-Jean Tavera-

Wow these guys really were going for a kill: SteelStar Supremacists were flooding in through the lower decks of RV Dazzling Dessert through all its spacious subways and sewer systems. And from the sounds of it, some Glory Daze member blew up all the dungeon cores in the Sweets Futurism Interconnection! Watching as the latest squadron of rank 1 SteelStars pour out of the train car into the subway I was currently lurking in. These guys don’t know when to stop do they? I thought to myself, feeling impressed with just how many low level SteelStars they were able to throw at us: these guys really did live up to their SteelStar fanatics. Hehe, now lets see if their fanaticism for SteelStars can beat my flanaticism for this Enigma!

“Looks like they are going to fall into our trap, again. Must be another group,” replied Binny as the group of SteelStars neared my trump card I got from hanging out with Johari Vogt, the flower santa of gifts! Smiling like a mad raccoon, I felt as Custardman, my high-spirit high-familiar deviled humpty dumpty, drew on the thirteen system slots he had access to.

Custardman, the superhero deviled humpty dumpty! Empowered not only by the attunement, Deviled Humpty Dumpty Companion, but my thirteen system slot formula blessed budget stratum 3 multi-system slot, Raccoon Stance: Flower-Halo-Egg, that was worth twenty-five system slots once you accounted for system slots used in mutating multi-system slots! My pride and joy that represented that not only showed my mastery in the combo of empowering and power-linking system slot’s connections to each but my love for my homeland, the Origin Land of Peerless Polari and the two other Origin Lands, Valleys of Food-Magisters and Alihi’a’Pounga, and Robert Fayn’s Enigma, Historie Pastoria Sweets!

“Taste my eggs of justice!” shouted Custardman, springing out of the shadows from the corner of the subway station, his hydrangea-based conjuration of a cape from my blessed system slot, Flower of Earnestness, flowing. Before the SteelStar Supremacists could react, various spirit halo appeared around him and fired off a volley of explosive eggs filled with fey mana and various system-altered manas.

The spindly pair of black coloured SteelStars in the back were the first to fall as they were unable to move fast enough to dodge behind a pillar or back into the train car and didn’t have the integrity to tank the tasty colourful explosions. As the red, orange, and violet coloured SteelStar went to retaliate with an array of spells, lasers, and gunfire, Custardman activated my grand primary spirit halo of the deviled humpty dumpty to erect a thin barrier of defensively-modified Protean Shell and Homeostasis Silk. Take that! The power of a grand spirit halo you can’t get elsewhere! I mentally cheered on, disregarding the fact you could technically get such a spirit halo without Raccoon Stance: Flower-Halo-Egg if you knew the proper system casts and Halo System-based magic and had the right supplies.

Taking my chance, I lunged out from my own hidey hole to slice at the yellow colour SteelStar that was climbing back out of the train car to try and revive their fallen allies. With a flash of lights as the station’s lights dramatically glinted off my SteelStar’s bronze gears, Binny shot out of my hand in a surge of Halo, Reaper, and Game System-altered mana and pierced through the healer like a knife through butter. With Custardman at my side, I felt like a real dark knight of spellman superhero, not just a delver!

“Crap! Abort!” yelled one of the remaining red coloured SteelStars before starting to glow. Already knowing what was going to happen, both Custardman and I maneuvered ourselves away before they could self-destruct on us. These guys were definitely criminal crazies: self-destructing wasn’t easy on your system, even if it was just a proxy body or SteelStar going boom! Although I guess it did help that such things easily had a built in way to revive yourself, or gave easier access to a way to revive yourself. Talk about kamicrazies, I thought to myself as I went to dust off bits of SteelStar and thinking about the tiny pawful of people I know who actually had self-destruct mandalas: yup they were a bunch, even weirder than me!

“Jean, are you done dealing with SteelStar Supremacists on your end? Louella would like you to relocate,” asked Louella’s system assistant, Iris, from the back of my head.

“Yup, just had them go kaboom again, totally not pawesome if you ask me. Custardman and I barely get any experience from it. So what does Louella need?” I thought back, looking at the compiled accounts of my stratum 3 multi-system slot to see which system slots got our latest batch of sweet sweet experience this time.

“Not Louella, but Robert. A group of SteelStar Supremacists have sneaked past Wallace’s entrapments and are currently heading to the encampment set up by Robert, Harvey, and Perecy. I already have a flight of boss monsters in route to cover your current position.”

“The streamers need us. We should hurry!” shouted Custardman, his crystalline googly eyes glowing with mana, excitement, and heroism.

“Alright, let’s get this show on the road,” I replied with a thumbs up. Anyone who could slip past Wallace’s fields of ice flowers was definitely going to be a tricky bugger worthy of a smack down. No one could mess with our secret master of crowd control on my masked watch!

Following Iris’s directions, the two of us ran our ways through the bowels of RV Dazzling Dessert before making it topside to an open park just west of the Roving’s central tower. I could already hear the clashing between Robert’s monsters and the Vraglix bashers. Seeing that Harper was flying in and out of the fray with manalogical arrows of mist and magical miasma flying off her wings, I knew just where to go.

“Thank freaking god you’re here,” shouted Robert from his makeshift labyrinths of crystalline barriers.

“Jean’s here! Awesome! Let’s go chat, push open a path for our masked friend!” followed up Harvey in full on Blazehopper mode, jumping to intercept me while his chat-controlled camera-eye-balls whizzed through the air and fired off a flurry of lasers. Hehehe, someone is making use of his new pair of CharmBall Co.’s Camera-Ball Repair sub-features, I thought to myself with a smile: I could practically hear Ride of the Valkyries from how valiant Blazehopper and his chat was.

“Hi chat! Look at me! I’m on VoxView!” I replied with a laugh and a wave at one of the camera-balls that was deftly dodging all the attacks sent its way. Ready to show my pawfect greater gaming skills off, I felt in line with the VoxView streamer and rushed the nearest SteelStar, a bulky green one that looked sort of like Robert’s but was way too barrelly. Watching as it brought a stocky arm to the ground, I jumped high into the air and avoided the sudden pitfall. “Let’s do this! Triple Gear!” Landing on the soft park turf, I activated my fifth ability, Third Gear, and flooded my bronze system cast model SteelStar with beige-steel manas altered by the Halo, Reaper, and Game Systems.

Feeling the cross-karmic retribution started to kick in and produce miasmic steam from my bronze gears from not having a Living Necropolis Set class specialty in my attunement for this SteelStar, I notched my fist back. Before the barrelly SteelStar could go for another pitfall, I let loose my mighty paw of a punch: with a resounding cracking noise, the SteelStar went flying and tumbling a few feet away, its gross innerworkings exposed. Yup, that’s what happens when you get hit by a Third Gear-pumped up blow without having resistance to all three Systems it used. I so need to get a psychopompic spirit to give this puppy paw an extra punch. Wonder if Yokum or Aya can take me to the mandala management company they got their Dual-Reaper Spirits from.

“Don’t worry stream! The superhero Custardman is here!” shouted Custardman, jumping in with a volley of his eggs to finish off the downed SteelStar before posing in front of the explosion like a power ranger or super sentai character. Ooh or ask Julien about the synthesis attunement he got to turn Lucy into a spirit with an origin in the Living Necropolises, I mused as I looked for my next target.

“Look out you two!” suddenly shouted Blazehopper, interrupting my train of thought long enough for me to dodge a sudden giant spike being sent my way. 

“Damnit, I thought that was going to hit for sure,” cursed a SteelStar Supremacist in a beige-steel coloured SteelStar that easily twice the size of my own: a variant from the looks of it with a giant floating multi-barreled rocket launcher filled to the bring with more spikes. Seeing that I could keep up Third Gear for a few minutes before I had to turn it off and start quick repairs, I dashed toward the giant SteelStar that was firing his big old mean spikes from his roost of a hill.

Running through the first volley of spikes, Binny went to focusing on me and creating his signature mascotty cowl around my SteelStar. As the second volley of spikes was fired, I twirled around in the air to karate kick the one that would have hit me and noticed that Custardman and Blazehopper were following behind me instead of going back to support Robert, Pendramug, and Harper. Oh my mask yeah! We got this! I internally shouted in joy, surging forward with a huge bounding leap.

“Gotcha,” quipped the giant SteelStar Supremacist as I heard the clicking noise of his rocket launcher… twice… from above me. Mid-jump, I looked up to see that he actually had two more of his rocket launchers floating way above and him and were firing down at where I was going to land! Even if I was in my real body I probably wouldn’t have been able to block my spell shield plus Binny’s, but I was just in my rank 2 level 25 SteelStar! Oh no… I muttered to myself realizing this SteelStar was going to be scrap metal and yucky gunk in a couple of seconds.

“No you don’t! Eggodus!” shouted Custardman, firing off his strongest barrage of exploding eggs to intercept the spikes coming in from the left. Only to be followed up Blazehopper firing off a thick laser of radiance mana from his gunlance to do the same to the spikes on the right, saying,

“Stay positive!”

“What type of anime bullshit is this? Don’t just go saving him at the last second!” roared the giant SteelStar in a rage before firing off an even more giant spike from his chest.

“It’s not anime BS,” I replied, making use of the fact I was on the ground again to lunge to the side of the spike, making sure to keep low to the ground. “This is VoxView. And language!” Making it to the foot of the SteelStar, I crunched down before surging up with all my fight: double fisting the guy in the chest and lifting him off the ground. I could feel my SteelStar’s integrity got down a bit from hitting such a hard surface with so much force. But oh my mask that felt awesome!

Growling and thudding back on the ground with both of his feet, the SteelStar Supremacist grabbed his nearest rocket launcher and started to wield it like an oversized club. Watching as it started to glow with the power of an ability, I knew it wouldn’t be pretty to get hit by the thing. Leveraging the fact I still had Third Gear up, I twirled around the giant lug of a Vraglix basher and went for the mentallic tendons in his back legs. 

Scraping with mana-charged claws on extra sturdy metal, I felt myself hit the wetware behind. With a heavy thud, the SteelStar went to one knee as I went in for a second blow to make sure it wouldn’t repair itself. He continued to growl and curse, he went for a blind swing behind him, only for Custardman to blow his makeshift club out of his hand with a flurry of eggs. Hehehe, it’s three on one times!  I laughed as I continued the scrape and claw away at the SteelStar Supremacist’s sort of exposed and extra thick backside.

It didn’t take much longer for the three of us tagging the SteelStar Supremacist to fell the criminal goliath. Feeling the experience, I realized that not only was this guy using a variant SteelStar but was probably actually using a high level rank 4 one! Jumping my paws in my air, I shouted to not only Custardman and Blazehopper but to Robert, Pendramug, and Harper in the sort of distance,

“Did you see that?! We killed the goliath! We’re D-” A sudden flash of darkness. Blinking for a few seconds, I realized I was suddenly back in my self-hub ship. Panicking a bit I went to open up my list of SteelStars to see that my bronze system cast model was totally trashed: it would take a week of passive repair to be usable again if I didn’t speed up the process with mana, Cyber-Sin Discs, and other magical supplies. Not only that, it was level 22 now! Not 24! “Oh no…” I said making an ‘o’ face: one of the things that could lower levels of a SteelStar like that was… forbidden magic!