch of hunks.”
“Who cares how many girls he dated.”
“They are probably just all old ladies anyway.”
“If I work out I could get that strong anyway.”
“Wait a minute…”
“Is that?”

Joining the other hunks on stage was…

“NO WAAAAAAAY” they both shout.

“I don’t need to hang out with you losers anymore”, the brawny Conehead says, smooching the many ladies that stand in a circle around him. The two scrawny knights look on enviously, but eventually something clicks in their heads.

“Hey, isn’t he dead?”
“Yeah, that dumb hat guy did it…”
“Then how is he all buff and alive now?”
“Did we even kill that hat guy?”

The nightmare began to collapse around them as they showed a level of clarity and intelligence the likes of which they have never exhibited before. The two Coneheads wake up and see Daniel driving his fork down on them. Conehead 1 draws his sword up and catches the fork right before it reaches into him to draw his soul. Conehead 4 draws his sword as well, but since he had no incoming fork he lunges straight forward with his blade.

The sword may be tiny, but the blade hits hard and makes Mr. Daniel drop his fork and cane. The two living Coneheads sit up to see an angry circle of animals ready to pounce, but the wounded Mr. Daniel fell forward from the effects of his wound. Thing is, the two Coneheads sitting up are pretty much two giant spikes just waiting to impale anyone who falls on them.

The animals snap out of their hypnotic state as Daniel dies, a strange grin on his face. The Coneheads are not too pleased to have a dead man stuck to their helmets, and the two try to push the fallen Monster Handler off their heads. The many animals begin to wander off on their own, none particularly interested in killing each other right now. Widow Maker does take a second to speak to the two remaining Coneheads.

“Hey, about your friend there… I couldn’t help but capture him. Apparently I’m susceptible to all sorts of dumb possessive magic. It’s getting quite tiresome at this point.”

Conehead 1 and 4 turn to Widow Maker, no emotion betrayed through their visors.

“Yeah… Well he was just a dumb hunk anyway.”
“If he wants all those girls he can have them.”
“We’re gonna go for Samus!”
“Bye bug lady. Don’t go near that swimsuit competition! It’s just a hunk parade”

The two Coneheads scamper off to resume their hassling of Samus. Widow Maker looks at them puzzled. They may have shaken the nightmare, but it seems their minds still think what occurred there was real somehow…

Such a huge cluster of competitors is bound to draw the eye of a man interested in a fite, and for those not willing to join the Deadhead dodge-a-thon, Mr. Daniel’s menagerie and the attack on the Coneheads was the big moment to watch. Jumpropeman had floated over near the end of the confrontation and decided not to interrupt it since he was enjoying the drama.

The fitemaster is a bit bored with the post battle wrap-up though, but when he decides to see what else was going on in the arena, he notices something.

“Hey, our mystery fiter isn’t out yet!”

Whatever is inside the mystery box, it isn’t getting out on its own. The hole it made earlier was only enough for the metal arms to poke out of and swipe uselessly. As fitemaster, Jumpropeman can’t stand to see the fite’s guest star cramped in the box instead of out and about showing of its stuff. The time spirit floats over to the giant container.

The Coneheads get to the box first though, and they are more interested in the young woman who is still hiding behind it as she scans Gamera and WALL!! for information.

“Hey Samus, miss us?”
“We just killed some guy in a creepy hat!”
“Pretty cool, huh?”

Samus jumps and turns her gun on them again, this time not out of surprise but because her patience for them has run out.  She begins to charge her arm cannon, and the Coneheads take a step back.

“I think we pressed the wrong button…”
“I think she’s pressing the wrong button if she’s the one charging her gun!”

Samus is more than prepared to blast the two knights to Kingdom Come, but once again her attention is diverted after she spots the Jingle Specter flying towards her. She had no idea he was coming over to just open the box, but her experience battling Chozo Ghosts has made her wary of any spirits who get too close. Samus points her arm at Jumpropeman and fires, and the specter is caught by surprise. Knocked out of the air, Jumpropeman falls down near the Coneheads’ feet.

Samus begins scanning JRM to make sure he’s down, but a sudden crack forward with an electrified jump rope confirmed that he was not yet out of commission. Conehead 4 leaps into the way of the attack, saving the bounty hunter from a nasty shock. The Conehead slams into the side of the metallic cube, and a roar from within confirms that our Mystery Fiter is peeved and ready to join the brawl. The unharmed Conehead turns to Samus,

“Hey lady, we’ll take care of THIS guy. You just got to show us that Zero Suit afterwards!”

Samus didn’t hear the deal, but she had taken off when she heard the roar from within the box. If that box opened up, she wanted to have a range advantage against whatever is inside of it. The Conehead Brigade interpreted her abandoning them to fite Jumpropeman alone as agreeing to their deal, so both knights are invigorated with new resolve.

“Let’s do this!” they say, both knights preparing their weapon magic. Jumpropeman hovers in place, waiting for the two to cast their spells.

Conehead 4 whips up a small bomb, but before he can toss it the weapon blew up in his face, flooring him once more. Conehead 1 has gone for a different approach and summons arrows to rain down from the sky! Or rather, one arrow, and it passes right through Jumpropeman since he has been intangible the whole time.

Jumpropeman returns to a solid state and begins to unleash his own attacks, cracking his jump rope like an electric whip. Neither Conehead is particularly good at dodging the swings, so they are continuously slammed against the wall of the box. The two knights are growing weary from the constant shocks and the annoying metal rings of their armor hitting the box's hellish alloys.

Forscythe Puddingshins is shambling along nearby, and the constant cracking of the jump rope coupled with monstrous roars and metal rings catches his attention. Seeing Jumpropeman gleefully whipping the Coneheads repeatedly without them having any hope of striking back put a sour taste in the ghoul’s mouth.

“That’s hardly sporting,” he says as he begins to load his antique pistol. The ghost is quite far away, but B the Masque knew how to properly compensate for it with his aim. Jumpropeman is too wrapped up in whipping Coneheads to pay attention to the boom of a pistol shot, but when it slams into his tail, he quickly realizes he is being targeted. Forscythe holsters his pistol for now and tries to shamble about inconspicuously as Jumpropeman tries to find the man who blasted his tail.

The heads of the two tiny knights are spinning, but now that JRM’s attention was off of them they saw an opening to attack. Realizing their magic isn’t working too well at the moment, the two draw their swords and leap onto the ghost’s back.

Once again though, the specter is intangible, this time for fear of a second shot coming his way. The Coneheads faceplant into the dirt, but they are quick to roll back onto their feet and begin jabbing their swords at the spirit. Jumpropeman sees their pitiful attempts at stabbing him and floats out of range before he turns tangible again. His green jump rope crackles with energy and the super hero prepares for another attack, but two arrows come down from the sky and lodge themselves into his back. Apparently the rest of the earlier arrow spell was just a bit delayed.

Jumpropeman is once more shot out of the air and again he falls at the feet of the two knights. The Coneheads pull back their swords to attack, but Jumpropeman starts spinning his rope above his head like a helicopter blade, if helicopter blades were made of dollar store plastic. The two knights have no choice but to back up. Conehead 4 decided he would dare to try his bomb again. Once more, it blew up in his hand, but the rope was spinning closely enough to the little knight that the force of the blast blows the green skip rope out of the ghost’s hands.

Unarmed, Jumpropeman is ripe for the stabbing, and both Coneheads charge forward with their glowing blades. There had been many chances for them to learn that JRM goes intangible when he’s not attacking, so what happens next is quite sad.

Passing right through the immaterial specter, the two remaining members of the Conehead Brigade stab each other in the heart. The two fall forward, but their distinctive helmets clink together and lock them into a standing position that made them look like a strange memorial to stabbing someone who looks just like you. Jumpropeman floats away from the two dead Coneheads, his earlier goal of freeing the mystery fiter forgotten now that he wished to find whoever shot his tail.

Forscythe is not the only fiter close to the box and Jumpropeman at the moment, but the two other fiters present clearly don’t have guns. Hypotenuse had entered the battle with a directive to win, but so much of her programming consists of who to avoid that she has been unable to begin a proper battle. Aevar had come for her almost immediately, and her and Light Work had spent most of the match trying to outrun an untiring Graveknight. The robot team eventually spotted the gravity boosters to the upper level though, and in their attempt to escape their pursuer they leap into the gravity field and are launched up onto the walkways. Aevar came to a halt when this happened. He does not quite understand the technology behind the gravity boosters, so he merely thought that Hypotenuse is a really good jumper.

Jumpropeman has already pegged Forscythe as his assailant and is prepared to go challenge him when he hears the voice of Aevar En-Charon call to him.

“My quarry has escaped me for the moment, so I am starved for a challenge. As the master of these blood sports, you must have at least enough knowledge to amuse me for a few brief seconds.”

“Seconds are never brief man, it’s a set amount of time!”

“You will pay for your tomfoolery and japery with your life, specter!” Aevar charges towards the fitemaster, his blade glowing with brightly burning flames.

Aevar’s battle challenge was greeted with the ghost flying out of range and considering how to fite the graveknight. Just because you are challenged doesn’t mean you got to fly right into battle thoughtlessly.

Outside of the arena, high above the bloodshed, Swackhammer raps his fingers on his armrests. The Nerdlucks who are servicing him look nervously at Swackhammer, knowing that the fat alien is quick to annoy and loud when he is.

“I-Is there something you need sir?”

“I need someone down there to open the box and let the mystery fiter out! The reveal was completely ruined by that Arthur guy and his holier-than-all-of-thou attitude. Even Jumpropeman can’t get to the darn thing because people keep trying to kill him!”

“We would do it sir, but we’re just too small to reach it…”

“HEY! HEY FITERS! ANYONE! FREE WEAPON TO THE GUY WHO LET’S THE MYSTERY FITER OUT!”

No response.

“COME ON! ANYBODY! Yeesh, if I could just do it myself and get him out there! Wait… I can!” Swackhammer gets out of his chair, the Nerdlucks following behind him anxiously as he moves towards a ridiculously tall elevator. He gets in and presses the button for the ground floor. As many Nerdlucks as possible follow him in, but quite a few remain stuck on the upper platform as Swackhammer begins his slow descent down the elevator shaft.

Once they reached the bottom, the Nerdlucks spill out into the arena and follow Swackhammer as he waddles across the battlefield. Most fiters seem to ignore his arrival, but Forscythe is unoccupied and Swackhammer's arrival greatly confuses him. B the Masque hobbles over to the alien host.

“What brings you to the arena Mist-“

Swackhammer swats Forscythe out of the way with a meaty claw. “Outta the way zombie, I got work to do.”

“ZOMBIE?!?” Forscythe’s anger boils, but Swackhammer continues walking on to the box, paying no mind to the seething ghoul. Forscythe stumbles after him to “correct” Mr. Swackhammer’s mistake. Once the portly alien reaches the box’s front, he waves to the audience.

“Alright everyone, it’s time for you to finally meet your mystery fiter for the year!”

The hook is undone and the front of the box falls open. Black smoke pours out of the box as the mystery fiter steps out for everyone to see.

We don’t talk much about Zoofights II…

The Big Bar Brawl tends to have one contestant who changes into a godbeast at some point, so this year we decided to skip the transformation process and bring the godbeast straight to you. To honor the progenitors of Fite Yer’ Mates over at Zoofights, we are bringing back one of its older competitors from a time where battles were brief and monsters didn’t always get their chance to shine.

Please welcome to the arena the former Zoofighter, BASTARDSAURUS REX!

Also known as Grapplesaurus Rex, this T-rex was brought back from the dead by demonic forces once so all it took this year was a deal with the Devil Ed to get her back in fighting shape! This two headed monstrosity is almost identical to when she fought in Zoofights 2 with golden grappling hooks and 2 heads for doing what dinosaurs do best. We did, however, fit the beast with two kicking Bowser-inspired shock collars that will shock the beast if it tries to fite any of the other animals in the arena.

It’s our small attempt at trying to adhere to the old “Don’t run your own Zoofights” rule. We are trying to honor our predecessors, not ape their ideas.

The two-headed beast lets out a satanic bellow as it walks out of the box to join the brawl. Even the busiest fiters had to turn and see where the eldritch roar was coming from. Many fiters cannot help but fear the massive specimen, while the more bullheaded and overconfident fiters just see it as another challenge. One fiter though looks at the Zoofighter in wonder. A former Zoofighter herself, Widow Maker is blown away by the sight of the B-Rex back in action.

The audience’s own roar of approval matches the volume of the mystery fiter’s own satanic screams. Swackhammer begins walking back to the elevator, but he is intercepted by Forscythe once more.

“Do you take me for a zombie, sir? I will show you what a zombie truly looks like, Mister Swackhammer!” The ghoul digs his claws into the flesh of Swackhammer’s face and bites down on his neck. The alien briefly struggles, but the screams of panic quickly morph into the brainless moans of an undead slave.

Swackhammer quickly turns on his Nerdluck posse, who were simply too broken from their years of service to resist the zombification process. Soon, B the Masque has his own army of undead aliens. The group marches away from the recently unleashed Grapplesaurus Rex, not wishing to fite a battle they most likely could not win. B-Rex didn’t bother with the small group anyway. Its eyes were quickly drawn to Tak-sin and Morgan. Tak-Sin had talked Scorpion into aiding them before the brawl and was now sitting back comfortably as Scorpion fought off the combined assault of Scorched Earth and Carla. The two had not allied in any way, but had shared a first choice of target in Tak-Sin. Scorpion had no trouble dealing with the blasts of heat, and the intense heat waves had the nasty side effect of immediately vaporizing Carla’s attempts at attacking Scorpion.

B-Rex lumbers over to where the battle is taking place, believing that since Tak-Sin is sitting out of the battle that he would be easy prey. The dinosaur’s arrival isn’t really silent though, so Scorpion, Carla, and Scorched Earth’s attention was immediately drawn to the bastard lizard king. With a belch of unholy fire, the reptilian daughter of Satan opens fire with both golden grappling hooks and a plume of flames that even the mightiest dragon could not match in ferocity. Carla creates a wall of ice in front of her that almost immediately dissolves, but the fiery blast did not scorch her or the mermen who happen to be behind her. Scorpion and Scorched Earth are not bothered by the flames, but the giant grappling hooks happened to be aimed at those two.

Scorpion falls into a portal of fire and is quickly on the other side of the beast. Scorched Earth, however, was not gifted with the ability of teleportation. The gold claw slams into him and launches him into the bleachers where an unfortunate bunch of sentient snowmen who came to watch the show melt instantly from the superbeing’s impact. The claw begins to retract, but it gets hooked on the edge of the bleachers, leaving a long tow cable spanning across a bit of the arena.

Scorched Earth was nearly killed by the attack, but a strange audience member in a labcoat approaches him and begins to stick strange instruments into the ailing superhuman. Scorched Earth’s energy starts to return to him, and the Society member thanks the crowd member with an air of familiarity that suggests they may know each other. Audience members nearby booed, but with his rejuvenated strength Scorched Earth’s aura of heat is back in full force and any complaining fans were quickly roasted.

Carla begins chucking ice spears at B-Rex, but the tyrannosaurus has her own aura of heat the prevents any of them from compromising her ochre hide. Realizing her water powers are doing nothing in this battle between heated competitors, Carla took the opportunity to sneak off as Tak-Sin and Morgan finally decide to join the battle. The merfolk prince points his trident at the beast, and Morgan rushes forward to begin the battle. His coral claws extend and he leaps up onto the cable, using his claws to repel down and kick the beast in the chest. The kick doesn’t do much to the dinosaur, but it does give the Zoofighter the idea to kick forward with its own feet. Morgan is slammed back to Tak-Sin, who is unable to move out of the way before the inevitable crash.

In the meantime, Scorpion has crawled up the tail of the B-Rex and scaled the beast’s back. Twirling his ninjatos, Scorpion leaps into the air and brings them down into one of the beast’s heads. The blades puncture the skin, but the bone holds strong and protects the mystery fiter from a fate similar to Permafrost. Also, B-Rex has another head, which is quick to turn and snap at the attacking ninja. Scorpion launches his kunai spear at the attacking head, but the spear goes into the beast’s maw and latches onto the back of the Bastardsaurus’s throat.

The dinosaur yanks the rope back to try and pull Scorpion into its mouth by his own weapon, but Scorpion quickly cuts the line with one of his ninjatos. The head the yellow ninja is standing on begins to shake, causing Scorpion to tumble off. The one properly reeled in harpoon takes aim at the ninja and fires, but Scorpion is able to grab the harpoon from the side and twirl it around and back towards B-Rex. The harpoon punctures the dinosaur’s stomach, and a grisly roar of pain comes from both heads. Tak-Sin and Morgan are back on their feet and both charging towards battle this time.

Tak-Sin goes to the side and jams his trident into the leg of the mystery fiter, causing a geyser of unclotting demonic blood to spill out. Tak-Sin backpedals from the spray, afraid to get his clothes stained by the unholy liquid. Morgan has no trouble charging in towards the open wound though to try and damage the leg more.

B-rex’s stomach wound and bad leg cause the monster to topple. The harpoon automatically retracts out of the stomach, worsening the wound. Scorpion begins celebrating what he thinks is a victory, but the beast wasn’t done yet. Smoke pours out of the devil dinosaur’s stomach, and soon that wound is completely healed. The same thing happens to the leg, but the Curse of Bleeding Tak-Sin had inflicted on it made it impossible to fully heal. It is enough for the dinosaur to stand back up though, and as Scorpion revels in what he thinks is a victory, the beast opens both mouths and prepares to bite down.

Tak-Sin doesn’t feel any obligation to warn Scorpion, and Morgan could only say “Yarr” if he tried to warn him anyway. Scorpion is scooped up in the beast’s mouth and B-Rex tries to chomp down, but Scorpion is not completely unaware of the situation. Scorpion holds open the mouth of the beast so it can’t bite down. The other mouth belches hot flames into its companion head in what looked a bit like a strange fiery French kiss, but Scorpion is not fazed by the same hellish flames that he himself could use.

Tak-Sin instructs Morgan to resume attacking, and once more the pirate eidolon goes for the unclosing wound. The monster is forced to change the attention of the fire-breathing head to the attacking pirate, which gives Scorpion the opening he needs to leap out of the other head. Scorpion turns to face the Zoofighter, both ninjatos ready to cut into the beast, but suddenly the cable of the Grapplesaurus’s other arm begins to retract. The harpoon has finally been dislodged after quite a lot of jimmying about. Scorpion could have dodged it if he saw it coming, but the golden harpoon came at him from behind.

Scorpion is hooked by the harpoon and slammed into the mechanisms of the B-rex’s arm. No longer distracted by Scorpion, the B-Rex turns its full attention to Tak-Sin and Morgan. Scorched Earth has made the wise decision not to rejoin the Bastardsaurus battle, but he has set his eyes on an equally fearsome opponent: Saxton Hale.

Saxton Hale is a big threat, but he didn’t draw the same crowd of concerned fiters that Deadhead has. Instead, he has been spending the duration of the brawl trying to keep up with Doomrider. Both are powerhouses with impressive fortitude, and both seemed to be enjoying the prospect of being able to go all out with all their tricks and strengths.

Unfortunately for the two, a wave of smoky air came to put an end to their battle. Doomrider went from really excited to really disappointed when the cloud of smoke rolled in. What he thought might be someone getting really hazed on drugs is in fact just a guy surrounded by a constant cloud of ash. Doomrider lets out a raspberry at the newcomer and goes off to find something else fun to do in the arena. Saxton Hale, however, takes the interruption a bit worse. The CEO of Mann Co. cracks his knuckles and growls like a panther ready to strike, but it is Scorched Earth who strikes first.

A volley of heat blasts slams into Saxton’s chest, but the Australian seems unfazed. He laughs at Scorched Earth’s attempts to burn him.

“Trying to give me a burn? I could bathe in a volcano if I had the mind too, but then I might wash of my natural musk!” Saxton leaps high up into the air and comes rocketing down feat first towards his opponent. Scorched Earth tries to dodge, but the CEO manages to grab the superhuman’s shoulders on the way down and brings him down to earth with him.  In the brief time he has to counterattack, Scorched Earth kicks up the volcanic forces of Moron Mountain to create fissures in the arena floor. The two fall into a wide open crevasse he had created, and although the landing is rough for the superhuman, Saxton seems to be the one taking it worse. A cloud of ash is filling up the hole in the ground quickly. The CEO may be able to take hits like a champ, but he still needs to breathe.

Another gigantic leap quickly got Saxton out of the fissure, but now Scorched Earth had a plan of attack. Slowly he rises out of the pit, the smoky air around him now his main focus. Saxton Hale was running away from the crevasse, and Scorched Earth can’t help but laugh, “I have driven the mighty Saxton Hale to run in fear!”

“I’m not running. I’m grabbing me a weapon!”

Before Scorched Earth could interpret the statement, Saxton has hefted up the box the mystery fiter came in and slammed its open end down on the superhuman. “Keep your smoke to yourself!” Saxton Hale wipes his hands clean of ash and soot and surveys the arena for someone more worthy of his time.

Inside the box Scorched Earth desperately searches for an exit. He searches for the hole that the Grapplesaurus had made when he reeled in the bishopfish, but that was on the door to the open side that Saxton had slammed down on him, so he has no luck there.  He tries to melt the sides of the box, hoping the metal was weak enough, but the demonic metals were made to contain the Bastardsaurus and are not going to cave in to heat that does not even come close to the intensity of hellfire.

The interior of the box is very dark, but with nothing to burn Scorched Earth cannot create fire. A strange noise comes from within the box. Scorched Earth looks around, but the pitch black offers no clues. A hiss like a dilophosaurus from Jurassic Park sounds dangerously close. He launches a few heat blasts wildly, but whatever it is did not seem affected by the attacks. Scorched Earth floats around nervously, and suddenly there is a light.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Arthur Bishopfish had survived his mauling earlier and has returned as a demonic fishman. I guess Episcescopalian rites don’t protect a devout follower from the infectious spirits of Hell. Arthur attacks Scorched Earth furiously, and the superhuman has only his own physical strength to counter it with. The battle is a little bit one-sided in the favor of the fish.

The box suppresses a lot of the screaming and terrifying hisses, so as Gunter waddles by he isn’t any the wiser to what is going on. After its brief possession as part of Mr. Daniel’s group of animal attackers, Gunter has spent most of his time walking about the arena with no real direction. The penguin comes across a battle between Lucky the troll and three other fiters. Leonardo and Ricard had briefly allied with Wheeler to keep the Troll busy as the other attacks. Lucky swings his one arm around, groaning and grunting with every miss. Every few missed blows led to a small electrical jolt that is meant to motivate the giant but the troll is not going to do any better with directionless prodding.

While Wheeler is spinning around and keeping the troll busy, Gunter walks up to Leonardo and Ricard and begins patting their backs with its flippers. He enjoys the sound the grey knight’s armor makes as it is slapped, and he enjoys the feel of Ricard’s robes. When the two turn to see the source of the back slaps, they are surprised to see the tiny penguin.

“Oh, look Ricard, some wildlife wants our attention!”
“We are busy right now little bird. Come back later.”

Gunter doesn’t move, and when Leonardo and Ricard try to rejoin the battle against the troll they felt more penguin slaps on their bums.

“Do something Ricard, I don’t want to fite while receiving a bunch of spankings. I did enough of that as a lad!”

Ricard sighs and turns to the penguin.

“Wak.”

Ricard conjures up an illusory pile of fish in the distance and points the penguin off towards it. Gunter happily waddles away to gorge on the buffet o’ fish, but when he reaches it and tries to jump into it like a pile of scaly edible leaves, the illusion breaks.

Ricard and Leonardo had gone back to fiting the troll, so they couldn’t see the rage building in the eyes of a penguin scorned. The demonic wishing eye around its neck begins to glow…

Green Gunter clones begin to appear all around the arena. Battles are forced to cease as a wave of penguins washes over the competitors. The group that had devoted their time to fiting Deadhead was at first relieved to see the nazi zombie washed away in a tide of green penguins, but suddenly large colossi built out multiple copies of the penguin clones begin to swipe at them, knocking fliers like Rainbow Dash and Utsuho into the sea of birds below. The walkways seem to be the only safe place, but so few contestants had gone there to start with that almost every fiter is forced to focus on the green penguin invasion.

The Bastardsaurus Rex had been coming down hard on Morgan and Tak-Sin, and the pirate was quickly being torn apart by the combination of flames and harpoon attacks. Luckily, a wave of penguins rushes in and the B-Rex’s attention shifts to the penguins that are now climbing all over him. Tak-Sin tries to shoo the penguins away from the injured Morgan, but the penguins are quickly upon him. Penguins that are not being attacked by fiters just slap their fins harmlessly against whoever they are rubbing up against, but Morgan is not being gentle. His coral claws tears many penguin clones asunder, and in retaliation many begin to peck Morgan apart. Tak-Sin tries to remove the penguins from his faithful companion, but Morgan stands up, a grotesquely damaged body, and picks up Tak-Sin. He had little strength left, but he begins to dash away from B-Rex, all the while penguins picking apart his legs. They barely reach the gravity boosters, and Tak-Sin is tossed in before he could protest.

“Yarr…”

Tak-Sin lands on the walkway above and watches the carnage below. A few other fiters stood nearby, none willing to fite each other as the penguin carnage overwhelms the arena.

One unintended positive side effect of the Gunter invasion involves the mystery fiter’s box. The Gunters saw the giant fissure Scorched Earth had made earlier and are compelled to push it in to the crevasse. The combined force of a million pushing Gunters flips the box over and lets Scorched Earth escape the ravenous Bishopfish. Arthur leaps after the heavily injured superhuman, but the fishman gets a face full of penguins. Driven by primitive demonic drives, Arthur lashes out at the penguins and provokes their deadly pecking. Even with demonic healing, the penguins attack too quickly for the Bishopfish to fully heal himself.

The many clone Gunters were only an unintended side effect of Gunter’s revenge scheme though. The many green penguins seize Leonardo and Ricard immediately and bring the two before the original Gunter. Neither warrior can do anything against the might of a million clones, and Gunter begins to spin a new magic with his wishing eye. The two begin to slowly freeze.

“Oh, this isn’t THAT bad. You could have torn us asunder or something far worse!”
“Don’t give it ideas Leonardo.”

The gradual freeze did start to hurt the two of course, frostbite and all that, but something was quickly pushing through the crowd of green birds. With arm sweep after arm sweep, Lucky the Troll is plowing through the penguin army like they are nothing. Many penguins try to peck him into submission, but his skin is thick and the beaks of the birds are small. Gunter begins quacking in a panic, and the penguin colossi come running to try and stop Lucky’s advance. The first penguin collective tries to stomp on Lucky, but the troll’s body resisted the blow and actually broke the giant’s foot apart, causing it to stumble and scatter. The next one tries a fist slam, but Lucky’s own arm swipe breaks it apart as well.

Leonardo and Ricard were up to their necks in ice by the time Lucky had broken through all the penguin’s defenses. Gunter angrily waves its arms and quacks, but Lucky does not swipe the penguin aside. Putting a few fingers forward, it flicks the demonic wishing eye.

As soon as the eye shattered, all the magic it had cast begins to backfire. The two freelancers melt out of the ice immediately and Gunter himself is frozen, but the penguin has a lot more magic left to backfire. Every single Gunter clone flows into the frozen body of the penguin, causing it to grow larger and larger until it towers above even the high up walkways of the arena. Soon the arena is empty of all penguins except for one giant frozen penguin corpse.

Leonardo and Ricard are shivering, but they decide to thank the troll by not fiting him anymore. The two wander off towards the gravity boosters, intending to dry off in private and rejoin the battle once they are sure no limbs needed amputation due to frostbite.

The same time they went up the boosters though someone came down them. Tak-Sin approached where he had last seen Morgan and found the maimed body of the pirate eidolon. Tak-Sin took a moment with the corpse of his ally, but then he stands back up with a determined look on his usually soft face. The merman prince’s ally is down, but not necessarily out. Tak-Sin begins to perform a revival ritual that will draw Morgan back from the spirit plane so that he may protect the prince once more.

Elsewhere in the arena, there is another corpse that was having something strange happen to it…

Permafrost’s stomach stirs and begins to wiggle around. A great Falchion pushes through the skin of the beast from within and slices a hole open. Out pops…

The Royal Guard has managed to survive being eaten by the mammoth, but the lower half his armor has dissolved away to reveal his underwear. The guard takes some time to enjoy the fresh air of the world outside a mammal’s organs, and then goes off to see if he can still make his mark in the brawl.  The gravity boosters quickly catch his interest, so the Royal Guard rides them up to see who is up there for him to fite.

On the ground though, Aevar was getting fed up with how the battle was going. JRM had been ignoring him since the challenge was made, and when it finally seemed like they may begin to fite, a wave of penguins had swamped the two. After the disappearance of the green birds, Aevar approached Jumpropeman.

“No more excuses ghost. There will be no further delays. We fight NOW!”

Again, the blade lights up and Aevar charges, but Jumpropeman turns intangible and slips into the ground. Aevar comes to a halt and drives his sword into the dirt where Jumpropeman had last been visible. With no confirmation of a hit, Aevar began watching his feet and walking carefully. From below the dirt Jumpropeman listens to the footsteps, trying his best to plan a surprise attack.

The ghost reaches out of the ground and quickly wraps his rope around the graveknight’s feet. Aevar is turned intangible and dragged into the ground, but as the jingle specter drags him down, the aura that surrounds the knight begins to infect the ghost’s mind. His drive to participate in the fite lessens and he stops dragging Aevar down into the dirt. Aevar turns tangible once more, but his entire lower body is submerged in the rocky surface of the alien world. Aevar struggles to escape, but the ground is firm and cannot be easily escaped. Jumpropeman floats out of the ground lazily, his mind lost in a cloud of negativity.

Jumpropeman kept floating up into the sky, and eventually he escaped the influence of the dreary Desolation Aura. His wits back about him, he realizes Aevar is wide open. Floating back down and staying out of the range of the knight’s aura, Jumpropeman charges his jump rope once more and attacks someone who can’t really strike back. Aevar swings his blade in an attempt to parry the rope, and eventually a whip strike results in the jump rope wrapping around the blade. Aevar pulls Jumpropeman in before he can abandon his weapon, and once more the Desolation Aura sucks the energy out of the usually cheery jingle specter. The ghost begins floating upwards again, but before his foe could get away, Aevar drives his sword down and bisects the time spirit.

The ghost’s body dissipates after being cut in twain and the only things left behind are his trademark hat and his green jump rope. Aevar begins to push against the dirt to try and pull himself out, but because of how fazing through the ground works, all but the space his legs occupied was solid rock. Aevar began to dig his sword into the ground to work as a makeshift shovel.

“How do you get it working?”

“Maybe it’s a puzzle. Wish I had hands!”

Around the outside of the arena, WALL!! and Gamera were busy trying to work out just what the Lector’s Pentajulum could do and how one can tap into those powers. Gamera kept slapping the object and shaking it, but the strange object showed no signs of offering it secrets any time soon. Samus watched the two, much closer now but still unnoticed by them. She was in earshot now though, and hearing them discuss a strange object made her nervous. Best to eliminate the weapon now before it could cause trouble later.

WALL!! was holding the object once more… how he can hold an object is still up for debate. Either way, the Pentajulum covered up his face almost entirely, and to Samus from far away the object looked like it was floating on its own. Worried it might have been activating, Samus took aim and fired a missile directly at the object. The missile crashed into the object but failed to shatter it. Instead, the colorful shape began to glow and above Gamera and WALL!! a portal began to form. Samus tactically retreats to a safer location to see what comes out of the portal…

Mac Tonight fell out of the portal, completely unaware of what just happened. He looked around and did not recognize where he was. He turned and saw WALL!! and Gamera.

“Where am I? Who are you? And hey… aren’t you that turtle from last year’s brawl?”

“Yeah, I’m Gamera, and this is WALL!! Welcome to the Big Bar Brawl again Mac!”

With that welcome a look of horror dawned on the usually cool moonman’s face. He was back on the battlefield and doomed to be involved in the bloodsport once more. The portal he fell through closed.

“How did I get here? What’s going on?”

WALL!! held up the Lector’s Pentajulum, “This thing brought you here somehow.”

Mac Tonight yanks the bauble from WALL!! and begins fiddling with it, desperately trying to reopen the portal so he could get out of the brawl. After a lot of pounding and smacking, the object started to glow again, and a portal opens up. Mac Tonight begins to celebrate, but then a flood of water came rushing through the portal.

Mac Tonight and the Pentajulum are washed away as the portal drains what appears to be Atlantis, but something else comes with the water…

A strange fish-like creature with tentacles and three eyes, a beast known as the Aboleth pours through into the arena. The sunken city apparently was serving as the monster’s lair. The strange creature is swiftly washed outward into the arena, but WALL!! and Gamera briefly feel the tug of psychic tendrils on their minds. They don’t seem too interested in finding out what just happened, but the portal continues to spill more and more water into the battlefield, slowly filling the coliseum’s lower level. And I mean really slow, but the arrival of the water quickly grabs the attention of the competitors.

Many brawlers take to the gravity boosters the moment they realize there is an endless stream of water flowing into the arena. Even Deadhead has the sense to take to the walkways to avoid the flooding, but a few battlers decide to stick it out in the water. Aevar doesn’t really have a choice, so soon he is completely submerged by the oncoming flood. Some fiters don’t even have the time to make it to the gravity boosters, because soon the water has rised to knee-deep levels. Not enough for someone to have to swim, but still enough for people to raise their legs really high as they walked slowly about.

Thing is, there is one fiter who was not swift enough to escape the flood, and he had quite a bit of trouble with the water that now surrounded him.

Many a video game character has some level of Hydrophobia. Sure, they’d be fine with it if they were swimming underwater on some occasions, but on other days in other lands they can’t stand it if they jump into the stuff. They won’t even swim, they just immediately consign themselves to a watery death and try again when they are revived.

Wheeler’s mind was rooted in these beliefs, and since the water clearly was not deep enough for this to be a water level, it meant this water would likely kill him should he accidentally end up in it. The snake coiled up on his skateboard and rode it on the waters like a surfboard. Wheeler rode around on the whims of the currents, and soon he came across someone who seemed quite pooped.

Scorched Earth was scratched up badly from a combination of evil fishman attacks and crushing waves of penguins. Shortly after his rescue from the box he had fainted, but the water rushing in woke him up. The water levels were continuing to rise, and although Scorched Earth had been content to wade through at first, he eventually took to the air when it started to reach head height. His flying about was lazy, but when the snake spotted him he give the serpent a tired grimace. He wasn’t ready to fite yet, but Wheeler seemed ecstatic.

“Hidden away in a place I’d never look! Across the waters lies a fearsome foe! An optional boss that is only for the most daring player! Watch out bro, because here I come!” Wheeler began to paddle the water with his tail to move his skateboard closer. Scorched Earth grumbled a bit at this, but it was clear that the snake was not comfortable with the water. As Wheeler closed in, Scorched Earth began to launch blasts of heat, but the snake nimbly dodged them by slithering around strangely on his board. The water sizzled as it took heat blasts instead, and steam was quickly blocking both fiter’s view of their opponent.

Wheeler’s shades fogged up, so his vision returned much more slowly than Scorched Earth. The superhuman decided to try something different and launched a blast of heat at the snake’s board instead of the snake himself. The end of the board splintered and lit on fire, And Wheeler was forced to abandon his shades to see what was going on. In a panic the mascot splashed water onto the end of the board, but it was already beginning to capsize into the water (although capsize seems like much too grandiose a word for the sinking of a floating skateboard.) Before his board was completely submerged, Wheeler springs into the air and attempts to land on Scorched Earth’s head, but the Society member’s head was just as hot as his attacks. The snake’s goomba stomp leads to an unharmed Scorched Earth and a badly burned Wheeler. Wheeler has nowhere to go after the jump either, so he ends up landing in the water.

The snake flails about for the bit in the water, but Scorched Earth couldn’t didn’t want to rely on drowning as his kill method. Rather than firing a blast of heat, the superhuman began to focus his powers on the water around Wheeler, and soon it came to a heavy boil. Scorched Earth makes snake stew out of Wheeler.

The radical snakes loses his life and his boiled body sinks to the bottom of the flooding arena. Scorched Earth looks around for someone else he can boil, but an opponent quickly makes their presence known. A bolt charged with earthen magic slams into Scorched Earth and forces him into the water below. Because of her mount Moosh, Ariel was able to stay below and battle any stragglers who hadn’t fled to the gravity boosters yet. Barkle barked gleefully next to her, holding her next few bolts in his mouth in his attempt to help. She still had a quiver she could reach into at any time, but he wanted to be helpful and it hadn’t caused any troubles so far.

The water where Scorched Earth landed vaporized in a circle around him and he rose back into the air to face his attacker. The already tired superhuman didn’t like that his opponent was airborne as well, but the slow-moving bear should be an easy target.  Scorched Earth prepared a few more heat blasts, but Ariel was quicker on the draw and a couple lightning arrows crashed into the Society member. As Scorched Earth flinched from the electricity, Ariel had the good sense to cast a spell on her mount. The blue bear began to flicker as the Blink spell took effect, and once Scorched Earth was back and ready to launch some heat blasts, he found his shots slamming into illusions of the fat blue bear.

Ariel fires another bolt, this one charged with wind, and the air blast blew the ash cloud that surrounded Scorched Earth away just long enough for Ariel to pinpoint just where in that collection of smog his body actually was.

“You and your organization will pollute this world no more!”

Firing an uncharged bolt for the superhuman’s neck, Ariel ended the life of the living inferno.

Scorched Earth fell into the water below. At first it bubbled and steamed from the fallen fellow’s residual heat, but his corpse eventually cooled down and the water calmed down.

“I’m getting hungry… Can’t we get some food now?” Moosh grumbled. He had been doing all the legwork and all the wingwork, and his stomach began to growl like a pound full of dogs predicting an earthquake.

“Maybe we can find Gamera around here. I don’t think he’s really using that spider sausage at all, and I think they may be edible… Don’t get the idea I support the pork industry though.”

“I don’t care what you support unless it’s the ‘Feed the Moosh’ foundation.” Moosh begins a slow hover towards Gamera, who was tall enough that he could be seen all the way across the arena.

The water levels were growing higher and higher, and somewhere in their depths lies a free-roaming Aboleth, but no one seemed to concerned, perhaps because they didn’t know what an Aboleth is. In one corner of the arena, the water was waving and fluctuating in an odd way. Someone was bending the waves to their will…

The portal to Atlantis eventually closes, perhaps floating around in the water had triggered some other function of the Pentajulum. The water had been given a long time to flow though, and the arena was rather deep for anyone who decided against the gravity boosters or simply didn’t reach them in time. Forscythe and his zombie army trudged about underwater like it ain’t no thang, and Saxton Hale was quite enjoying the opportunity to test how quickly he could backstroke. Purnima’s mech bobbed up and down in the water, but within Purnima had taken a bit of a nap do to the comfiness of the seat. The lower level of the brawl seemed to have become a swimming pool, but the waters were beginning to move in a strange way. In one corner of the arena a huge cylinder of water was forming.

In the middle of the cylinder was a calm and focused Carla. It was taking quite a lot of effort to focus on moving the water about, but a huge swirling tube of water danced about her. The vortex continued to suck up more and more of the Atlantean water, and soon Saxton Hale found himself paddling through the dirt of the arena. On top of the vortex unknowingly floated Purnima in her suit, the rocking of the cylinder as it swirled ensuring she got a good nap.

With the arena floor briefly dry as Carla channeled the water into a protective cyclone, Chet had free reign to take aim once more.  Many people had joined him on the walkways, but there were still corners no one had bothered to explore yet. Chet once more looked for a high profile target, intending to land a kill instead of some wardrobe destruction. Aevar still remained where we last saw him, so the non-moving target was a perfect target. Chet propped his Decashot up appropriately and began calculating wind resistance and angle and all the boring sniper stuff you don’t have to do in a video game.

Unfortunately for Chet, he had never truly shaken the smell of corn that hangs around those born in Nebraska. I’ve heard legends that children aren’t born the normal way there, they simply pop out of a cornstalk and if they are lucky they aren’t popped before they develop into a recognizable infant that some corn husker could adopt. His corny scent attracted the curious nose of one Spider-Pig. The pig approached Chet sniffing curiously.

Chet’s first reaction to an inquisitive snout pressing against him was a warrior’s reaction. He reached over and grabbed Spider-Pig by the collar of his uniform and hoisted him up. The spider sausages that were wrapped around the pig slipped off and the swine oinked in panic, but Chet calmed himself down and set the pig back down.

“Don’t startle me like that. I’m busy. Run along now, little pig.”

Chet got back down and had to adjust his rifle again more, but Spider-Pig did not leave. He continued sniffing the Nebraskan curiously.

“Shoo pig, I’m busy.” Chet waved his hand at the arachnid-inspired swine, but Spider-Pig just kept sniffing the lovely corn scent convinced Chet must be hiding a husk of corn somewhere in his clothes. Chet finally lined up his shot and squeezed the trigger… only for Spider-Pig to press his snout deep into Chet’s side and cause the man’s shot to miss. Chet growled in anger and squeezed his temples. He picked up Spider-Pig and walked him as far away as he could without being too close to the other fiters up on the walkways.

“Stay there, and leave me alone!” Chet went back to his Decashot and once more prepared to set up a shot meant for Aevar’s head. He hoped the powerful gun could crack the magically-enhanced armor of the grave knight, but there was only going to be one way to find out.

Spider-Pig came walking back to Chet, still drawn to his scent. Chet was too caught up in his shot to notice the pig’s return, but the hog began slowly moving closer and closer to Chet, until he rammed right into the Nebraskan and pushed him off of the walkway.

Even if the water had still been there the fall was too long for anyone to survive. Spider-Pig oinked a few times, not really sure what just happened, but it picked it’s spider sausages up with its mouth and flung them onto it back before it prepared to wander off. Its meandering quickly came to a halt when a foul smelling chap in golden armor stood in the way of the pig. The Royal Guard was had no objection to picking on such a weak competitor, and if he could secure any sort of kill or influence the brawl in anyway, he thought fiting Spider-Pig would be the easiest way to do so.

Spider-Pig shook its spider sausages off of its back and picked them up with its mouth. Royal Guard readied his Saracen Sword, but Spider-Pig quickly flung its weapon into the face of the guard. The strange chains that covered his face meant no contact with the skin was made, and the small guard laughed at the pigs futile attempt to hurt him.

And then the spiders crawled out of the meat.

All kinds of species of spiders had been calling that sausage home, and now they had been agitated to the point of attacking. The half-clothed guard had plenty of places for the spiders to get a good spot to bite, and many did begin injecting their own brand of venom into their home’s perceived assailant.  Some of the venom was in fact lethal, but at the moment Royal Guard did not care. He brushed the spiders off his body with his sword as best he could and then turned his sword on the pig. Spider-Pig saw the guard going for an attack and pushed himself on his hind legs. Grabbing the sword in his teeth, Spider-Pig swiftly disarmed the Royal Guard and tossed the falchion off of the walkway. I feel sorry for whatever royalty this guard had defended before being swallowed by a prehistoric mammal.

Disarmed but not out, Royal Guard readied a bomb spell and rolled it towards Spider-Pig. Spider-Pig tried the “bite the weapon and toss it away” tactic, but after picking up the bomb and looking like those roasted pigs with apples in their mouths, the fuse was up and the explosive went off right into the gut of the superhero-themed swine.

The sound of the explosion is somewhat suppressed by pig body, but it does draw the attention of someone with excellent hearing. Royal Guard jumped up and down in victory, but he was quickly growing woozy and his mouth began to foam a bit. Some of the faster acting spider venom was taking effect, so when Ulrika moseyed over to where she knew Chet was waiting, she was surprised to find an unattended Decashot and a guard reeling next to it. She saw Spider-Pig’s corpse nearby too, but she thought there was no way in hell the pig could have gotten rid of Chet. Without even asking questions, Ulrika pulled back one of her Karzantium fists and uppercutted Royal Guard up, up, and away.

The guard is barely alive when he lands, a useless mess of broken bones and internal bleeding, but where he lands is important. Scorched Earth’s fissure from earlier had become the temporary den of the Aboleth while the arena was mostly dry. Surviving solely because of the big hole of water that had escaped Carla’s attention, the creature’s tentacles reached up and pulled the guard’s barely living body into its domain and began to exert its hypnotic control on him. His many illnesses and injuries suddenly became irrelevant as the guard was turned into a servitor of the Aboleth’s will. The monster sends his mindslave out to seek out Carla and put an end to her water control, but the damaged body still moved too slow to be of much use. A human may get discouraged when they saw someone moving so slowly to complete an objective, but the cold and thoughtful mind of the Aboleth focused only on the goal, not the time it took to complete it.

The B-Rex had been one of the fiters to stay on the ground level during the flood, mostly because it had no idea what a gravity booster is and definitely was not the kind to flee a challenge. Widow Maker had flown down to the ground when Carla cleared the flooding, mostly to avoid the increasingly crowded walkways up above. When the dinosaur saw the bug, a primeval Zoofighter instinct kicked in and it charged directly towards her. Before it could reach the praying mantis, the shock collars around its neck gave a painful surge that caused the B-Rex to trip and slide to where it was only a few inches away from Widow Maker. Widow Maker looked at the Bastardsaurus not with the same wonder of earlier, but with pity.

“A Zoofighter should never be forced to fight her instincts…” It ran against all her common sense, but Widow Maker’s drill arm began to spin. Flying up unto the demonic dinosaur’s back, she drilled hard into the collars, absorbing the shocks it administered to both her and the tyrannosaurus with stoic determination. Eventually, she managed to break both collars off the beast and the B-Rex stood up proud and roared.

“Perhaps in a different time we could have been allies, but friendship victories weren’t introduced until Zoofights V. Let’s at least try to keep the Zoofights spirit alive, shall we?” Widow Maker’s words may have meant a lot to herself, but her competitor was unfortunately a beast from the less civilized times of 2006. B-Rex looked down at her emancipator, and for a brief moment Widow Maker hoped maybe the spirit of goodwill may just turn this dinosaur soul to her side yet.

Then she remembered it’s a demonic creature literally from Hell and quickly cloaked and took to the air before the beast bit down at the spot where she had been. The B-Rex began looking about for her, but now that she was in the sky she dropped her cloak. “Just like old times! Wish I had my butt gun.” Widow Maker flew in towards one of the beast’s heads, but there was no real blind spot for this beast. The other head turned and belched a spiral of howling flames right at the bug, but Widow Maker quickly pulled her wings in and let herself fall down. The B-Rex tried to readjust its flame breath, but Widow Maker began flying between the beast’s legs. The dinosaur swung its tail to try and get her as she flew back out, but Widow Maker stayed between the beast’s legs and revved up her drill.

Widow Maker dug her drill into the weaker of B-Rex’s two legs, and even though it wasn’t on the same side as the wound Tak-Sin had created earlier, the combined damage did lead to the foot being under too much pressure to stand properly. B-Rex was forced to the ground, and now Widow Maker flew away to escape an incoming tail swing. The tail did still manage to smack her though, and B-Rex rolled over to see where her opponent had landed. Before Widow Maker had time to take off into the air again, two fiery streams of hellfire shot out towards her. She held up her shield to protect as much of her as possible, but the shield was not made for fire of that magnitude. Widow Maker was barely able to protect herself long enough to get back into the sky, but the shield has turned into molten metal and the hot slag drips off her left claw. The burning bothered her, needless to say, but she was focused on the battle at hand.

Lying on its back, B-Rex tried its best to aim its fire stream at the flying bug. Widow Maker tries to cloak at this point, but the glowing orange melted metal still shines through. The beast still tries its best to aim at the dripping molten arm of the bug, but once again she quickly drops from the sky, this time onto the beast’s belly. Widow Maker remembered the fuel bladders of the beast, and in a very messy display she revved up Phantom Thrust and plunged herself into the insides of the beast. The metal on her left claw had cooled into a deformed harpoon, and once she finally located the bladders of the beast she punctured them and let the fuel drain out. Smoke erupted around her and her own carapace was beginning to crack, but with her job done, she flew out and let B-Rex heal with its demonic powers. The bladders stitched up, but with no fuel the B-Rex could not fire spouts of flame from its maws anymore. The wound in the stomach did not fully heal either, showing that enough damage could in fact kill the beast.

Widow Maker flew into the air to escape the aura of heat around the healing beast, but now that it had lost the weapon of flame breath, the Grapplesaurus Rex went back to its old namesake. Widow Maker could see that the harpoons were angling themselves to hit her, so she flew into the space above the dinosaur’s heads and hovered. The two golden harpoons fired at the same time. Widow Maker dodged the first one fine, but the second slammed into her and launched her far away. The praying mantis was able to prevent its own fall with some furious wing beating, but the harpoons that hit her still needed to fall. Widow Maker had occupied the airspace above the dinosaur’s heads for a reason. The two golden harpoon came slamming down onto the two heads of the beast with a spray of demonic blood and the shrieks of two angry t-rex heads.

With no heads to guide the healing, the former Zoofighter was dead once again. Maybe next time we should put three heads on it. Widow Maker was in crappy shape, but she had proven she was still a qualified Zoofighter despite only fiting in an alternate universe battle in the league.

Let’s just hope this little showdown didn’t break any old-standing rules…

As the praying mantis landed to rest, a determined fellow passed by who was daring to enter Carla’s water vortex. Thing is, this fellow was not the servitor of the Aboleth, but a one-armed troll who had rather enjoyed the feeling of being nearly submerged in refreshing water.

You would think it might take a lot of concentration to keep a cylinder of water spinning around in a protective tube around you, but Carla was not focusing at all. She was lost in the waters, her mind dissolved into the liquid as it danced about. She could feel Purnima’s machine bobbing on the top of the vortex, but like the water she was not bothered by what floated atop it, but instead what lies within it. A pollutant was suddenly present in the waters, a tough troll who was pushing through the vortex. Seeing the hideous creature mulling about in her water frightened Carla, and her serenity slipped into panic. Lucky had just come for a nice cool down, but his presence caused the giant water walls to come tumbling down. He was not pushed about, even by the great current of such a huge amount of water spreading back out, but the water began to flow back towards Carla as she tried to take control.

She would have to go on the aggressive now, even though the troll really wasn’t intending to harm her at the moment. A tendril of water shot forth and slammed into the troll’s chest, catching it completely by surprise. The giant began to walk towards Carla, but the water around it began churning harder than ever before. The force grew so strong that it lifted Lucky off the ground and began tossing him about in waves that could sink an ocean liner. But Lucky was no boat, he was a living being, and he desperately paddled with his one arm in an attempt to escape the attacking waters. One huge wave shot up into the air and immediately solidified into a rain of hail.  Many chunks of ice slammed against the troll’s back as it tried to pull itself from the water, but it seemed unaffected. The ice glanced off the tough troll hide, so Carla transformed the hail into icicle rain. Again, no puncturing, the ice merely shattered as the tough back of the beast greeted the falling icicles.

Carla tried her best to contain the troll in the waves, but eventually the troll managed to swim out and land at her feet. It groaned as it got back up on its feet and prepared to backhand the young woman. Desperately, Carla rammed her knuckles into the side of the troll.

If pointed ice couldn’t puncture his skin, what did Carla honestly think bare hands could do to this troll? Carla clutches her hand in pain as Lucky looks down at her confused. The absence of the mage’s control leads to the water spilling out again though, and soon both Carla and Lucky were submerged in the Atlantean waters. However, a delayed shock had just reached the troll’s collar for refusing to backhand the girl because of a tiny punch that had distracted him.

A shock collar and water don’t mix well at all.

Lucky takes the shock a lot worse since it was projected directly into his body, but the jolt of electricity shakes Carla too. In her pain she can only think to pull herself high out of the waters with a fountain blast of fluid until she can rest up. Lucky’s body floated in the water below. He wasn’t knocked out, but the jolt did daze him for quite a while. Looking down and seeing her opponent vulnerable, Carla created a sphere of water around the troll and began to raise him up into the air. She made sure to pull in the tides below so that the sphere was high above a drop to solid ground, and once Lucky had regained clarity, he found himself pressed into the middle of an orb of water high above a deadly drop.

Despite the threat of the drop, Lucky began to desperately swim out of the sphere. Carla made no attempt to bash him with waves or stab him with ice. She simply kept a series of currents flowing towards the middle. Lucky tried swimming as best he can, but one arm severely hampers your ability to fight a strong current. A resilient hide can only get you so far as well, and trapped in the waters, Lucky was quickly running out of breath. Suddenly, his paddling stops. He knew death was coming soon, and he decided to enjoy his last moments by letting the cool water sooth his tired body.

The air escaped Lucky's mouth in bubbles as his body floated lifelessly. A few shocks electrified the dead troll, but it was clear that the beast was not going to get back up. Carla let the sphere dissipate, so Lucky’s body came crashing down with a loud thud. Hopefully he had found solace in those last few moments in the water sphere.

You know who we haven’t checked in with for a while? Clint and 17. We saw 17 under Mr. Daniel’s control, but after that scuffle Clint and 17 had spent quite a bit of time trying to reunite. Clint’s eyes had glowed when he saw the B-Rex, but he knew he could not take it down alone. He was, needless to say, pissed when he saw Widow Maker do just that. During the flood he had taken to the corpse of Permafrost as a temporary island, but in the dry arena his search for his ally continued. Eventually, the two reunited.

Permafrost was only the first part of their attack plan. It appears Samus wasn’t the only competitor who pegged Gamera as a potential target, and now the two began preparations. But it appeared they weren’t the only people who regrouped after the flood. B the Masque and M the Masque obviously had a connection entering the brawl, but both had started off with separate ideas of how to go about killing folks. Aiden had decided to join the early kerfuffle against Deadhead and after the flood he regrouped with Forscythe who had built up quite a respectable army of undead followers. The two had plans of their own, and Aiden’s involved exploiting an unintentional weakness Clint had mentioned before the Brawl.

Clint and 17 begin their swift but stealthy charge towards Gamera, but a small errant Nerdluck gives 17 pause. Clint had continued charging for a bit before realizing his ally had stopped, but when he saw the creature 17 had paused to investigate, he grew intensely suspicious. Before Clint can go over to investigate, a swarm of the scrawny aliens whisk 17 away. Clint rushes to save his crab ally from the tiny horde, but the bulky Swackhammer zombie steps in the way and floors the monster hunter with a stiff arm thrust. The Nerdlucks march 17 over to Forscythe, and once Aiden confirms that his ghoulish companion has properly detained the alien crab, he charges in to fite Clint.

Clint takes a few swings at Swackhammer before Aiden arrives, but the bulky alien takes each blow without reacting. His undead flesh absorbed the blows well, and it wasn’t until Aiden arrived that Swackhammer finally backed down and went to rejoin his group. The claurichaun pulled his greatsword out of the sheath on his back and snickered.

“Not prepared to fite one of the wee folk, are ye? I didn’t forget lady, let’s just see how unprepared ya really be.” Aiden’s taunts didn’t seem to click with Clint though, and the monster hunter tried to run to the side of the Masque to go regroup with 17. Aiden did not think too highly of this. Twirling his greatsword around, Aiden shattered one of Clint’s greaves. Having part of his leg armor completely cleaved off got Clint to pay attention to the tiny fellow.

“You want a fite little man, you got one!” Clint brought his own heavy blade down towards the claurichan, but Aiden quickly rolls out of the way and sweeps at Clint’s legs once more. Clint tries to jump over the swing, but the sword still manages to hit his feet and forces the monster hunter to face plant on the way back down. M the Masque is quickly on the back of his taller opponent and pulls the hunter’s head back. A clean slit throat was his intention, but his instinctive reach for a knife turned up an empty pocket. Clint bucks the tiny man and gets back on his feet.

Aiden’s greatsword is brought back to the front in time to block a swing of the Wyvernator. Clint’s swings are long and powerful, but the claurichan has no trouble swatting each blow aside with a slap of his own large sword. Clint was indeed unprepared for a tiny foe, but suddenly one of his swings landed square on the head of the Masque. Aiden looked up terrified, his hat bisected and head split open. He fell into the dirt, dead.

“Take that you cocky leprechaun!” Clint spit on the corpse of M the Masque, but suddenly something slammed into his back. Clint stumbled into what he thought was the corpse of Aiden Thane, but the illusion quickly dispelled, revealing that the green-clad trickster had duped the hunter into celebrating a false victory. The back of his Rathalos Mail was cracked open now, and with another powerful smack Aiden shattered the chestplate. Even the powerful skin of the beast could not stand against the enchanted weapons of M the Masque.

Clint is more exposed than he would ever like to be in a battle. The monster hunter clasped his blade tightly and pointed it forward, trying to keep Aiden at least a sword’s length away. Aiden didn’t strike. He took a few puffs off his pipes, scratched his beard, and then started walking away. Clint saw the back of the claurichaun and couldn’t resist the opportunity for such an easy strike. He put his all his energy into a hefty swing of the Wyvernator, but Aiden quickly spun around and tossed one of his pipes into the monster hunter’s face. The explosion of smoke in his face made it impossible for him to see Aiden slide under his legs. The smoke cleared quickly though, and Clint began looking around for his opponent.

The sword rammed into his exposed back answered Clint’s question quite well.

Aiden pulled his greatsword out of the back of the monster hunter and wiped it clean of Clint’s blood.

“I wonder if there’s a way I can get a pint around here. I’m parched.” Pleased with his victory, Aiden wandered off in the hopes of celebrating his victory in the way he usually celebrated such things: drowning himself in insane amounts of alcohol.

At the site of an actual drowning, Carla lowers herself from her water spout and forms a dome of water around herself as a defensive bubble, careful to make sure the corpse of the troll was on the outside so the stink of death wasn’t trapped in with her. One thing she was not so careful with was her handling of Purnima’s Bunnymund. The mech ends up falling into the dome with Carla, and the sudden heavy shaking of the crash landing woke up its rider.

With a slight yawn and a huge pandiculation, Purnima pokes out of the top her Casual Dueling Suit. The large grub looked around and marveled at the watery dome she was contained inside. Carla was on the ground, a bit shaken from what she had done to Lucky, and it was not clear if she knew Purnima was in the bubble with her.

Seeing the girl on the ground, Purnima gasps in horror. She quickly leaps out of her battlemech and scurries over to the side of the young woman. Carla gasps in horror herself when the bug approaches her, but Purnima has quickly wrapped her arms around Carla and pulled her to her feet.

“You poor child, you look absolutely shaken!”

“Yeah… I just had to do something ter-“

“It must be from this ratty robe you are wearing.”

“Huh?”

“A weaver of the waters such as yourself should never be confined to a dyed burlap sack! Come, let me flex your body into the shape of the fluids you bend so gracefully~” Before Carla knew what Purnima was talking about, the bug was all over her, taking measurements, invading privacy, cracking bones and tightening corsets. Carla was almost brought to tears as the sharp claws of the bug pressed various fabrics against her body. The dome of water hid most of it from view, but the screams of pain that accompany a woman getting into clothes that don’t quite fit were loud and clear.

“Voila!”

Carla stood in shock, and it was a while before she even looked down at what she had been forced into wearing. It was a beautiful dress no doubt, but it did not justify the invasive procedures necessary to put it on.

Purnima looked at Carla expectantly, awaiting the praise a fashion designer is accustomed to receiving, but Carla’s eyes teared up. The watery dome above began to quick and waterfalls spilled down into their protective air bubble. Purnima knew when to make an exit, so she quickly crawled over to her Casual Dueling Suit and hopped back in. She would ask Carla to compliment her later when the tides are calmer.

But the tides did not calm down. Carla began to thrust huge walls of water into Purnima’s Bunnymund. At first the bug thought it was a side effect of the dome collapsing, but when she saw the eyes of the water mage, she knew they were in fact battling now.

“The fate of an artist is never glorious, for only in death can it be appreciated. If you are attempting to hasten my appreciation from the world, I thank you, but I have too many designs left to share that I cannot possibly rid the world of my inspiration yet!” The Bunnymund leaps towards Carla, but an ice wall quickly greats the leaping lagomech. The machine has no trouble plowing through the ice, but a punji pit of icicles waited for it on the way down.

The machine shattered the first few it landed on, but they made for an awkward landing for the machine. Landing on its cute bunny face, the Bunnymund had to right itself and break through the forest of ice spears in its search for Carla. Hail fell down from the top of the collapsing dome, but just like Lucky had, Carla’s target easily resisted the ice balls. The dents it put in the machine did nearly cause Purnima to faint. Such a perfectly designed battle suit was getting wrecked!

Carla did admittedly find the new dress quite easy to fite in, but she would not let up simply because the dress allowed her to be a bit more mobile. The Bunnymund broke out of the icicle forest and aimed its carrot lance, but Carla quickly brought the dome down to try and prevent Purnima from firing. It worked, but Carla had acted so hastily that she was pushed about by the waters as well. The casual dueling suit spun around in the churning waters, but as it passed by Carla, Purnima quickly popped the lid open and pulled her in. Quite a bit of water followed her in, but Purnima did not want the girl to regret ruining her brand new dress.

Carla sputtered a bit before she realized where she was. Purnima was seated in the extra comfy chair of the machine’s cockpit, but Carla quickly got up and shoots a blast of ice at the bug’s face. Purnima’s idea of possibly drumming up some alliance with the girl was quickly shot, and after a slight lean to the left to avoid the ice, Purnima pressed a button on her control panel. The floor Carla stood in fell out from under her and she slipped down a short slide towards a furnace. Carla couldn’t stand to look at the fire, but a faint voice called to her from within.

“Finally… a friend…”

Sending a water mage to your furnace for fuel usually isn’t too pretty, but if that water mage had been keeping a huge amount of water in one place, you get a nasty side effect of the all that water flowing out at once. The Atlantean waters flowed back into the arena, but it appears to be a bit shallower than before due to how much of it was lodged into the ground as ice or floating about as chunks of hail. Still, as the arena filled up once again, the Aboleth pulled itself out of the crevasse and began to swim around the arena freely. Royal Guard was snatched up in one its tentacles so that its only servitor so far would be on hand when it went to claim another.

Saxton Hale had been looking for an opponent worth his strength, but since Ulrika was up on the walkways and Aevar was trapped in the ground, he was having some difficulty. When the waters rushed back in, the Aboleth was naturally pushed in the direction of Saxton Hale. Seeing a creature he had never beaten into submission before, Saxton Hale welcomed the challenge of the psionic monster. The Aboleth didn’t go straight for an attack though, instead prying into the head of the Australian with its hypnotic powers.

Once the psychic tendrils penetrated Hale’s mind, they were quickly locked into a toehold by the mighty mind of Mann Co.’s CEO. The Aboleth had never faced such an odd brand of mental resistance, but Saxton didn’t even seem to be trying to resist the mental invasion. His mind was actually focused on running right for the tentacled monster. The Royal Guard tried to intercept Hale, but he was brushed aside, and when Hale brushes you aside, you fly halfway across the arena.

Halfway across the arena, Gamera had just finished up his conversation with WALL!! and realized he should probably fite someone. He had no idea how many people had chosen him as their target, and didn’t even know that somewhere near Samus was trudging through the waters trying to get in close and finally start attacking the kaiju. As Gamera considered who he should fite, the guard slammed right into his chest. Lifting the golden-clad guard up and looking him over, Gamera decided he’d fite whoever tossed him over, and looking into the arena the many moving tentacles of the Aboleth made him decide the tentacled beast he had never seen before would be a good target to fite. After all, the less you know about your opponent, the better, right?

Gamera took off into the air and flew towards the Aboleth, leaving Samus behind. The bounty hunter saw her opponent flying away and sighed, but she did not give up. Her heart was set on fiting the giant turtle, so she took off through the waters to try and catch up with Gamera. If only she had been wearing her Gravity Suit her movement through the water could have been a lot faster.

With Royal Guard gone and its mental assault failing, the Aboleth’s tentacles became its next line of defense. Saxton began grabbing the beast’s many tentacles and tying them together, but his hands became coated in slimy mucus. He paid it no mind, but soon he found it difficult to breathe through his mouth and nose. In fact, it seemed he was breathing through his hands.

The mucus of an Aboleth has this nasty side effect of rendering those who touch it unable to breathe outside of the water. The places on the victim’s skin where it had touched the beast become the only membrane they can breathe through, and they can only breath if the membrane is submerged in water. Saxton didn’t catch on to this too quickly, and he continued grappling with the Aboleth until the beast shot out a huge puff of mucus. The water around the monster became a cloud of slime, and Gamera happened to land right into it. The turtle landing in the water kicked up some small waves that churned Saxton and the Aboleth about, but suddenly Gamera’s legs began to feel strange. He lifted his feet out of the water to check them, but the kaiju also had no knowledge on the transformation that was occurring.

The Royal Guard was beginning a slow float back towards the Aboleth, but now that it had Hale on one side and Gamera on the other, it was pretty boned. Hale grabbed the beast from below and hoisted it up into the air and brought it down in a piledrive. The beast had no free tentacles to attack Hale with, so it tried to pry into the mind of Gamera. Gamera’s mind wasn’t hardwired to resist hypnotic influences, but as Hale continued slamming the psychic monster’s head into the ground over and over, it was unable to focus on possessing the giant turtle. Gamera tossed his sausages at the Aboleth, but in the water they did a whole lot of nothing. The spiders were not eager to crawl out of this meat, and the sausages floated away from the battle. Gamera shrugged, not even knowing about the hidden depths of his own weapon, and began unleashing fireballs from his mouth down at the Aboleth below.

Hale is blasted off the beast by one of the balls, but the Aboleth itself was loopy from all the head trauma, so as fireball after fireball slams into the water below, the Aboleth has no presence of mind to move out of the way.

Out in the waters the Royal Guard dropped dead finally. With the mind link of the Aboleth severed, his body simply quit when it realized how much it had been injured. The Aboleth itself sank down into the waters below, the mucus cloud that still surrounded it staining the area where it died. Gamera still didn’t realize he was breathing through his feet, and since Hale was rushing back through the water to pay back the turtle in kind for his attack earlier, he wouldn’t be realizing it for some time.

As Hale wrestled with the kaiju, Ariel approached on Moosh. She tries her best to ask Gamera for the sausage, not realizing he has already tossed them out. Moosh’s stomach was no longer growling: it was roaring in agony. As Ariel tries to get the giant turtle’s attention, Moosh hears a voice whisper to him from beneath the waters.

“If you are looking for food, I know a great place where you can find those ‘Preying Mangos’ you seem so keen on finding…”

Ariel was too focused on trying to make good on her promise to feed Moosh to pay attention to the strange voice calling from the water.

“I’ve been looking all over for them, but I haven’t found a single mango yet,” Moosh told the strange voice.

“You have been looking too low my friend. Mangos do not grow in water or in dirt. Where do they grow?”

“Uh… Oh! Trees! I haven’t seen any trees though.” Moosh pondered the words of the voice, and Barkle even pokes over to inspect what was going on. The dog can barely see in the murky water full of pollutants and the yahoo ads and bing ads that were still hanging around, but the green face of Forscythe was barely visible in the water. Not bothered by complete submersion, the ghoul and his undead horde were hoping to add another to their ranks, but it wasn’t Moosh.

“Trees grow upwards my friend. If you are hoping to find food, the only way you can go is up.”

“I’m not too good at flying upwards…” but Moosh's stomach growled loudly, and the blue bear was forced to follow the call of his stomach. Ariel wasn’t quite positioned correctly as Moosh angled himself to fly upwards. The archer slipped off the bear and into the water, and even though she called out after him, the bear continued flying upwards, Barkle only barely able to cling on the flying ursine’s fur itself.

Ariel was not a bad swimmer, so after slipping into the drink she started to stroke away from Gamera and Hale’s battle to try and find some dry land. Before she got far, a series of hands reached out of the water and tugged her in. Under the water’s surface were all the Nerdlucks and Swackhammer, who all began swiping at the young woman. A strange shield of magic suddenly formed around the girl though, and soon the zombified aliens found themselves swiping at the Protect shell instead of the girl herself. The protective spell gives the girl the time she needs to surface and load her bow, but she does not aim for the attacking horde. Ariel fires bolt after bolt into the ground below, and pillars of earth shoot out from the ground. Ariel clambers up onto one of the columns of dirt and begins firing more and more Earth-charged bolts into the water ahead of her, creating a path for the archer to escape on.

The horde is quick to catch on though, and they start pulling themselves up onto the earthen path as well. In fact, other competitors start crawling onto it themselves, Aiden amongst them since the water level was much too high for a short fellow like him. The quickly crowded path and the general slowness of his undead servants made Forscythe realize that turning Ariel into his undead ally was no longer a possible prospect. Ariel was making her way towards a gravity booster, careful not to get in the water at all in case there were other hidden opponents in the depths.

Forscythe would have appreciated an undead servant with a ranged weapon, but realizing the hunt was now pointless, he drew his pistol and began the arduous process of loading it. Aiden realized his ally needed help, but even though he began to chase after the archer, she was much too fast and much too far for him to catch up to her. She was only a few feet away from a booster when Forscythe’s pistol was loaded. Ariel prepared to jump into the booster, but as she leaped Forscythe fired his second shot of the match. Once again, it hit its target, but this time, it was a lethal shot.

The high ground would have aided her well, and she had intended to rain down arrows on her pursuers from above, but now her dead body is carried uselessly up onto the walkways above. Leonardo and Ricard were near to where her corpse landed, and although seeing a dead body land next to you is usually gruesome, Leonardo was overjoyed to see it. He took Ariel’s crossbow the Carmanor and her quiver of bolts.

Now that he was armed, Leonardo decided it was time for him and Ricard to rejoin the battle. Hypotenuse was nearby on the walkway, still unable to pick an opponent because of conflicting programming warning her to be simultaneously cautious and aggressive. More importantly though, her back was turned to the two sellswords, so unknowingly, Hypotenuse had her opponent chosen for her.

A crossbow bolt slams into the back of the multi-armed battle robot, and it actually gets lodged in there pretty good. Light Work immediately leaps into action when it sees Hypotenuse has been hurt, and the two freelancers begin backing up. Leonardo tries to load his weapon, but Light Work is upon them before he can fire again. Ricard begins banging the side of the tiny robot as it pins Leonardo to the ground. Hypotenuse turns to face her attackers and whips the Devil’s Plaything out stiffly. The long chain of arms cracks into a solid staff and she slams it forward to try and hit Ricard. Ricard is able to back away from the first few strikes, but he almost topples over the edge backing up blindly, and Hypotenuse is able to club him over the head quite easily.

Leonardo is busy trying to free himself from Light Work, but the robot has him pinned pretty nicely. The yellow robot presses its eye in close, ready to deliver a painful jolt to Leonardo, but the quick thinking gray knight headbutts the tiny droid, causing it to fall off his body and free the clever knight. Hypotenuse whips her weapon out and its rigidity is placed with the flexibility of a whip. Ricard was down, so Sine’s clone has taken the opportunity to give the minstrel a good lashing. She is only able to get a few good smacks in before Leonardo has his (or rather Ariel’s) crossbow pointed directly at her once more. Leonardo decides to experiment with the bow’s features, and a bolt charged with earthen force slams right into the side of the tall android.

Hypotenuse falls over the side of the walkway, but a few of her many arms many to grab the edge and she quickly swings back up. Light Work scuttles onto her body and begins trying to mend the arrow wound from earlier, but Hypotenuse pulls him off and chucks him at the two freelancers with a simple instruction.

“Don’t blow up now KKKRZZZT mon petit” The French malfunction seems a little less clean than usual, probably spurned on by the damage she has sustained. Light Work was fully prepared to blow, but with the order given it decides to instead try to cling to the face of one of the two warriors. In a panic, Leonardo fires a bolt directly at the oncoming yellow droid, and perhaps it would have been better if it had blown up…

Light Work is broken, but even though it shut down its body still flies towards Leonardo and floors him. It begins to quake, and Leonardo quickly chucks the yellow robot over the edge. Light Work self-destructs on the way down, leaving no trace of its presence in the brawl besides the yellow chunks of metal that would not float about in the arena. Light Work’s fall did inspire Hypotenuse to ramp up her attacking though, and she flipped towards the two allied fiters and swept her whip around. The sweep manages to trip both Leonardo and Ricard, and she is quickly on top of Leonardo and begins driving all 15 of her unoccupied arms into Leonardo in a flurry of heavy punches. The armor of the knight holds up, but Ricard knows he must help his ally, but his own attacks would do nothing against a robot’s body. He thinks back to the books Leonardo had him read before the brawl and decides to conjure up an old fiter from Fite Yer’ Mates history in the hopes of scaring Hypotenuse.

“Stop right there!” a heroic voice shouted at Hypotenuse. Hypotenuse continued her assault, but turned to see who was calling out to her. Once she saw who it was, her attacks ceased and she stood up immediately.

“It can’t be… is that you… KRRRACK, mon père? ”

Hypotenuse quickly realized it was simply an illusion, but the emotional distraction gave Leonardo enough time to load another bolt and fire it. He tried another function of the bow this time, and this time the bolt that slammed into her was charged with the power of Thunder. The bolt punctured one of the android’s arms, and she quickly attempted to yank it off to avoid the surge of electricity, but the shock had done its damage. Seeing how she had reacted to the first bolt, Leonardo began unleashing a volley of electric bolts into the arms on the right side of the robot. Hypotenuse desperately ripped out each arm that was shot, and soon only her “biological” arm on that side remained. Reduced to only 8 arms (since the first arm removed was on her left), Hypotenuse was at quite a disadvantage.

“Pour utiliser mon propre créateur contre moi était un sale tour. Préparez-vous à payer pour cela avec votre vie! ” Hypotenuse had slipped entirely into French due to the constant electrical damage she had been subjected to. Her voice crackled and slipped into robotic tones as she spoke, giving away just how much damage had been done to her. Leonardo reached for another bolt, but Hypotenuse swung the Devil’s Plaything around and smacked the crossbow aside. Her weapon snapped into a rigid form once more and this time she stabbed it into Leonardo. The heavily dented armor caved in and Hypotenuse manages to run her weapon into Leonardo’s side. Between malfunctioning spurts of nonsense, Hypotenuse let out one more taunt in French.

“C'est incroyable ce que vous pouvez faire avec le bon ensemble de mains.”

She yanked her weapon from Leonardo’s side and prepared to drive it in again when the sound of singing caught her ear. Ricard had dabbled in some recreational reading outside of the books Leonardo had told him to read before the battle, and outside of learning many heroes he could conjure up with his illusions, he had learned a few national anthems from Earth as well.

“Allons enfants de la Patrie
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

Hypotenuse looked him a bit confused at first, but a spark rocks her system and drives her to join in. Soon, both Hypotenuse and Ricard were belting out a rousing duet of France’s National Anthem. As the two sang La Marseillaise, Leonardo weakly crawls over to retrieve the Carmanor and pulls it up. He aims it as best he can at Hypotenuse, and begins to let loose with bolt after bolt of uncharged shots. The malfunctioning Hypotenuse can’t turn her attention away from the song due to a strange uninspired sense of French patriotism, and soon the robotic “bleeding” has run her body dry. Ricard reaches the end of the anthem as Hypotenuse falls forward dead, a pitiful pincushion of crossbow bolts.

Leonardo leans back in relief, taking a break at the only chance he might get. But from far away the sound of someone else singing makes both him and Ricard alert and confused. Someone was coming towards them, and they were singing a very different National Anthem.

“Oh say can you see, By the dawn’s early light…”

General Cleft had heard the singing of France’s national anthem and came over to teach those who were singing it that no one should have national pride unless they are pledging their allegiance to the red, white, and blue!

Well, not the French red, white and blue, the AMERICAN red, white, and blue! Cleft continued singing his nation’s song as he marched towards Leonardo and Ricard. Leonardo was badly wounded by Hypotenuse, and he was in no condition to fite.

“I can’t take this guy right now Ricard! Do something!”

“Hm…. Well he’s singing the song of America. Maybe I could distract him with something American? I saw this picture of their president in the National Anthems book.”

“Good! Conjure him up and keep him busy!”

“I only know what his top half looks like. The picture stopped at his waist.”

“Make something up then!”

Ricard began to create an image in front of him, and by the time Cleft had reached the two sellswords, someone quite recognizable stood in front of them.

An illusory version of Barack Obama stood in front of Cleft wearing some rather odd pants since Ricard would have no way of knowing what pants the president would normally wear. Cleft was completely shocked when he ran into the POTUS, and he immediately bowed and stuttered out a greeting.

“Mr. President! I had no idea you would be here at the brawl today! Is there anything I can do for you?” Cleft looked up at the president now, but Obama stood completely still.

“Make him talk!” Leonardo whispered.

“I don’t know what he sounds like.”

“Make something up!”

Ricard cleared his throat a bit and began to talk with a kingly air, “Dear USA,” Leonardo shot him a confused look. Ricard shrugged and kept going, “We… gather here today to honor Cleft for his great achievements…”

Cleft was quite confused by the strange way Obama was speaking, and even more confused by the poufy pants the president was wearing. Cleft  begins walking towards the illusion, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Ricard hiding behind the president and speaking the strange words that weren’t making much sense. Cleft kicked his feet back like a horse stamping its hoof and charged right through the projection of the 44th president. Ricard had been standing right behind the false politician, so when Cleft’s spiked head came ramming through the illusion, it hit the minstrel right in his chest.

Ricard’s dead body flew over the edge of the walkway, and General Cleft left in a huff, angered someone would dare impersonate the president, even if the impersonation was just a projection. He didn’t bother Leonardo though, and the grey knight sighed with relief. He wasn’t happy to have lost his companion, but at least the knight still had a chance to avenge the minstrel. As Cleft walked away, Leonardo aimed the Carmanor at the stone creature’s back and fires a charged water shot. The bolt bounces uselessly of the rock hard hide of the Moon Cleft, and its impact was so minor it didn’t even draw Cleft’s attention. Leonardo tried the other settings of the bow as well, but neither the bolt nor the magic managed to do any damage to the rock hard rock creature.

Music is rare in an arena, and since Mac Tonight was too busy trying to hide in the least busy corner of the flooded arena to sing, only the two national anthems have served as interludes during the match. The infrequency of music tended to make any song draw a lot of attention, and a trio of cats made of cold vanilla custard had come by to see what all the singing was about. The three kitties had missed the big battles, but they did find Leonardo prone and armed with a crossbow.

The Custard Kittens approached Leonardo with no ill intent, so at first Leonardo seemed content to let them hang around. The squinty-eyed cat crawled up on his armor clutching the meat thermometer while the bent cat and the melting cat (no longer a frozen husk of cat this time around might I add!) went around to the knight’s side. Leonardo reached up to slap the cat off his chest, but the squinty-eyed cat rammed the thermometer into Leonardo’s open wound the moment he tried to remove the cat. Leonardo flinched and tried to bring the crossbow up to fire, but when he reached for the bolts he found nothing there. The two other cats had emptied the quiver and were now holding the arrows themselves.

Leonardo instead smacks the squinty-eyed kitten off of him, but the melting cat drops its arrow to climb up Leonardo and yanks the thermometer out as it does so. Leonardo swipes at this cat as well, but this one quickly makes its way to the knight’s face. Squinty-eyed cat picks up the arrows its companion dropped and began slapping their shafts against Leonardo’s armor, and the bent cat does the same. Their attempts to distract Leonardo work, and as he swats at the cats the melting cat reaches grey knight’s face and lifts his helmet’s visor. Leo tries to bring his hands up to smack the cat off, but the cat thrusts the meat thermometer repeatedly into Leonardo’s face.

A man can only take so many stabs in the face, and coupled with an already nightmarish wound to his side Leonardo is soon out of commission.  One of the thrusts forced the thermometer in too hard though, and now the kittens were forced to abandon their weapon in the body of their kill.

These kittens are pretty brutal.

The Custard Kittens decide to take the crossbow and arrows as their new weapons even though they wouldn’t be able to load it. For them, Carmanor was only going to be a very oddly shaped club. As they walked off with their spoils of victory, a big blue bear flew up beside them. He was going to keep flying upward until he saw the branches of a tree, but as he flew by the kittens he noticed they were made of delicious vanilla custard. Abandoning his quest for whatever a “preying mango” is, Moosh landed next to the kittens. The bear was drooling buckets at this point, the prospect of finally finding food motivating him to action. When the kittens turned to see who had landed near them, they were greeted with the famished face of Moosh the flying bear.

The Kittens ran for their lives.

Down below though, 17 was finally catching a break. During their pursuit of Ariel, the Nerdluck army had split up. A few were left in charge of keeping the crab under control while the others went off to enslave the archer, but they had yet to come back. Many attempts had been made to break through the crab’s junk armor so they could have a crab zombie join the ranks, but the Nerdluck zombies were much too weak. When Forscythe and his group were returning, 17 made his move.

The zombies may be able to walk underwater, but they could not compare with the mobility of a crab in the water. As Forscythe shambled back to the tiny Nerdlucks who had held 17 prisoner, the crab spun around, his claws snapping the undead aliens to pieces. The crab had no idea what had happened to Clint, but with the return of the water 17 was able to easily escape his captors and go for their leader. Forscythe ordered his other alien servants forward, but their shambling was even slower in the water, and soon 17 had decapitated every tiny alien that had been in B the Masque’s posse.

There was still one big alien though, and that big alien had taken 17’s gunlance when they had captured the crab. The undead Swackhammer didn’t have the dexterity to try and fire the weapon though, so instead it was reduced to swinging the weapon at 17. The water may have served as a good hiding spot for them earlier, but now that they were fiting something that knew how to move in the waters, the water hurt their cause more than it helped them. The drag caused by the water made Swackhammer’s swings so slow the 17 didn’t even need to dodge them. 17 took a few blows from the lance without being hurt, and then since the swings were so slow the alien crab deemed it safe to try and catch the lance as it swung around.

17’s claws clasped the weapon and pulled it away from Swackhammer, but the deterioration caused by being a zombie constantly in water meant that Swackhammer’s hands went with it. The crab shook its weapon to get the hands off, but now Mr. Swackhammer had no way to attack. Forscythe had already taken off back towards the earthen path Ariel had made, knowing the battle in the water was a lost cause. The undead Swackhammer turned in time to see his master turning his back on him. 17 swam after Forscythe, but not before making sure Swackhammer wouldn’t be a problem again.

Forscythe crawls onto land and begins to load his pistol once more. He tries to shamble as far away from the edge as possible, but soon 17 is out of the water and pointing his own gunlance right at Forscythe. The two fire at the same time.

17’s armor takes the shot without cracking, although it’s still much worse for the wear. Forscythe, on the other hand, is only wearing a soggy uniform, so he has no protection from the blast of the gunlance. The ghoul falls over dead. Er… dead again. One more time. He’s KO’d, alright?

17 scuttles along the path, hoping to find Clint somewhere. Aiden, who was also on the path at the moment, sees the alien crab and believes it is coming to avenge his fallen ally. To avoid a confrontation with a crustacean with a gun, Aiden decides to take to the water and try to find somewhere else that’s dry in the arena so he can relax. He hadn’t let it on much, but fiting Clint was quite exhausting. You can’t just break Rathalos armor by lightly tapping it after all.

Back up on the walkway, Moosh is chasing the kittens around fruitlessly. Neither was very fast, but Moosh was tired from so much flying and already slow to begin with. Barkle, however, was not really tired at all. The puppy leaped off of the bear’s back and began pursuing the kittens.  He quickly caught up with them, but the three cats began batting his nose with the arrows and bow. Barkle barked at them, but as he kept their attention, Moosh began to fly off the walkway and around to the other side of the cats.

Once he was behind the cats, Moosh reached out towards the melting cat with the crossbow. The cat tried to bonk the bear on the head with it, but Moosh’s paw batted the weapon away. The two other cats were ready to leap into action, but Barkle was quickly upon the squinty-eyed cat and the bent cat was forced to make a decision. The cat decided the squinty-eyed one was more important. Besides, the melting one has died more than any of them. The bent cat charged Barkle with its arrows, so Moosh had no trouble cramming the melting cat into his mouth. Thing is, stuffing a living cat in your mouth is not a good idea.

The melting cat wrapped itself around the bear’s tongue and began biting it. Moosh howled in pain and stuck his tongue out, rubbing his paws across it to try and remove the kitten. The cat hung on tight, so Moosh began biting his own tongue to try and remove the cat. The bites were messing the cat up quite a bit, but soon it jumped off of its own accord to avoid any more gnashing from the bear’s teeth. Moosh bit down hard on his tongue now that there was no custard cat buffer, and he clutched at it as it began to swell. Barkle was being waved backwards by the bent cat, so it seemed like neither of them could go in for a bite without being wounded.

Moosh took to the air again, this time flying over the kittens. The kittens began tossing their arrows up at him, but without proper propulsion they failed to make an impact. Moosh began to glow red, and Barkle made sure to clear out from under the bear. The kittens did not know what was going on until the bear did a butt slam right on top of the three of them.

The cats were flattened into a pool of custard, and without any real form to them they were unable to attack as Barkle and Moosh began to lap up the custard puddle.

The cool frozen custard felt good on the bear’s swollen tongue. Finally, Moosh had found a meal, and he was more than happy to share it with his little companion.

Down in the waters, Aiden Thane spots a strange sandbank out across the waters.  The claurichan swam towards it, but he failed to notice that the tiny beach has a few occupants…

The flooded arena has been a nice change of pace for Doomrider. Rather than trying to use it to his advantage in any way, he decided it was time for a beach party! He spent some time driving a boat around with beautiful demonettes, riding a jet ski, and engaging in other forms of revelry that involve summer time fun. After Gamera had gone off to get transformed into a water breather, WALL!! had dropped by the beach and joined in the fun.

Sometimes I wonder if people forget they’re in a brawl.

After the sun and fun died down, Doomrider floated by WALL!! on an inflatable raft, sipping sulphur from a glass with a lemon on the side. “Cool pool, dude.”

“Hey, if you want to thank someone, thank Mac over there.”

Mac Tonight had been hiding in a corner for quite a while, but Doomrider and WALL!! had coaxed him out with a delicious McCafe Chocolate Chip Frappé, now available at all participating restaurants. It’s Not Just a Drink, It’s An Experience! Mac was now lounging on the beach and chilling with the other laidback bros of the brawl, but swimming up to their little slice of paradise was a brawler who was not looking for R&R. Aiden pulls himself up on the beach and sees the setup the three fiters have going. A huge cooler of alcohol sat next to WALL!!, and Aiden approaches it in a hurry.

The claurichaun downs drink after drink without even introducing himself to the face in the WALL!! that was right next to him.

“Hey! No cool man, you can’t just take our booze like it’s yours!” WALL!! snapped at M the Masque, but the claurichaun kept chugging their beer supply without paying him any mind. Mac Tonight started moving his lounger away from the two, certain that soon something was going to go down. That something began when Doomrider leaped off his raft and it shifted back into the hellish bicycle he was so often seen with. Even with a Hawaiian shirt and shades, the sight of the Doomrider riding towards you on that thing is a terrifying sight.

“Hey shortstuff, listen the fuck up. That’s our stash, and you can’t just be downing all our fucking booze without even asking.”

Aiden held up a finger as he finished chugging his current bottle of brew, and only when he finished did he bother addressing the Daemon Prince who was inches from his face, “I couldn’t care where it came from, I’m thirsty and there’s beer, so if you brought it here ya knew the risks.”

Being indignant to one of Slaanesh’s most powerful servants was never a good idea. Doomrider revved his bike up, but Aiden reached back into the icebox and pulled out a beer can. Aiden looked at Doomrider, and without any sense of fear popped the can open.

Almost instantly the front tire was grinding against Aiden’s face. WALL!!’s face disappeared for the moment and began appearing all around the arena looking for something that could help Doomrider beat up the punk who was stealing their brewskies. Doomrider eventually drove off of the Masque, but besides a horribly ground up face the claurichaun seemed alright. He pulled his greatsword out of its hilt and charged towards the bike, but Mac Tonight tossed his McCafe Chocolate Chip Frappé right into the face of the party pooping fiter. Aiden wiped his face clean and glared at Mac who was quick to take refuge behinds Doomrider’s big flaming bike of death.

A great sword similar to Aiden’s formed in Doomrider’s hand as the bike roared back to life. The blast of the back engines blew Mac Tonight into the water, but the force the bike’s speed put behind the swing meant when Aiden tried to block it with his own greatsword his blade was split in two. Doomrider swung around and went for another slash, and the claurichaun’s head flew clean off his shoulder.

Doomrider looked at the head on the ground, but he could tell it was not the authentic head of M the Masque. Using what little remained of his blade, Aiden leaped up onto Doomrider’s bike and smacked him off. The daemon prince was surprised by the small man’s strength, but he was even more surprised when the claurichaun started the bike up. The pedals were so far down, how could he reach them?

However Aiden did it didn’t matter, because when the bike was within inches of hitting Doomrider, the servant of Slaanesh snapped his fingers. The bike immediately came to a stop and Aiden went flying. WALL!! had just teleported back with Gamera’s spider sausage in his mouth, intending to use it as a weapon, but when he saw the claurichaun flying through the air he decided he could better aid the battle by being on the wall Aiden was about to smack into.

A quick teleport over and WALL!! was ready to strike. “EAT THIS SU-“ WALL!! was ready to swing his sausage at the incoming Masque, but the face’s mouth was large and Aiden’s head was small. As he was screaming his taunt, Aiden’s head slipped right into his mouth. Aiden immediately began pushing against the wall to try and free his head, but WALL!! was not letting up. Spiders had begun crawling out of the sausage and biting Aiden Thane, but as WALL!! sat there with a man in his mouth, the face in the bricks came up with a brilliant idea. Enough pressure from hard stone is enough to decapitate any man.

A hard bite down on the neck was all it took, and as M the Masque’s body fell into the water below covered in spiders, WALL!! spat the head of the fallen claurichan after him.

This time, Aiden’s death was not an illusion.

With Aiden down, WALL!! went back to the beach to rejoin Doomrider. The Daemon Prince had lost track of Mac Tonight after he had been blown away, but now that there was no claurichan to bother them, Doomrider conjured up a whole new set of drinks for them to celebrate.

“LET’S KICK THIS PARTY INTO SHAPE!” Doomrider tossed a couple smoking drinks over to WALL!! and the two began downing the drinks with reckless abandon, but these alcoholic beverages weren’t the same plain-Jane store-bought beers.  These drinks had been created by Slaanesh herself, and as such they were not created from the safest substances. WALL!! had no trouble chugging the sulfur and bleach and molten metals, but as the drinks grew stronger and stronger his lips began to crack and his face began to steam.

The face in the wall was beginning to look quite bad, but the increasingly powerful superacids Doomrider forced into his mouth were dissolving it to the point he could not speak. All the while Doomrider poured the drinks down his own throat without so much as a flinch. WALL!! didn’t think he could take anymore, and finally Doomrider got down to the final drink. The drink was housed in a glass wide enough to serve a roasted Spider-Pig on but still had a tiny little handle for the rider to grasp.

“I call this one the Godbreaker!”

One part Batrachotoxin, another part dimethylmercury, yet another part fluoroantimonic acid, this drink swirled around within a huge base of plasma. The chemicals were burning through the glass that contained them quickly, so rather than drinking them, Doomrider chucked his glass into his mouth and crammed the other into WALL!!’s uncloseable maw. Even Doomrider seemed to struggle to handle this monstrosity of a drink, and some of it could be seen burning holes through his boots. Doomrider stamped around as he took in the drink, and when it calmed down in his system, he turned to WALL!!

“WOW! Wasn’t that fucking amazing? Woah…”

“I thought you could handle a bit more than that…”

His drinking buddy out of commission, Doomrider decided he should stop slacking and get back in the Brawl. His bike rockets over to his side, and the Doomrider rides off into the skies to look for a fiter worth his time. As the rider took off, Mac Tonight crawled back onto the island and got back into his lounger. As long as no one else came swimming out there, the moon-faced mascot believed he will be safe from all harm.

Out over the waters, the two brand-new water breathing powerhouses were still going at it, but they were soon to be greeted by a new challenger in their battle. Samus has finally made her way to the battle, and she is now poised to finally take on her target: Gamera.

Perhaps if Saxton Hale and Gamera weren’t locked into staying in the water their battle might have reached a turning point, but being forced to breathe through their skin was keeping them trapped in the brackish Atlantean waters. Both foes are fearsome in their own right, and now Samus sought to take them down, starting with the kaiju.

A blast from a fully charged shot crashes into the giant turtle’s shell, and both male fiters quickly turn to greet the new female arrival to their melee. Tired of fiting the turtle, Saxton Hale immediately pounces on the opportunity to fite someone new, and I do mean pounce. The CEO of Mann Co. launches himself onto the bounty hunter and seizes the two oversized shoulderpads of the Varia Suit. The metal caves in like tissue paper to Saxton’s powerful grip, but Samus curls into a ball and begins unleashing a powerful Screw Attack. Saxton Hale’s skin is cut apart as he attempts to hold on, but the cutting blades eventually lead to a most unfortunate casualty. Half of the Australian’s moustache is lopped off, leaving the other whisker alone in the desolate word of Hale’s upper lip.

Hale let go of Samus as soon as he felt the breeze against his bare lip. Samus continued to bounce around in the air, and soon she found herself at eye level with the giant turtle. Gamera blasts a fireball at Samus, causing her to uncurl out of her ball form and careen down to the waters below. Saxton was nearby, but he was heavily focusing on the exposed flesh of his upper lip. The CEO had to strain hard, but suddenly a fresh and somehow well groomed whisker appeared. The two sides of the mustache rejoiced to be back together, but there would be time for merry-making later. Samus splashed down beside Hale, and he was quick to leap into the water after her. Samus began to rapid fire power beam shots at Hale, but the Australian didn’t have time for pain.

Gamera, unfortunately, found time in Hale’s schedule for pain. The kaiju jumped up and brought his feet down where he had seen Samus land. Both Hale and Aran are pressed down into the ground. Samus’s suit protested to the heavy turtle’s stomp, but it still worked well enough for the bounty hunter to switch to her Ice Beam. Samus blasted the foot of the monster, but the beam ended up freezing her to the foot instead of encouraging the beast to lift it. Samus struggled to escape, but Saxton had quickly found his way out from under the turtle’s foot, and it involved lifting the beast up and slamming it into some of the support struts for the walkways.

Up above Deadhead was causing quite a bit of trouble for the fliers. Those Nerdluck spirits seemed like an unending wave of ammo, but the walkway Deadhead was standing on suddenly began to tip. Deadhead began to slip, but he managed to grab onto the edge of the tipping walkways and began shimmying towards a more stable part of the platform. Dirk, Utsuho, and Rainbow Dash were all brash fiters, so they all immediately flew in to try and finish Deadhead off while he was prone. This made for an unfortunate midair mixup, and the three fliers became entangled in each other. Mrs. Commanderson perched on the tipped walkway and watched with Tank as the three fiters began arguing in midair, each one insisting the others pull back so they can go in and finish Deadhead off. If you have ever heard the story of the North-Going Zax and the South-Going Zax, you can imagine what this kind of mentality lead to, just don’t imagine the part where people built highways around them.

Samus was still on Gamera’s foot as the kaiju stood back up to counterattack. Gamera hurled himself forward, trying to body slam a man who just twirled him around. Saxton easily caught the turtle and flipped him over onto his back. The ice around Samus was beginning to crack, so the bounty hunter forced herself into Morph Ball. In her smaller form she was able to roll out of the ice, but as she tried to roll away from Gamera, the big plodding boots of Saxton came running right towards her. Since she was underwater, Saxton could not see the obstacle in his path and ended up slipping on the ball in the water. This small slip up gave Gamera enough time to get back on his feet and curl into his shell. The turtle began to spin around in the water, and soon both Saxton and Morph Ball Samus were caught up in a whirlpool.

Samus and Saxton were slowly sucked in by the vortex, but it turned out to be a big mistake. Saxton began pounding against the kaiju’s shell denting it inward until the turtle was forced to poke his head out unless he wanted the Australian to seal the exits of the shell shut. Samus, meanwhile, ended up rolling into the tail hole of his shell and began laying power bombs. The explosions got Gamera back on his feet and running about in the water. Samus popped out of her smaller form and prepared to attack the injured turtle, but Saxton Hale ran up to her and seized her. Samus tried to kick her captor, but Hale tossed the bounty hunter up into the air as hard as he could. The ascent was surprisingly fast, but in the brief second of time she had to think, Samus shot out her grappling beam and hooked Gamera by his open, shrieking in pain mouth. The two sailed skyward, and soon the two broke through the atmosphere. Samus was only bothered by the pressure of breaking through the stratosphere, but Gamera was quickly finding it difficult to breath.

This kaiju was so used to breathing under all conditions that he was unfamiliar with the concept of suffocation.  Floating in the emptiness of space, Gamera was being sapped of energy the longer he couldn’t take in some nice refreshing water through his brand new leg membranes. Gamera began tugging at the grappling beam in his mouth, trying to shake Samus loose, but the bounty hunter’s beam was in there tight. Not waiting to see how long it takes to remove a beam from your mouth with your bare hands, Gamera tried to curl into his shell so he could fly off, but Samus yanked the turtle towards her and disengaged the beam. Gamera spun around in the vacuum of space, but besides being dizzy he quickly found his limbs encased in ice thanks to Samus’s Ice Beam.

Gamera’s vision was going black, and the turtle had not taken a deep breath of water before being forced into space with Samus. The turtle can only vaguely see an orange blur, and with the last energy he had, he shot a fireball towards Samus. The bounty hunter was hit hard by the blow and was blown further away from Moron Mountain, but she has managed to keep Gamera from returning to the planet, and now the giant turtle’s number was up.

The jets on the back of Samus’s suit sputtered to life. The damage Hale had done to her suit showed, but the integrity of the suit was enough that she could safely breathe oxygen on land, in the sea, and in space. All she had to do now was reenter the battlefield from space, but warning signs began to flash on her visor. Gamera’s last fireball had weakened her suit to the point that reentry may cause her to burn up in orbit.

With no gunship nearby and no other alternatives, Samus dives towards the planet below…

17 briefly stops to admire what he thinks is a shooting star, but the crab has finally reached the end of the earthen platform and stands before a gravity booster. Assuming Clint must be up on the walkways, the crab prepares to join the battles on the upper level before he notices something strange clinging to the support strut right behind the booster…

With 17 fiters left, it might be a good time to figure out where everyone who is alive is right now. On the ground level Mac Tonight is relaxing on an artificial beach and is watching the many activities of the other people still alive. Aevar’s body was still trapped in the grey rock of Moron Mountain, and although the water had weakened it and his constant wiggling had shifted some stone around, the graveknight was still stuck beneath the water unable to do much. So much for a strong showing so far…

Purnima’s Bunnymund bobbed in the waters below, Purnima still torn up over the dress she was forced to fry after Carla turned out to be a rude guest. The easy listening on the radio was quelling her nerves though, and an itch to rejoin the battle was developing to the point where it would soon need to be scratched. Tak-Sin was beneath the water as well, but as a merfolk prince he had not been bothered by the constant shifting tides around him. He was solely focused on the arduous revival process of Morgan, and so far it seemed like people had been allowing him to do it unimpeded.  The ritual was bound to end sometime soon…

Having rid himself of Samus and Gamera, Hale was consigned to trudge about the waters in the search for a new opponent on the lower levels. The only one he could see was 17, and he could tell the crab was ready to leap onto the booster and leave the only area where Saxton could breathe.

Following her defeat of B-Rex and the lengthy recovery afterwards, Widow Maker had flown up to the higher levels with the intention to join the Deadhead rumble once more, but Ulrika seemed so daggum bored. No one had dared challenge the incredibly heavy and nearly indestructible woman yet, so Widow Maker decided to indulge her with a duel. Doomrider had seen the two fiting from below and also chose to leave the lower levels for some high rise brawling, turning the duel into a three-way rumble.

Moosh and Barkle were nearby, lapping up what little remained of the Custard Kittens. Commanderson and Tank were similarly at ease for the moment, waiting for Dirk, Utsuho, and Rainbow Dash to untangle their midair Gordian knot of limbs so they could take out Deadhead, who was still clinging desperately to a bent bit of the walkway. Commanderson could easily knock Deadhead off the ledge, but her time as a pre-school teacher taught her not to exclude anyone who wanted to participate from a fun activity.

Cleft was marching about the upper levels, still humming the national anthem but unable to find anyone he deemed worthy of his time. It also helped that everyone already seemed preoccupied, so he just continued twirling his gun about as he patrolled the upper sector, eager for someone to end their battle so he could step in and join. His physique made it a bit hard to just leap into a huge battle and not get immediately overwhelmed by flying fiters with guns or lasers.

So there we are! All 17 fiters!

Wait

Hold on.

I missed one, and it just so happened the little guy was the one 17 had spotted just before the recap. The flood had not been kind to the little imp, and Grutz had spent most of the brawl since helping take down Permafrost cowering behind the support strut or scaling up it when the water rolled in. The magical creature dared to poke out from behind the strut every now and then to check if things were safe, but this time he was greeted by a waving crab.

The scrawny imp would probably have freaked out if it had been any other fiter, but the glimmering junk and glowing scrap that coated 17’s shell caught the big black eyes of the tiny fellow. Grutz let go of the strut and doggie-paddled his way over to the path. 17 even helped pull the imp up onto the platform, believing it had just made a new friend in the middle of the battle. 17’s voicebox crackles out a single word.

“fRIenD?”

All Grutz heard was “treasure”. The tiny imp leaped onto 17’s back and began slamming its pickaxe into the area between the junk armor and the crustacean’s shell. 17 frantically reaches up to try and stop the imp, but its claws don’t go that high. Even with the addition of the Scissor Gunlance to its reach, the imp was too speedy to hit. As soon as the lance swung towards it, it was instantly on the other side of the shell trying to pry a piece of metal off the alien by using its pick like a crowbar.

17 began scuttling about on the platform like crazy trying to shake the imp off, but the aimless ambling eventually lead to the crab walking right off the path and into the gravity booster. 17 and Grutz sailed up above and landed with a splat in the last bit of custard still remaining. The landing crab and imp spook Barkle, and after a few growls, it scampers off across the walkway and away from its ally. Moosh, meanwhile, was more concerned that the two had just landed in the last bit of its meal.

But boy, that crab sure did look tasty. Been a while since the bear had any seafood. Without even speaking a word to each other, Grutz and Moosh had formed an alliance against the alien crab. Grutz continued his assault from on top of the crustacean, but Moosh went for a frontal attack. 17 was too distracted to see the see the bear’s first attack, so the overweight ursine slammed into the crab and caused it to drop its gunlance in surprise. No longer fluttering on its wings during combat, the weight of Moosh became quite apparent as it walked towards 17 and squashed the Scissor Gunlance beneath its feet. One of the crab’s claws still pawed at the imp on top, but the other tried to devote itself to fending off the bear.

Moosh growled in a way only bears can as it started lashing forward with its paws. 17’s hide was too tough for its claws to penetrate, but Grutz was finally making some progress in popping some of the junk off. 17 had no way of striking the tiny creature, so it began to focus its full attention on Moosh. The blue crab’s pincers snapped at the blue bear and forced it to retreat, but the many pieces of armor on the shell were being pried off one by one. Soon, Grutz had cleaned the shell of the alien crab, and with noting left on top, Grutz gave in to instinct and tried to mine for hidden treasures within the shell.

The pickaxe breaking into the 17’s shell was enough to cause the crab to convulse, and without any more junk to grab onto left, Grutz was finally shaken from the shell of 17. The crab whirled around when it realized the imp was off its back and immediately began snapping its claws into the weak little imp. Grutz could not escape the flurry of pinches 17 was throwing his way, but by turning his now exposed and cracked back to another opponent, 17 left himself wide open for attack.

Moosh attacks the tiny enemy crab’s weak point for massive damage. The bear’s paws had no problem cracking the shell wide open and reaching in for the soft crabmeat within.

17 manages to land 17th place, Moosh gets some more food and Grutz gets to enjoy all the baubles he pilfered from the crab’s shells. Everyone is a winner here, except the dead crab of course.

The time it took for a crab to die also happened to be the amount of time it took for Samus to make reentry. Her armor had managed to survive the pressure of atmospheric friction, but she still had to land somewhere, and she had no idea where it would be safe to land. The water was not deep enough to absorb the entire impact unless she somehow hit the crevasse, the giant dead Gunter body looked sort of soft but was most likely still encased in ice. The embankment of sand Doomrider had created was too far off her course, and things like the earthen path and the raised walkways were just generally bad ideas. Gravity did not give her time to readjust her flight plan though, and it turned out the first stop on her fall would be the walkway where Doomrider, Ulrika, and Widow Maker were fiting.

Samus’s falling body crashed right into the Daemon prince and broke through the walkway beneath him, Ulrika tumbling in after due to her proximity to the rider and his bike. In fact, before we arrived, there was quite a spectacular show where Doomrider’s weapons were failing to penetrate Ulrika’s Karzantium skin and Ulrika’s blast from her gun arm were actually doing significant damage to Doomrider.

Shame we didn’t see any of that. We were too focused on a bear and an imp ganging up on a crab.

Either way, Doomrider, Samus, Ulrika, and a good hunk of the raised platform splashed into the incredibly dirty water below. Widow Maker had made the wise decision of backing off when Ulrika and Doomrider had gotten in close to each other, and right now that meant she was still hovering above the walkways. Widow Maker was without an opponent again, but a bullet that flew her way issued a challenge.

“Hey! Praying mantis lady! Come over here and fite me if you dare! Come on, please? I can’t find anyone else who ain’t busy!” General Cleft was literally begging the bug to battle him, and Widow Maker saw no reason not to indulge him. The Moon Cleft’s call for battle did make a single ear on Moosh’s head perk up.

“Did someone say… Preying Mangos?” The bear had been hearing about these mangos all day, and even though it had an easy meal right in front of it, it just had to see what these fabled fruits tasted like. The bear was a slow flier though, so as it took off in pursuit of Widow Maker, the bug and the stone had more than enough time to begin a stellar battle.

Up above many lives were being ended, but down in the waters below one person was finally back to life.

“Welcome back Morgan.”

“Yarr.”

The two merfolks' reunion was cut short when the crash landing of Samus and her group of falling fiters hit the waters and kicked up quite a tidal wave. The waves push Tak-Sin and Morgan away before they could properly regroup after the ritual’s end. The huge waves did kick the Bunnymund high up into the air, and the uneasy tides made Purnima finally commit to doing something besides listening to her radio. The bunnymech rode a few waves until it was near a gravity booster and hopped up above on the power of reversed gravity. When she lands on top, she is greeted by Deadhead, who is standing on some level ground and finally ready to resume battling.

When a Nazi zombie gets in your face, you don’t just stand there and stare at him. Purnima rammed her machine’s lance directly through the stomach of the undead soldier. The grub lifts Deadhead up in the air on the end of her lance and begins spinning him around trying to do as much damage as possible to the zombie, but the constant spinning is only making her carrot lance dirtier and dirtier. Eventually, the bug uses the Bunnymund’s shield to scrape the zombie off her lance. Deadhead falls to the ground and begins the slow process of getting back up.

Mrs. Commanderson and Tank see that the battle with Deadhead has resumed, and even though the other fliers are busy they decide to join in anyway. Once Deadhead is back up, the sharp talons of Mrs. Commanderson swoop in and grab the zombie by his shoulders. Commanderson begins to take off with the nazi in tow, but Deadhead summons a rather fat spirit, that of Swackhammer, and rams it into the archaeopteryx. Commanderson crashes back down into the walkway, where Tank catches up the fite and begins ramming his body into the zombie while pulled into his shell. Deadhead stands up and ignores the constant bludgeoning from the turtle and tries summoning more spirits to help begin another annoying volley of ghosts that could keep the fliers locked down.

The ball of writhing limbs consisting of a pony, a dark angel, and a Hell raven continued to spin uselessly in the air, but once Dirk saw that the battle with Deadhead was resuming, he decided it was time to untangle the knot. Dirk’s orbitars sprung to life and pointed at the heads of Rainbow Dash and Utsuho.

“Alright, we’re getting out of this knot NOW! We’ll land over there,” Dirk said, pointing at a bit of empty walkway, “I’ll untangle first, I guess you untangle second Utsu… Utsu…”

“Utsuho Reiuji,” the Hell raven deadpanned.

“Right, you get out of that ball, and we all work together to kill this zombie for good! And if you don’t listen to me, prepare to have your face blown off by these babies.” Dirk’s orbitars hummed as if to offer tiny threats of their own, and soon the Fliermass had fluttered its way over to the walkway and they finally untangled themselves.

Dirk took off the moment he was free to fite Deadhead, but when Rainbow Dash was free she took the time to rocket around the skies, happy to have the range she needed to build up speed once more. Utsuho, on the other hand, was quite grumpy. The other fiters around Deadhead made it so she couldn’t use her stronger powers without turning everyone against her, so as she flew around in a huff, only Dirk really went in to attack Deadhead. Tank was doing a decent job of slamming into Deadhead, but the blunt damage was only causing the zombie to stumble a bit as more Nerdluck souls came up to join him. Purnima’s mech shifted its feet around to rejoin the battle, but Dirk flew in front of it to try and rejoin the battle himself. The orbitars blasted Deadhead repeatedly, and even though the zombie’s body held up to that assault, the spirits it was trying to summon were released from its control due to the distraction. As a bevy of spirits floated towards Nerdluck heaven, Dirk began spinning around the nazi to try and keep himself safe from swiping zombie hands.

Purnima took aim at Deadhead with her lance, convinced only she had done any damage to the zombie because of the still present hole in the Nazi’s stomach. She tried her best to time it right, but when the carrot lance finally fired, Dirk got right in the way of it. One of the angel’s orbitars manages to absorb the brunt of the blow, but the rocket-propelled lance could not be stopped by the orb alone. The lance rammed into Dirk’s back, grinding into the back of the boy’s wings and forcing him to land on the walkway.

Dirk is furious. There was friendly fire, and then there is THIS. The dark angel leaves Deadhead and begins walking towards Purnima. The carrot lance was rolling around on the ground near Dirk, so he hefted the heavy metal carrot up and brought it back to Purnima. A voice crackled over the intercom, “I appreciate the thought, but the lance cannot be reattached so easily.”

“Oh yeah?” Dirk pulled the carrot back and rammed the point end through the arm that had launched it.

The machine’s right arm sparked violently, and to protect herself Purnima raised the machine’s shield to protect the cockpit. The arm exploded and launched the lance back out, but with no target it simply slipped into the waters below. Dirk’s remaining orbitar began to fire blasts into the casual dueling suit, the light armor of the machine tearing easily. Purnima tried her best to dodge the blasts as they tore through the chassis, and soon her machine’s inner workings were smoking heaps of useless machinery. Purnima tried to fiddle with the controls, but the fires burning around her were too much for her, and she was forced to sit back in her chair and hope they would die down.

Dirk pulled his arm back, his hand glowing as he summoned up some magic. Aimed directly for the cockpit, Dirk unleashed a Mega Laser right through the Bunnymund. The cute bunny face of the machine was decimated, and the beam continued onwards and passes through the mech’s passenger.

The grub and her machine lie in a heap of fire. Getting his revenge on Purnima for launching a lance at his back was quite cathartic, but when he cooled down and tried to return to his battle with Deadhead, he found the zombie to be much further down the walkway. His rage had inspired him to ignore his pain, but as he tried to walk over and rejoin the battle, he found himself drained of energy. Dirk fell to his hands and knees. The dark angel began casting Health Recovery, but it would be a while before he was fit to fite again.

The three female fliers (and Tank) had kept Deadhead at bay for a bit, but there is only so long you can dodge spirit bullets. Commanderson was blasted away from the group along with Tank, the tiny turtle seeming to be her ally more than Rainbow Dash. Speaking of Dash, the blue pony was blasted in the direction of Dirk, and having a rainbow-haired pony crash into him meant Dirk didn’t get to finish fully healing himself with his spell. Utsuho, on the other hand, easily dodged the many spirits launched at her, she was used to avoiding ridiculous amounts of incoming projectiles. More importantly, with the other fiters out of the way, Utsuho could finally go all out against the nazi zombie.

Over with Widow Maker and Cleft, the battle had boiled down a bunch of ineffective blows. Whenever Widow Maker closed in, the hard rock hide of Cleft prevented her from doing real damage. Meanwhile, the speedy bug with cloaking capabilities was too much for the general to keep track of and properly shoot down. When Moosh finally reached the group, he was a bit pooped, but not so pooped that he couldn’t accidentally push Cleft over the edge when he landed. The General tried to fire up at the bear as he fell, but the rock monster twirled around too much in the air as he fell to get any decent bead on the blue mammal.

Widow Maker was quite impressed with Moosh’s unintended tackle, but when she saw the look on Moosh’s face, she knew instantly what happened.

“No no no, I told you! Not a fruit! I know EXACTLY what you’re doing. You are imagining me as some giant cartoon mango aren’t you?”

Moosh’s only answer was the ravenous look on his face as he dived towards the praying mantis.

Moosh is a strong bear no doubt, but the lumbering lummox had nothing on the speed and strategy of the former Zoofighter. Moosh tried diving at the mantis, pawing at her, and even trying to bite her, but the bug’s wings whisked her out of the way of danger with ease. Widow Maker didn’t want to fite the bear particularly, but as she tried to fly off, the winged bear came slowly hovering after her. Rather than landing on a walkway, Widow Maker decided to turn their battle into an aerial one.

In the sky, Moosh had to devote most of his time to using his tiny wings to keep his huge mass aloft. When Widow Maker came at him with her metal encased left arm, Moosh could only weakly swipe at it. The metal tore a gash in the bear’s side, and although the ursine growled in pain, it still continued to float after her. Widow Maker tried to give it a hint to lay off by scratching another gash in the bear’s opposite flank, but this was not a bear who took no for an answer.

Sighing, Widow Maker spun up the Phantom Thrust and charged directly for the bear’s head with it to try and finish this battle off early, but Moosh actually managed to counter the blow… by grabbing the drill. His paws were a bit worse for the wear for doing so, but after a few moments of grinding against his paw pads, the drill stopped spinning.

The mechanisms that made it spin were still working though, so it wasn’t the weapon that spun anymore. Widow Maker spun around in a spiral until she managed to disable her own drill. The praying mantis was incredibly dizzy afterwards, and her wings were unable to beat properly. The bug went falling down, and after glowing red for a few seconds, the big blue bear’s butt followed her down.

Dizziness only lasts so long though, so before she hit the water Widow Maker was able to recover and flutter out of the trajectory of the ground pound. Moosh hit the water and launched up a comically large amount of water. Being splashed by so much water dragged Widow Maker down into the drink as well, but Moosh was unable to attack her at the moment. His butt had hit the bottom, and dropping from such a height it was likely he broke some bone in that area of his body.

The bear was not a good swimmer, and the butt damage was not making it any easier. Widow Maker wasn’t much better, but she manages to float over and jabs her claw into the bear’s head. The blow was swift and clean, and Moosh’s struggling in the water ceased.

The humongous bear’s body floats around in the water, and the giant mantis uses it as a nice raft to dry off on. She needs time to drip dry before she can properly get into another fite.

“Hopefully that puts an end to the whole Preying Mangos thing forever. It obviously won’t, but a bug can hope.”

Left alone with Deadhead, Utsuho’s nuclear control rod arm began to glow. Deadhead looked up at his only opponent, and started to twitch in a way he hasn’t all match. Spirits began to rise up, but these aren’t the same old Nerdlucks we’re used to. These souls look a lot more familiar. The fallen fiters are rising once more…

Barkle had been looking for his companion for a while, and seeing the freshly dead soul of Moosh rise up near Deadhead gave the dog hope of reuniting with his ally. Barkle began to run across the walkways, gradually getting closer and closer to the nazi zombie.

Deadhead began to unleash his spirits upon Utsuho, but unsurprisingly quite a few of them were not pleased to be dragged out like this. Only the spirit of some orphan we haven’t really seen in the arena complied with the call to attack Utsuho, the others quickly turned on Deadhead. Heavy hitters like Gamera knocked Deadhead around while more brutal fiters like Scorpion began ripping chunks off the zombie. Aiden and Leonardo’s souls got to work trying to take the feet out from under the Nazi, and the reunited duo of Clint and 17 tried to make the hole in Deadhead’s stomach even larger. The undead soldier was so used to working with the pliable Nerdluck souls it had almost forgotten the souls could reject his influence.

Utsuho used the opening offered by these dead fiters’ assault to prepare a powerful attack. Her glowing arm finally launched forth a Mega Flare, and the roaring ball of energy quickly engulfed Deadhead. The blast also had the side effect of scattering the spirits, but Utsuho hoped that Deadhead would be dead after that blow. Well, dead again. One more time.

When the flare disappeared, a charred and well-cooked Deadhead glared at the Hell raven with the same emotionless look it has had all battle. Utsuho can’t believe her eyes, but she doesn’t waste any time wondering how the zombie survived. The young woman coated herself in fusion energy and charged towards Deadhead in an Uncontainable Dive, but Deadhead managed to call in a spirit who was willing to serve him. Bastardsaurus Rex’s soul blocked the Dive and clamped down on Utsuho with its ghost teeth. They weren’t as sharp as its teeth in life, but those chompers still hurt Utsuho immensely.

Okuu tried to wiggle free, but the teeth were beginning to dig into her skin. Before the beast could dissect her with its ghostly teeth, Utsuho created two orbiting spheres of blue energy. The Retro Atomic Model hits both sides of the B-Rex’s jaws and it was forced to pull them open to avoid having its jaws decimated.

Deadhead was too focused on picking on the young girl to even notice when Barkle walked up right beside him. The Moosh soul had disappeared after Utsuho’s Mega Flare attack, so the poor dog in Tingle’s clothes arrived to nothing but a foul smelling zombie. Barkle began growling at the zombie, his natural dog senses alerting him to the evil within the Nazi. The barking and growling didn’t make Deadhead stop being evil, so Barkle attacked. The dog pounced forward and knocked Deadhead off the walkway. B-Rex’s spirit dissipated as Deadhead and Barkle fell down into the water below together.

The zombie scratches the poor puppy apart before they can even land in the water.

Deadhead’s body sank into the water below, and up above Utsuho cheered. She believed the dog had done it, and the zombie nazi was finally down.

The waters had settled down since Samus’s crash landing earlier, so the three who had fallen together had time to realize what had happen. Doomrider’s head had been knocked backwards by the impact, but with quick snap he was facing the right way. Ulrika had simply fallen, so she looked no worse for the wear if you excluded how the murky water dampened her hair and clothes. Samus, on the other hand, looked like an absolute wreck. He armor was sparking and pieces had already fallen off. Warnings within the Varia Suit indicated the suit would soon disengage itself, but Samus was not done with her suit yet.

Doomrider’s bike appeared next to him and he began riding towards Samus. It wasn’t clear if he had ill intentions due to the huge smile on his face, but the Karzantium woman running in the shadow of the bike definitely wanted to pound whoever had knocked her off the platforms. Samus pointed her arm cannon forward feebly, a ring shooting out and flaps opening on the side of the gun. Blue energy began to gather at the end of the cannon.

Doomrider’s bike screeched to a halt and the Daemon Prince gave her a thumbs up.

“Nice landing!”

Samus realized the former Big Bar Brawl champion meant her no harm, but the cannon had already begun to fire. The Zero Laser shot forth directly at Doomrider, and even though Samus tried to pull it away and aim it elsewhere, its force was too great for her to control. Doomrider was disintegrated by the powerful blast of energy, Ulrika only barely escaping the same fate thanks to being in the shadow of the Daemon Prince.

Samus’s armor falls off, revealing the Zero Suit the Coneheads wanted to see so badly earlier. She clutched her small stun gun/whip gun where her arm cannon used to be, and looked up at Ulrika. She wasn’t happy with eliminating someone who wasn’t expecting it, but she didn’t have time to mourn. Ulrika was running forward, her own hand transformed into a powerful arm cannon.

Back on what still remained of the slowly disappearing walkways, Commanderson and Tank crash down near Grutz, scattering his junk and pushing quite a bit of it off the platforms. Grutz freaks out seeing his swag get scattered, but when he examines who had collided into his collection, his huge eyes settled on the propeller Tank had been using to get around. The imp did not fully understand how the attachment worked, but he did know one thing.

He wanted it.

Landing was much more painful for the reptile who didn’t have a shell, so even though Tank was not alone with Grutz, the bird-reptile who landed with him wasn’t quite in the mood to fite. Tank didn’t have much time himself to recover from being launched far away before a new challenger was on his shell and ready to battle. Tank begins to twirl around in the sky trying to shake Grutz off, but the imp had a nice handle to hold on in Tank’s propeller harness. The turtle faced the same issues 17 had faced, but the turtle had the element of fear on his side. When Grutz realized they were flying above the open water instead of the walkways, he became a lot less eager to pull the propeller off of the turtle.

The tiny man’s focus instead shifts to trying and motivate Tank to land somewhere safe, and without much in the way of strategy in his brain, Grutz resorted to striking the turtle’s shell repeatedly with the pick. The shell was quick to crack, but rather than shuddering in pain like 17, Tank responded by barrel rolling. Grutz was forced to hold on for dear life as Tank performed a series of aerial acrobatics the pony had taught him. They weren’t nearly as swift as Rainbow Dash’s, but the turtle managed to keep Grutz from striking the shell again.

The harness on the flying tortoise’s shell was not made to handle the weight of anything greater than a single turtle though. Grutz’s added weight was tearing the leather, and soon the snap of the leather giving out signaled that the aerial battle was over. Grutz reached up and clasped the metal bit with all his might, losing his pickaxe in the process. Tank was not gifted with the boon of hands though, so the tortoise begins to plummet down to the water below. A quick bite into Grutz’s ankle is the only thing that saves him from crashing into the Atlantean waters below.

The propeller continued to spin, powered still by the magic of a unicorn. Grutz has no idea how to control the propeller, so the two go flying towards the giant Gunter monolith looming over the arena. Grutz tries his best to kick the tortoise off his foot, but it isn’t until the two slam into the giant frozen penguin that Tank can’t hold on anymore. Banging against the Gunter statue as he fell, Tank was no longer alive when he hit the water.

Without the tortoise to weigh him down, Grutz pulls his legs up and clings with his entire body to the magically-charged propeller. He had no sense of control, so the propeller was carrying him around the arena on its own. Grutz looked around desperately for a place to land, but the propeller seemed to never carry him close enough to a walkway to risk jumping off.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash and Dirk are once again entangled, but this ball was much easier to break out of. Some of Dirk’s healing had gone through, but the filly crashing into him cancelled out the last one. He was still in a bad shape, but Rainbow Dash was only a bit frazzled from being tossed around and tangled up.

The two hot-headed fiters had both lost their fites earlier this year, but now that they were beside each other in the arena, both decided it was time to prove they could win a battle. Dirk was looking to kill a pony, and Rainbow Dash was looking to prove she wasn’t a last-place loser, even though by this point everyone was guaranteed at least 13th place. Dirk’s single working orbitar began to attack before either one could officially initiate the battle, so Rainbow Dash took to the air and began dodging the blasts at super-sonic speeds. Dirk couldn’t take to the skies to pursue the pony, but even though he had been dabbling in mostly defensive spells this battle, he had quite a few offensive spells in his bag of tricks.

Rainbow Dash was circling the dark angel, the orbitar unable to keep up with the speedy pegasus pony. Her circle gradually tightened, and when Rainbow Dash finally went in for an attack, she was greeted by a bright Celestial Firework to the face. The exploding ball of light blasts Rainbow Dash backwards and down towards the waters, but the pony quickly recovers and zooms up into the sky. The orbitar stops firing once the pony has flown too far out of reach, and Dirk could no longer see the pony in the sky. He knew what she was going to try, so the dark angel braced himself for impact.

Rainbow Dash came rocketing down from the clouds, a burst of color exploding out in a ring from her body. The Sonic Rainboom came crashing down on Dirk, but the dark angel quickly cast another healing spell. This healing spell was not the same as the one he was using earlier. This was the Pisces Heal, a move that absorbs a lethal blow and converts it into healing energy. The sudden stop coupled without an equal and opposite reaction was more than enough to confuse the filly long enough for Dirk to use another power: the Poison Attack.

Rainbow Dash is injected with a potent poison, but the attack spurred the pony into action as well. The horse lifted its front hooves and kicked Dirk square in the chest, flooring the angel and leaving him open to be trampled repeatedly by the pony. Fighting off the enfeebling effects of the toxin, Rainbow Dash continues to stomp on Dirk until the orbitar begins to fire blasts directly into her face. The pony backs off and takes to the air again, giving Dirk time to stand back up.

Rainbow wasn’t in the air for long. After building up some speed, the pony came towards Dirk on the platform, her wings propelling her into her Super Speed Strut. Her head was down and prepared to hit the angel like it was a battering ram, so Dirk decided to counter a powerful charge with one of his own. Dirk focused on himself intensely, and his stamina began to drain as he sacrificed it in a Trade-Off to gain more strength. As Rainbow Dash closed in, Dirk launched himself forward as an Angelic Missile.

The two slammed into each other, both their heads making contact. Even with his increased strength, Dirk could not outclass a pony propelled at Mach 1 speed. Dirk is launched far away from the pony, who grinds into the ground from the remaining momentum. The dark angel slams into the stands and many audience members scramble away from the fallen angel. One person stands above the angel though, and it was all too clear to her that the angel had not survived the impact.

Rainbow Dash did not get up after grinding into the platform. The head-on collision had taken too much out of her for now, so even when she finally sees Grutz buzzing around with the propeller, she doesn’t have the strength necessary to chase after him to avenge Tank.

In the depths below, Deadhead stirs. The dead dog was still in his hands as he trudged about the water, but he quickly tossed it aside when he saw some other fiters beneath the waters. Deadhead thought he had found an easy target in the purple-haired man in front of him, but what the nazi zombie didn’t realize was that he was in their element now.  In fact, Deadhead was surrounded. Tak-Sin and Morgan were in front of him, but Aevar’s half buried body watched the zombie from a few feet away, and Saxton had leaped at the prospect of challenging the nazi after seeing him crash into the waters. Saxton was swimming up from behind, and everyone in the water was ready to fite Deadhead.

Deadhead slowly approached the merfolk prince from behind. Tak-Sin was standing there alone picking at his nails, trying to act like he was unaware of the approaching zombie. Deadhead gets within arm’s reach of the prince and pulls his head back to bite the merman, but Morgan comes rushing quickly through the water and plows into the Nazi from his right side. Tak-Sin turns around with his trident ready, but Morgan is all over Deadhead slashing the Nazi into shreds. Nerdluck souls begin to pop out of the ground once more, but this time they channeled through the hole in the Nazi’s torso and began slamming into Morgan’s stomach. Morgan grasped the arms of the undead soldier as more and more Nerdlucks began pushing him up, but Tak-Sin leaps in and pins Deadhead’s feet to the bottom of the ground.

The combined force of a pirate propelled by spirits and a mystical trident pinning his legs down made Deadhead in a bad place when it came to his arms. The spirits were pushing with such force that soon Morgan is shot out of the water, taking both of the soldier’s arms with him. Tak-Sin withdraws his trident from the foot of the soldier and tried to drive it into the Nazi’s dead head, but now that Morgan was blasted away the spirit began to focus on a defensive role. The souls were cleaved easily by the trident, but a few of them had devoted their energies to carrying Deadhead away from the attacking merman. Tak-Sin fired magical bolts after them, but the submissive spirits continued to give their second lives to serve anyone who gave them orders.

The alien spirits were not too smart though, and they carried Deadhead right by where Aevar was still lodged into the ground. Aevar reached up wordlessly and clasped one of Deadhead’s legs. Around Aevar, the spirits quickly lost their drive to serve Deadhead, so the graveknight had no resistance when he swung his blade around and severed both of the Nazi’s legs. Aevar tried to reach up for what little remained of Deadhead, but the undead soldier was naturally drawn to float, so his torso and head were now bobbing on the surface just out of Aevar’s reach.

As Aevar struggled against the ground more than ever, Saxton Hale came tearing through the waters to snatch up Deadhead. He was a bit disappointed to find the soldier in such a state, because he had been hoping for a challenging battle. Saxton lifted Deadhead by his head and tried to squeeze, but as he looked into the empty eye sockets of the soldier, his mind began to fail him. The world around him melts away and is replaced with an empty void of white nothingness. Deadhead moves with the fluidity of a living person as he adjust his body to stare directly at Hale.

The jaw of the skeleton slowly opened up, some faint German words gradually growing more visible as the jaw spread wider and wider. Outside of Deadhead’s void, Saxton Hale was sinking into the waters, and soon he reached Aevar. Aevar tried to swing at the two, but they were just out of his reach, but not out of the reach of the Desolation Aura. Deadhead’s message was just about to become clear to the Australian, but the intervention of an aura that blocks out almost all other forms of mental intrusion brought Hale back to the real world. Unlike the Aboleth earlier, Hale had felt the impact of Deadhead’s mind games, and he was not pleased.

Saxton hoisted the torso of the zombie into the air and slammed it down into the ground. The hard rock split like bread beneath a knife as Deadhead continued to go deeper and deeper into the planet’s crust. Even when gravity pushed against the zombie’s descent with intense force, the Nazi just kept going until it crashed into the molten core of Moron Mountain.

The incredibly deep hole that slamming a zombie to the center of the planet created began to fill with the water from the arena. Because of his proximity to the giant hole, Aevar finally had the rocks around him weak enough to break free. Aevar raises his sword and points it at Saxton, but his challenge is pointed at the back of a man who is running far away from him. Saxton Hale had quickly realized that a hole to the center of the planet meant that there would be enough room for the water to drain, and Hale would need a big cork to keep it from entirely draining. Without the water, Saxton would suffocate.

One possible cork Saxton easily spotted was the enormous frozen Gunter. Saxton swam towards it, but as he got closer and closer to it, he found the water levels were receding to the point that he could run to it. The hole in the arena was creating a large drain effect, and the water was quickly being centralized around it. The Gunter statue was so far out that only Saxton’s feet were wet when he reached it. Saxton tried to heft the giant statue up, but he was quickly finding it difficult to breathe. The normally strong man may have been able to lift it with air in his lungs, but with no water in his mucus membrane Hale could only manage to lift one end. The Australian still tried his best to lift it, but his strength gave out and the giant Gunter statue came crashing down on the walkways above.

The already damaged walkways couldn’t handle the full force of a giant penguin crashing into them. Only Commanderson and Rainbow Dash were still up there anyway, and those two simply had to fly to avoid the long fall.

Widow Maker hopped off of Moosh’s corpse as it and the many other bits of litter and bodies that had been bobbing about in the water flowed into the hole. Saxton came running towards the hole himself, desperate to get the water into his membranes and find a way to plug the hole.

Ulrika and Samus had been playing a game of cat and mouse around the area they had crashed, but the water draining and the walkway collapsing had drastically altered the playing field. Samus had been desperately trying to dodge the plasma blasts from the woman’s gun arm, so when the walkways came crashing down and gave Zero Suit Samus some cover, she was grateful for the change of pace. Ulrika retracted her gun back into her arm. No point shooting someone you can’t see.  In fact, she was happy the walkways had crashed down. It gave her a good excuse to use her fists. Ulrika pounded through the platform in front of her and began her search for Samus amidst the rubble of the platforms.

Ulrika continued to tear through the alien metals of the fallen walkway in her search for Samus, and this made it quite easy for the bounty hunter to avoid her. The sound of breaking metal allowed Samus to glean the location of Ulrika and she quietly worked her way around the maze of rubble to get behind the cyborg. Armed only with her paralyzer, Samus did not see any possible way she could take down Ulrika Braunhaus, but the bounty hunter had seen both Aevar and Saxton Hale running about before her vision had been blocked by falling platforms. Samus hoped to draw the attention of the cyborg and lure her out to where Aevar or someone with more capable weaponry than a stun gun could take her out.

Still, the process of guiding Ulrika to where Samus needed her would involve some risky business. Samus began to charge her pistol up as she stalked around the maze, relying on sound alone until she came across the path of the giant holes in the metal Ulrika had been making to pass through. Samus jumped through these gracefully, but as she continued into the maze through these holes, the sound of metal smashing stopped. Samus decided she would not leap into the last hole without looking for Ulrika first, but it turns out Ulrika had done a bit of backtracking. Ulrika lunged at Samus as the bounty hunter was skipping through one of the holes she thought was safe to pass through.

Samus quickly fired a fully charged paralyzer shot at the cyborg, and the electronic woman was forced to her knees from the stun. A plasma whip shot out of the end of Samus’s gun and Samus began snapping it at Ulrika, but Ulrika didn’t move. Samus starts backing away from the cyborg, but the Karzantium woman was still on her knees. Samus cracked the plasma rope at her opponent a few times, but there was still no response. It seems like the paralyzer shot had somehow fried the circuits of the cyborg woman. Samus stood there for much longer than most people have patience for, so when she finally moved in to inspect Ulrika she was almost entirely sure it was safe to do so.

Funny thing about the word “seems”. It only means something appears to be true, not that it actually IS true.

If she had still been in her Varia suit, the scan visor could have easily told Samus  that Ulrika was just playing dead, or deactivated, or possum, or whatever you might call it. Once Samus was right next to her, Ulrika sprang into action and uppercutted the bounty hunter square on the chin.

No one could survive a direct Karzantium punch on the chin like that.

Ulrika laughed and made her way out of the rubble maze. She was satisfied that her trick had worked so well, but there were still 11 other people in the arena, so she still had some work to do.

The skies seemed almost bare now that walkways were gone and the giant Gunter had been toppled. The sky was only occupied by three things now: Rainbow Dash, Mrs. Commanderson and Grutz. The archaeopteryx was pleased with the graceful way Rainbow Dash flew about, but the pony was looking to rest for now and was not ready for battle. Grutz, on the other hand, flew around the arena’s sky with no sense of direction or purpose. He was too terrified to let go, but suddenly the uncontrollable flying propeller was halted by the talon of the preschool teacher.

“DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO FLY? FOR SHAME! I SHALL TEACH YOU! ERAAAAAK!”

Mrs. Commanderson dragged Grutz over onto the back of the fallen Gunter and left him there holding his little propeller which has finally calmed down. The teacher retrieved a few chunks of the walkway and brought them up on the penguin’s back to serve as desks and chairs. Grutz shivered in his seat, partially from the cool air emitting from the frozen penguin’s body, and partly out of fear because he had no idea what was going on. Commanderson smacked her ruler against Grutz’s desk.

“PUT IT ON YOUR BACK!”

Grutz jumped in surprise, but he quickly did as he was told.

“THINK ABOUT FLYING! IT’S PONY MAGIC!”

Grutz obeyed, and the propeller began to slowly spin to life.

“THERE! JUST THINK OF WHERE YOU NEED TO GO, AND GO THERE! ERAAAK!!!”

Grutz began to fly about in the air with ease, and soon Mrs. Commanderson joined him in the air. The two spotted the beach where Mac Tonight still lounged, and Mrs. Commanderson told the imp to land there. Without any water near it anymore, it wasn’t as nice looking, but it was still a pleasant place for Mac to avoid the murder and mayhem that he had built an actual bunker back on Earth to avoid this year. Although the splendor of the beach parties of earlier had gone away after the two biggest party animals of the brawl died, some drinks and snacks were still scattered about the beach. Mac had actually dozed off, so he had no idea he had company.

“ALRIGHT, LESSON TWO, KEEPING YOUR MIND FOCUSED!” Mrs. Commanderson was preparing to teach another lesson in flight control, but the little imp had barely paid attention to the first one. Now, the magical creature was transfixed by the golden arches on the food bags and drinks that were scattered around Mac Tonight. He could barely make out the name McDonald’s and he immediately wanted to go there to go get those golden arches.

Such thoughts made the propeller try to take him to McDonald’s but there happened to be an entire planet in the way of the nearest one.  Grutz was forced into the ground by the propeller as it tried to take him to his destination, and when Mrs. Commanderson saw this she ripped it off his back and began smacking him about with her measuring stick.

“WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! DETENTION!!! WRAAAAWK! SUSPENSION!!”

Blow after blow after blow hammered into the little imp, pressing him deeper and deeper into the sand. An imp can only take so much physically, so soon the constant beatings took their toll.

The shrieking archaeopteryx was enough to wake up Mac, and seeing the bird-reptile beating a little man in the sand was enough to make him leap out of his lounger to find a safe spot to hide. Mac pulled a few beach chairs up and stacked them into a plastic wall of little protection. If Mrs. Commanderson saw it at all, she didn’t think to check behind it before she took off. Rainbow Dash, though, had been drawn by the sound of the shrieking bird, and since she had an aerial view of the beach, she had no trouble seeing who was on the other side of the wall of chairs.

Out in less sandy parts of the arena, Ulrika has burst back onto the battle scene and is immediately confronted by Tak-Sin and Morgan. The water was getting too low for them to stay in it anymore, so they ventured out in search of foes and ran into the ten ton cybernetic woman. Widow Maker had also came across the group, and although she couldn’t help but wonder where Cleft had went since their battle up above was interrupted, she decided resuming her battle with Ulrika with the aid of the two merfolk may make it a more fair battle.

Ulrika punched her palm with her fist and cracked her neck. Three on one was fine with her.

Morgan lunges towards the cybernetic woman and begins clawing at her Karzantium skin. Surprisingly, the tough metal seemed to take a bit of damage form the eidolon’s coral claws, but Ulrika just had to slam her fist into his side to send him flying. Widow Maker went in next with her drill, and once more the metallic flesh of the cyborg resisted the blows but still showed visible lines of wear. Even the toughest metals can be broken with enough constant pressure, but Widow Maker was too fragile to stay in long enough to make her mark.

Widow Maker fluttered upwards when Ulrika tried to retaliate. The cyborg was in a boxer’s stance now, ready to jab anyone who dared to move in half a mile away. Tak-Sin kept his distance, but he did still contribute to the battle.  The prince launched a few small bolts of energy at Ulrika, and although they did not pack the punch of Morgan’s claws or Widow Maker’s drill, their magical nature allowed them to singe the Karzantium woman.

The magical bolts did draw a lot of attention to Tak-Sin though, and Ulrika rushed towards the effeminate merman with her fist pulled back. His protector was much too far away, and he was much to slow himself to dodge it. Instead, he hefted his trident forward and prayed.

Again, the enchanted nature of the trident allowed it do something other weapons could not, and in that case it meant penetrating the hard metal of Ulrika’s fist like it was a thatch basket. Ulrika’s punch did not end up making contact with the prince, but there was still quite a lot of force to account for, and even an enchanted weapon didn’t have the power to absorb it all. Tak-Sin is launched out towards Morgan, who was rushing back to try and rejoin the battle and protect the prince. When he sees Tak-Sin flying towards him, Morgan leaps into the air and grabs him. Landing with a roll, he found that the prince was quite winded from being launched so far.

Morgan ran back towards Ulrika with Tak-Sin in his arms. Widow Maker tried to drill into the back of the cyborg’s head as she watched the returning duo, but again only minor dints were made in the metal skin. A drill to the scalp does change a woman’s focus though, and Ulrika tried to swat the praying mantis as it flew just out of reach. Widow Maker was hoping to buy Tak-Sin some recovery time so he could use that trident again, but someone else in the arena had other plans for the insect.

With no student to teach, Mrs. Commanderson had fallen back on her only other instinct: eat. And what do prehistoric links between birds and reptiles eat when they are hungry? Giant insects. One such huge bug was flying around Ulrika trying to get a battle in, but the preschool teacher cared little about the bug’s agenda. Commanderson had her own schedule, and right now it was time to eat.

The sound of a spinning drill and a cyborg’s metal clanging against it drowns out the softer sound of wings flapping, so Widow Maker did not see the talons of the bird-reptile coming when they swooped down and grabbed her by the shoulders. Widow Maker was pulled away from the battle and into a new aerial skirmish, so the two merfolk were left to fite Ulrika alone.

Tak-Sin got back on his feet, but he was not fully composed yet. He aimed his index finger at the cybernetic woman and started firing again, but Ulrika charged towards him with no fear of the damage it did to her. Morgan tried to leap into the way, but Ulrika grabbed the pirate’s face and slammed it into the ground. Tak-Sin pointed his trident forward again and hoped the cyborg would run into it again, but this time she ran to its side and ripped it out of the prince’s hands. Ulrika cracked the enchanted weapon in half over her knee and tossed it aside. Ulrika walked slowly towards Tak-Sin now, but without his weapon he was forced to resort to a panicked volley of magic from his hand. Ulrika absorbed each blow without flinching, smirking as she got closer and closer to the prince. Once she reached him, she did not punch or kick him. She lifted two fingers and flicked the merman on his forehead, flinging him across the arena.

Utsuho was flying around in awe of the rubble of the walkway when the flying form of Tak-Sin in the distance caught her eye. There was a strange beauty to destruction, but there was glory to be had for winning the brawl, so she chased after the merman to see if he could still fite.

Once the pirate had pulled his face from the dirt, he could only look on in horror as Tak-Sin went further and further away from him. Morgan was quick on his feet and seething with a rage unseen before by those who knew him. The captain did not wait for Ulrika to turn to him.  With new vigor Morgan swiped his claws across the Karzantium of the cyborg’s body, but it had been weakened so much from the magical assaults that now the eidolon had no trouble doing massive amounts of damage. Ulrika tried to turn and retaliate, but Morgan’s assault was too relentless that all she could do was let the spirit tear her apart in his frenzy.

Ribbons and streamers of shredded Karzantium were the only sign that Ulrika had ever been there. Morgan’s wrath subseeded and was replaced with worry for Tak-Sin, so the eidolon began to sprint in the direction the prince had been launched in. Before he got far, he hears a voice with a thick Australian accent say a line that belonged to someone with quite a different voice.

“GET OVER HERE!”

The water draining into the hole had limited Hale’s reach, but the receding waters also had the benefit of dragging a bunch of the corpses of fiters and their abandoned weapons over to Saxton Hale. As the CEO of Mann Co. he had quite a working knowledge of many of the weapons, and those that didn’t interest him he let slip down into the center of Moron Mountain.

Hale had reclaimed Scorpion’s kunai from the throat of B-Rex, and now he used it to pull the only fiter left in the arena with a similar build to his own into close combat. Morgan immediately tried to flee, his focus devoted more to Tak-Sin, but Hale quickly tied the kunai’s rope around his and Morgan’s waist. There would be no escape for either of them from this battle.

His fury building once more, Morgan began to claw at the water-breathing Australian, but Saxton’s punches hit Morgan with enough force to leave permanent indentations in the captain’s skin. Locked so closely together, they could not vary the blows much beyond slashes and punches, so it came down to a battle of endurance.

The coral claws that tore Karzantium shredded Saxton up badly, but the intense speed needed to shred his opponent up was limited by his inability to move freely. Each of Saxton’s punches hit with a force greater than that which propels hadrons within colliders. Being hit with more force than the LHC can generate tends to outshine any amount of force that was put behind a series of claw swipes. Morgan got slower and slower as he was bludgeoned with a fist that the United Nations had declared a Weapon of Mass Destruction, so it wasn’t long before the eidolon was once more incapacitated.

Saxton untied himself from the captain and actually looked quite disappointed. The gashes all over his body from the fite semed to suggest it had been pretty even, but it took a lot more than grievous injury to elicit a reaction from the great Saxton Hale.

Tak-Sin only survived his landing because the laws of physics dictate that there is a certain limit on the amount of force you can put behind a flick of the finger.  Still, the prince had a splitting headache, and the arrival of the Hell raven did not bode well for the exhausted merman. Utsuho lands right on Tak-Sin with her cement foot, and just as she had intended the prince sprung up in spite of how tired he was. Okuu looks Tak-Sin over and realizes he is very weak, but she doesn’t have time to be picky with her opponents. She had flown all the way out to greet the prince, so she might as well sweep up here before flying off to find more capable foes.

Utsuho swung her control rod arm casually at Tak-Sin, but the merman ducked beneath it despite how tired he was. Shocked she hadn’t hit, she swung again with more force behind it. Tak-Sin still managed to dodge her arm, so Utsuho switched up tactics and launched an orb of energy towards her opponent. The prince flung himself to the ground to avoid it, trying his best not to show how tiring avoiding the blast was. The Hell raven was amused though, so instead of trying to take Tak-Sin out easy, she took to the sky on her black wings and began raining a ludicrous amount of orbs down onto her foe.

There were hardly any openings between the blasts, but Tak-Sin managed to eek into each opening just in time to avoid being fried by the rain of nuclear energy. Utsuho started to laugh, and she continued laughing as her bullet storms grew more and more intense. The prince had no idea how he was still able to dodge them, but he always found the tiniest openings between the balls of energy to escape instant death.

Utsuho’s laughing began to grow maniacal, and suddenly the waves of small orbs gave way to two giant glowing orbs of red energy. Tak-Sin had been able to throw his body out of the way of danger up until then, but the red suns heading towards him were too large for him to just dive away from. His tiredness finally got to him, and the merman prince was engulfed in the red energy of Utsuho’s bullet hell.

As the supernovas died down and revealed the dead Tak-Sin, Utsuho calmed down. Embarrassed a bit by how crazy she had gotten during the rain of magic bullets, Utsuho flew slowly away from her fallen foe. She needed a while to cool down, because of this nuclear princess had a meltdown, it would not be pretty for her or anyone around her.

Being carried away by the archaeopteryx had provided Widow Maker with a surprisingly good view of the last few kills, but the bird eventually found its perch on the fallen Mega-Gunter. Commanderson was not going to school Widow Maker in the makeshift school that still rested on the fallen penguin’s back though, Mrs. Commanderson was ready for dinner.

Too bad she picked a dinner that won’t be going down easily.

“Why is everyone in this brawl determined to eat me?!” Widow Maker screams as the beak of the prehistoric bird lunges towards her. Even though the bird had her pinned, Widow Maker was not a weak insect. Widow Maker jabbed her metal coated claw into one leg and her drill into the other, forcing Commanderson to release the bug and pull her beak back. Widow Maker got back on her legs and began circling the bird. The preschool teacher did not try to attack, and instead began flapping its wings to take off. Widow Maker decided to take to the air as well, but Commanderson divebombed straight into the praying mantis once it had lifted off.

The bird-reptile’s razor sharp teeth tore a chunk out of the bug’s papery wing and caused Widow Maker to plop down onto the penguin body again. Commanderson hadn’t been grounded though, so she started flying around the bug, screeching much louder than anyone had any business being. Widow Maker kept her drill spinning to try and keep the bird from swooping her up again, but the bird was spending the time circling Widow Maker planning its next course of action.

Teaching children too young for grade school obviously makes one wise and cunning, so the archaeopteryx quickly figures out exactly where she wants to strike. Pulling her ruler forward with the leg that hadn’t been drilled, Commanderson smacked the giant eyes of the insect. Widow Maker almost reached for its eyes, but a spinning drill and a metal claw were not good tools to rub sore eyes with. She stopped just short of taking herself out, but a single smack to the eyes wasn’t going to put her out of commission.

Commanderson didn’t smack just once though. The ruler slapped against the bug’s eyes repeatedly, and Widow Maker could not do much more than jab at the flying menace with her two weapon arms. Eventually, the drill did make contact with the meter stick, but drilling a piece of wood often resulted in quite a few splinters of wood flying around the place.

I’m sure you don’t need to be told how Widow Maker accidentally blinded herself. Without her sight, Widow Maker had no idea where to swing her weapons, so Mrs. Commanderson just hovered over the bug and waited for the right moment to strike. When the giant mantis had her back to the bird, Mrs. Commanderson dove head first into the bug’s thorax and bit in. The bird sunk its wounded talons into the bug’s abdomen as it began to bite away the bug’s body segment.

Once more, we reach the situation where a competitor is unable to attack the fiter who is riding their back. Maybe Widow Maker should have brought back that butt gun that fired black widows.

The bird took its time eating the parts of the mantis that interested it, but it felt it couldn’t just sit there eating forever (a very different state of mind than the last creature who tried to eat Widow Maker.) Commanderson flew out to the brawl, but fiters were growing hard to find. In fact, she hadn’t seen Cleft in quite a while.

Aevar had been freed by Saxton and fully intended to fite him, but the grave knight had received an interruption in the form of a cocky rock creature. General Cleft barked a series of challenges from far across the arena at Aevar, and the knight was compelled by his ego to go investigate who was insulting him so he can show them how wrong they were. General Cleft had been trapped underneath a huge chunk of rubble from the walkway collapse, so his taunting Aevar was actually a tactic to try and get the knight to dislodge him from the tight spot he was stuck in.

Commanderson decided Aevar wasn’t a foe she wanted to take on unless absolutely necessary, but the slow-flying Hell raven making her way around the arena seemed like a decent foe. Commanderson had seen her powers earlier in the more futile attempts to take down Deadhead and was eager to prove that this old bird could still dodge like the rest of them even though she taught classes of children every weekday. The bird-reptile flies over to fite Utsuho Reiuji, but in the shadow of the prehistoric bird was a competitor eager to battle.

The water swirled around the hole to the core faster than ever, and Hale realized his time was almost up. As he saw the archaeopteryx fly overhead, he decided he could at least try to take out one more fiter before he choked on the air he could no longer breathe. Hale crouched down and launched himself up into the air. No one really expects an Australian to drag them out of the sky, but that is what happens to Commanderson.

A piledriver from that height was also quite unexpected, but the giant bird-reptile was quite slender and was able to squeak its way out of Saxton’s grip before he could finish his wrestling move. Mrs. Commanderson glides across what remains of the water to try and escape Hale, but the bird’s feathered tail made an easy handle for Hale to grab onto. The CEO of Mann Co. tugged the tail hard towards him, and even though he yanked out the feathers by doing so, it had enough force to get the bird to slam into his face.

The bird-reptile desperately clawed at Hale’s chest, and the already serious scratches from Morgan made it so that her additional slashes turned the Australian’s chest into a horrid mess of blood and body hair. Having a bird in your face made it quite hard to focus, so Commanderson had enough time to flap off before Hale could see again. He spit out a few pieces of down and saw the bird trying to make its escape.

Hale hadn’t collected his new arsenal of weapons for nothing. He pulled Ariel’s quiver off his back and aimed every bolt he had at the escaping bird-reptile.

Looks like someone will have to sub for Mrs. Commanderson tomorrow.

Like a Huntsman Sniper, Hale managed to peg his target with precision accuracy. The bird crashes into the arena floor, and although Hale always enjoyed a good kill, the hole beside him began sputtering with that sickening sound bathtub drains make as the water gets down to the last little bit.

Aevar was slashing through the alien metals in search of his insulter, but his rather noisy arrival gave Cleft time to build up an incredibly powerful charge. When Aevar En-Charon finally broke the beams that had trapped General Cleft, the Moon Cleft charged forward, but the grave knight had no trouble stepping aside and avoiding the rushing rock. Cleft, on the other hand, had trouble stopping his charge, and the little general went tearing across the arena until he reached the tiny puddle that Saxton called his oxygen source.

The cock-eyed rock was a strange opponent to be sure, but Saxton was eager for another battle. If he killed the last few fiters quickly enough, it wouldn’t matter that he had no water to breathe in the end. With a shout of his own name, Saxton Hale began to battle the patriotic pebble.

The gun-wielding moon stone didn’t need to be challenged to want to kill Saxton Hale. The Australia-shaped chest hair on Hale’s chest immediately ignited the patriotic fervor burning within whatever analogous structure Cleft had to a heart. Hale went with his usual “punch it until it dies, then punch it some more” tactic to start, but Hale is not used to fiting a pointy rock. The stone’s spiky exterior digs into the knuckles of Mann Co.’s CEO and forces him to pull back before he could properly punch the stone.

Cleft decides to go for an easy kill by firing his gun up at Saxton, but his aim was naturally drawn towards the symbol of the Land Down Under. The collection of chesthair was bulletproof though, and the bullet ricocheted off of the man’s pectoral hair. Cleft tried to fire another shot, but Saxton had pulled out one of the recovered weapons he had on his person and slammed the gun away like he was using a 2 wood.

Thing was, he wasn’t using a golf club, he was using Mr. Daniel’s canesword. Hale starts driving the weapon/walking stick into his rocky opponent, but the blade only manages to chip small shards off of the rock. Moon Clefts are built to last, but the water beneath Saxton was beginning to run out. Saxton found himself choking on air and had to crouch down to keep his membranes in what little remained of the puddle. The once proud Hale seemed to be bowing before Cleft, and the General realized his opponent was vulnerable.

Cleft scurried off to retrieve his gun as Hale desperately tried to keep the last of the remaining water on his membranes. Cleft marched slowly towards Hale humming the 1812 overture. Any American worth his salt knew what makes that song so epic, and as Cleft approaches the suffocating Saxton Hale, he punctuated the first cannon shot from the song with a pistol blast into the kneeling Australian’s temple.

The shot sends Hale falling back into the hole that had been taking away his precious life water. Somewhere down in Moron Mountain, the body of a legend was crushed by gravity and roasted by molten metals in a strange geological funeral pyre.

Four fiters remained, but there were five people in the arena. Well, there might actually be only 2 people, since a rock, a pony, and a cursed suit of armor don’t quite fall under the term. One of the people still alive was Mac Tonight, who believed himself safe behind his feeble tower of plastic chairs. Rainbow Dash was amused to see Mac Tonight back, and she set down on the beach below to say hi to one of the few combatants to be in all three Brawls so far. The pony’s landing was abrupt though, and the embankment of sand couldn’t quite absorb all the Newtons her stop shot out. The sand blasted outwards and knocked over Mac’s tower. The McDonald’s mascot flinches back from his falling fort, but when he sees Rainbow Dash has landed, he really gets scared. It’s not easy to forget a pony who slams her hooves into your side at supersonic speeds.

Mac Tonight leaves his beach and starts running into the arena, but Rainbow Dash has no trouble catching up with him.

“Why are you running? Let’s fite again! Like old times!”

“And die again? I’m tired of coming here and getting maimed!”

“Aww, but it’s fun!”

“Not for me! I just want to sing to the people, invite in the big event of the year and keep my name in the spotlight.”

“Well… maybe you should try to fite for once. I mean, you did alright when you were a zombie, and also when you were all red and that sheep mush was controlling you. Maybe you should just… you know… BRAWL.”

Mac Tonight’s running slowed down to a thoughtful stroll. The closest thing he ever got to fiting in any of these brawls of his own free will was tossing the McCafe Chocolate Chip Frappé (It’s Not Just a Drink, It’s An Experience!) at Aiden when the claurichaun crashed their beach party earlier.

“You know what, I’ll try it! Think Jumpropeman can still add me to the roster?”

“Uhh… I don’t think it works that way, and he’s kind of dead. But hey! If you can take someone out, people will remember you! People remember me for killing you the first year after all!”

“Alright, I’ll try… I feel a bit underequipped though.”

Rainbow Dash thought about his comment for a bit, but then she whisked off to search the arena for something the moon-faced man could use. She came across the top half of Tak-Sin’s trident and Samus’s paralyzer, some of the only weapons that hadn’t been pilfered by Hale or sucked in by the core-hole drain. Mac posed in an awkward way with his two weapons and faced the pony.

“Here we go!” he exclaimed, and he rushed towards the pony. Dash flew up and over the trident charge, swinging back around at high speeds to deliver a kick into his back. The filly had only built up a bit of speed, but it was enough force to make the hard hooves of the pegasus do what they had done to Mac Tonight back in the original Big Bar Brawl.

Mac Tonight’s first attempt at fiting ended horribly, and he is once more dead. Dead again. One more… okay that running gag is already old.

Utsuho had been flying over when she saw the incredibly brief battle between Rainbow Dash and Mac Tonight. To her, it looked like the pony had tricked the moon-headed mascot into setting himself up to be killed, and this did not sit well with the Hell raven.

Rainbow Dash starts poking at Mac’s corpse, but if it wasn’t for the far off beep of Refbot confirming the death of a non-participant, she might have never believed that she really had killed the mascot with such a simple move. Her corpse poking was interrupted when blue balls of fusion energy flew within inches of her majestic mane.

Aevar had not seen where Cleft had run off to, but the sound of a battle starting drew the attention of the grave knight. He had not expected the final four to be who they were, but he did not believe he would have any trouble taking them down. Cleft began a march towards the sounds of Utsuho’s attack at Rainbow Dash at well. The last few fiters were congregating, but two of them were winged battlers.

These two fliers quickly took their battle up into the skies of the arena, fiting for the honor of placing in the top three.

Excluding Cleft’s gun, Utsuho was the only remaining fiter with an attack with decent range, and her attacks consisted of singeing blasts of fusion energy. Rainbow Dash is a speedy opponent though, so Utsuho needs to keep her distance or else she could risk the pony taking an open opportunity and doing her in like she did Mac Tonight.

Utsuho began her bullet storm once more, but unlike Tak-Sin, Rainbow Dash is full of energy and faster than a lightning crash. The pegasus has no trouble navigating her way through the bullets and towards Utsuho, but the balls of energy don’t stop when Rainbow passes them by. Aevar and Cleft had been approaching on the ground, and now a hailstorm of nuclear energy was heading their way. Aevar feels no need to dodge the balls of energy, but the powerful atomic energy behind the blasts quickly taught him why he should. His magical armor begins to crack and sizzle as the magic bullets slam into him.

Cleft was receiving a similar beating, but the rock quickly began to dodge around the balls of light, trying his best to follow the pattern of the pony who was flying through them without harm. Aevar reluctantly joined the Moon Cleft in avoiding the deluge. Okuu was holding off on the spellcards for now, but as Rainbow Dash flew closer and closer without so much as a singed feather from the bullets, Utsuho decided she would pull out one of her more costly cards.

The rain of nuclear energy ceased for a few seconds as Utsuho prepared it, giving Rainbow Dash the last few moments she needed to close in. On the ground below, Aevar and Cleft both stood at the ready to dodge more, but since the grave knight wasn't looking, Cleft decided to test the potency of his gun by firing a few pistol shots quickly off to the side. The bullets bounced of Aevar’s armor without doing any visible damage, and the irritated undead knight drew his flaming sword to bear and prepared to cleave the Cleft in twain.

The two’s attention was immediately brought back to the skies though when, with a crackling like a Geiger counter broadcast over a home theater setup’s ridiculously indulgent surround sound, Utsuho unleashed an enormous spell known as Hell’s Artificial Sun. Rainbow Dash had to immediately change course to avoid the ball of energy, but the attack had its own gravitational field, and the pony had gotten too close to escape it easily. Okuu continues pumping more and more atomic energy into the artificial sun, but the pony’s speed allowed her to just barely stay out of the burning radiation of the ball while still being kept in place by the gravitational pull.

Aevar and Cleft prepared themselves below, but the ball seemed to be moving laterally rather than towards them. They did, however, see Utsuho making her way around the side of the artificial star and kept their guards up, although it was Rainbow Dash who should have been guarding.

The pony was caught by surprise when Utsuho cracked her control rod arm down on the pony’s back. The attack was strong enough to push the filly out of the influence of the artificial sun though, so Okuu was forced to let one of her strongest attacks dissolve without it managing to kill anyone. Utsuho Reiuji followed the pony down, but Rainbow Dash was able to quickly recover from the blow and began flying in circles below Utsuho. The Hell raven found herself propelled upwards by a vortex, and the bottom of the tornado below began sucking in the two ground based fiters as well.

The pony had turned the tides, but her need to spin around rapidly gave Utsuho an idea. The Hell raven began to launch her spray of small blue bullets once again, but they were drawn into the tornado and began to spin about in it. Rainbow Dash was too busy ensuring the cyclone’s stability with repeated spins to notice the incoming blue energy, so once the captured bullets reached her, she had no time to dodge them.

The blue bullets cause Rainbow Dash to falter in her spinning, and her own tornado tosses her out before slowly fading. The pony tried to flap her wings, but the radiation burns had rendered them incapable of flight. High above Utsuho considered just raining more bullets down, but she was pushing herself to the limit and her control rod glowed with a worrying red energy. Utsuho went for a different approach, and by folding her wings in and letting gravity do the work, Utsuho brought down her heavy cement foot down on the injured pony’s head.

Fourth place ain’t bad for a pony who has never won before. Okuu stood next to the fallen pony, panting and clearly exhausted from using so much energy to take the filly down. Aevar did not care whether the girl was tired or not though, and he plodded forward to take the Hell raven on. Cleft took aim with his gun, but realizing the two would fite on their own, he decided to see how it would pan out before he used the last few bullets he has.

Aevar’s blazing sword was a frightening sight to even those who resisted fire like Cleft. Utsuho Reiuji pointed her arm at Aevar but didn’t fire, hoping the bluff of an atomic blast would be enough to get the knight to move, but Aevar persisted forward. Ignoring the state of her arm, she decides to point her control rod at the ground and unleash her attack anyway. The Ground Melt attack began to make the ground beneath Aevar glow, and Aevar was instantly reminded of his earlier issues with the dirt. His slow march quickly shifted into a sprint as he tried to escape the attack, but the ground beneath him exploded and propelled him into the air. His armor was getting more and more damaged from the nuclear energy, but he was not the kind to back off.

Cleft had decided to be the kind to back off, but seeing Utsuho wide open for attack, he decided a sneak attack may be in order. The living stone charged around to Utsuho’s other side, but the Hell raven easily spotted the running rock. Utsuho propelled herself into the air and launched a Shooting Star spray at the approaching rock monster, and Cleft was slammed by the yellow blasts and forced to tumble away from the battle. The stars were the only full-on direct blow he had received from Utsuho’s atomic blasts, so when he started glowing with an ugly green energy after taking the hit he had cause for concern.

Utsuho tried to take to the air to once again gain a height advantage, but Aevar had recovered from the Ground Melt attack and was not ready to let his quarry escape. The blazing blade of the grave knight sliced through the raven wings on Utsuho’s back and brought her back to earth.

“There will be no escape for you anymore,” Aevar threatened as he swung his blade forward once more. Utsuho’s arm began to shake violently as she formed a blue Nuclear Visor to block the swinging blade, but the energy shield only blocked from the front.

Cleft took aim from the side of the nuclear girl and fired a single shot. The bullet tore into the shoulder of the girl’s nuclear arm, and she quickly found her control rod arm unable to push itself further. She was somewhat relieved because she had almost pushed the rod to the point of meltdown, but with no more nuclear control, the Visor dissipated and Aevar reached towards the girl. His sword probably could have cleanly decapitated her, but he went for a much more brutal approach.

Aevar En-Charon seized the nuclear control rod arm and crushed it in his grip. That was enough to force the meltdown that Utsuho had trying to be avoid.

The explosion of the nuclear lass blasted Aevar away, chunks of his armor flying off from the force of a miniature nuclear blast. Cleft was far away, but not far enough to escape the shockwave of the meltdown. The two were sent sailing through the air, and when the dust settled they were back near the hole to the core. Cleft popped back up, his body cracked but still structurally sound for the most part. Aevar was in a similar shape when he pulled himself up. Damaged, but not down.

Aevar looks down on his much smaller opponent and prepares for the final battle. Cleft looks around for his pistol, but it seems to have been lost during the unexpected flight. General Cleft didn’t care though, he doesn’t need the gun. He could take this undead suit of armor on strength alone, or so he hoped.

The brawl was winding down, and now the only two living things remaining that were involved in it (excluding Refbot who was just calling the KOs) prepare for the final showdown. Aevar En-Charon vs. General Cleft for the title.

FITE!

Cleft attacks first by charging towards Aevar and leaping up to slam into his chestplate. The armor groaned from the impact, but Aevar did not strike back. The Cleft was more than close enough for the Desolation Aura to take effect, and after the Moon Cleft was back on the ground, he felt his mind being bogged down by pessimism and apathy.

The almost omnipresent goofy grin of the rock began to slip as more and more of his mind was overwhelmed by hopelessness. Aevar decided this was a good time to use his fiery chest blast he had yet to resort to this entire brawl.  The cone of fire formed around his cracked chestplate, and although some of it began to flow into the grave knight’s body, he still unleashed it on the desolate general. When the flames cleared, an unaffected General Cleft stared back at him with a strange look in his eyes.

The aura had pushed its way through a lot of the rock’s mind, but when it reached his love of country, it encountered a problem. Patriotism wasn’t just part of Cleft’s mind, it was the core, and it was powerful. The aura was forced out the rock’s brain and General Cleft looked up at his opponent with a determined glare. In his eyes Aevar saw waving American flags held by a bald eagle over the Statue of Liberty high-fiving President Lincoln. This rock could not give up his love of country, and Aevar realized he had just ignited the fuels of patriotic fervor in the stone by trying to rid the rock of them.

With powerful resolve Cleft began hurling himself into the greaves of the undead suit of armor. Aevar could only move back in response to this, but he tried to bring his sword to bear. The flaming blade bore down on Cleft’s head, but the stone creature ignored the blows and the pieces of stone chipping off his own body. Cleft continued his charges into Aevar’s legs, but the grave knight didn’t seem too concerned. If the Cleft did shatter his greaves, he could just as easily fite him on the ground.

What Aevar didn’t realize is that Cleft wasn’t trying to shatter the armor. With one final powerful charge, General Cleft launched Aevar and himself into the gaping hole Saxton Hale had created earlier. The two fell into the depths of Moron Mountain, banging against the rock walls of the hole as they fell deeper and deeper. Gravity began to force itself upon them stronger than either had felt before. A bright orange light welcomed the two remaining fiters to the core of the alien world.

Cleft landed on the core cracked up but still pretty intact. Aevar, on the other hand, was having his armor body cave in on itself from the pressure of the centralized gravitational force. Through determination alone Aevar lifted himself up to continue fiting Cleft, but when he tried to lift his sword it was immediately pulled away by the force of the planet’s pull and slammed into the core. The heated core began to turn the blade into metal mush, and when Aevar looked down at his legs he found the same happening to him. He looked up at Cleft, who seemed to be handling the gravity fine.

“How are you not falling apart? You are pocked with all sorts of cracks and fissures, surely the force the tears me asunder should have ground you to dust by now.”

“Buddy, I am a rock. I was MADE by this kind of pressure… I think so at least.” General Cleft tried to move towards his melting opponent, but the gravity made it impossible for him to lift his feet. He began to drag his feet forward in a slow shimmy over to Aevar, but even Cleft could not escape the friction behind moving under the force of a planet’s gravity. Cleft’s feet were ground to smaller and smaller stubs until he was within a few feet of Aevar. Aevar used all his might to lift his hand alone, and when he brought it down on Cleft, it was nothing more than a light brush.

The force of physics made the hand a lot more dangerous when it rested on the cleft’s head though. The hand began to sink into the head of the stone, forced down not by Aevar’s might but that of Moron Mountain. With seconds to spare before the laziest karate chop ever bisected him, Cleft put all the force he could into a desperate leap. The act of opposing gravity itself meant that Cleft’s feet were left behind as he jumped, but when the stone creature came slamming into Aevar’s chest, it didn’t matter how much was left of him.

Aevar’s entire body was flattened against the molten metals of the core. The same damage it had been doing to his legs now spread over his entire form, and soon Aevar was dissolved into a smoking black shadow against the planet’s core.

How we got footage of that fantastic ending I’ll never know, but Refbot gives the beep that signals that we have a winner!

After a few hours of a daring adventuring crew traveling to the center of the planet to retrieve our champion, Cleft is fixed up and presented to the audience as the winner of the Big Bar Brawl 3!

“HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!” The stone monster shouted victoriously.

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It was no easy task shuttling the Big Bar Brawl champion back to the nation he loved, but it was worth it. General Cleft was invited to the white house by the president himself for a special award ceremony, and while he was there he made small talk with a rather old man.

“I can’t believe it… I actually get to meet the President of these United States!” Cleft was as giddy as a schoolgirl, but the man beside him seemed less impressed.

“I’ve met tons of presidents. They just keep inviting me here to meet them for some reason.”

Cleft looked at the man with a suspicious look in his eyes. “Why would they keep bringing an old coot like you back?”

“Oh, I dunno, something about serving our nation. This time it involved some fellow named Osama my son dialed by accident while playing with my phone. Can you believe these tiny phones we got these days? I remember when they were all on cords.” The old man clearly seemed more interesting in his phone story than the more incredible claim he had made.

“Wait a minute, you helped find Osama Bin-Laden for us? No way! You can’t fool this stone, no one just stumbles into making a historic event happen!”

Before the old man could reply, a presidential aide came up to them. “Mr. Cleft, Mr. Gump, the President will see you now.”

General Cleft and Mr. Gump entered the Oval Office, Cleft taking some time to suck in the atmosphere of the room. Secret Service men stood all around the edges of the room as a few cameras were trained on President Barack Obama. Rewarding a fellow who won a blood sport was not something presidents usually did, but Obama was eager to shake the recent NSA scandal and was willing to try any form of distraction he could get his hands on for the American people to gawk at.

“General Cleft, you have proven through your indomitable spirit in the face of danger that you truly value the American Way…” Obama continued to trail on with a pre-written speech, but something felt off to Cleft. For some reason he seemed to remember the president wearing poufy pants and speaking like a king. The whole event seemed too ridiculous for the general to believe. Why would he be getting a medal? Who was this old fellow next to him and why did he insist he was chummy with a bunch of the former presidents?

It had to be a trick!

Before Obama could finish honoring General Cleft with his speech, the rock monster charged at the president of the United States, convinced he was seeing another illusory president.

Happy 4th of July everyone!

(FIN)