#this would be so funny with the size of the new sprite

[themostsplendidcreature]

me and my weird dog (inspired by the mod that lets you have devourer of gods as a pet in game)

[bluebeads-art]

2024 November 21st

INTO THE LAKE WITH YOU, MUD CHILD

My part of a retroactive art trade with @anxiousapplepie ! "Retroactive" because I was already drawing this before we agreed to make it part of a trade, heheh. December 2nd edit: BEHOLD!... THEIR HALF OF THE TRADE... Eleven whole pages of trade!! Go read it go read it go read it

I read this post about their Role!Swap AU, and, like, multiverse shenanigans? Check. Characters goofing off and having fun? Check. Several opportunities for slapstick humor? Check. Conclusion: I really wanted to draw it. Physical comedy is my specialty. :p

This thing is kinda all over the place composition wise (looking at you, relative sizes of speech bubbles) because there is Too Much going on in these panels and I Did Not plan ahead of time, lmao. This was supposed to be doodlier than it ended up being, so as a growing pain it's a funny jumble of consistency. One of these days I'll be able to doodle without getting carried away. 😂

More rambling and close-ups under the cut

This interaction in particular is what nudged me over the edge to draw this whole thing. I don't know what Fighter Mirabelle's malfunction is when it comes to the Siffrins, but it lets me make Sif the butt of a joke again, so yeehaw! His hat being catapulted out of frame made me laugh when I was thinking of what to do with the composition-complicating hat in question.

Also my personal take is Siffrin is 100% having the time of their life here. Making new(?) friends? Being involved in a fun group activity? Well worth inhaling some puddle water and having to go jump in The Lake to wash the mud off later.

Bonnie being so furious they changed art styles wasn't in my original plan, but I'm so glad I thought of it on a whim because it made me laugh Every Time I looked at their face. 😂

Time taken on this whole thing was 42 hours and 50 minutes. AND. I KNOW THAT SOUNDS BAD. IF YOU KNOW I'M TRYING TO SPEED UP MY ART PROCESS. But this project gets a special pass. This was the farthest out of my art comfort zone I've been in a while! 13 (mostly) full-body characters at various complicated angles, 2 backgrounds, learning to use CSP's perspective rulers, effects I'm not used to like water splashes, etc etc. I made progress on speeding up sketching & line art as well! Some of the lines you see are just extremely cleaned up sketch. I was able to let myself fudge things more too. For example, Mira's dress is a very "dude just trust me" simplification because I don't know how the clothes folds would work at that angle. ^^;;

So while there's still a handful of things I'm not happy with, it's worth it for the learning experience and perfectionism-busting progress! Also for the sake of drawing silliness, of course.

Oh, lastly; the KO sprite is the one from in-game, so it was made by insertdisc5 and not me.

[wafflureal]

Pure Vanilla Cookie's Wet Tingles Info !!!

I decided I would make a post here explaining wet tingles to everyone who might be confused

(PLEASE REBLOG TO REACH MORE PEOPLE !! :3 /nf)

Wet Tingles Origin

It all started when i had a dream on November 1st, 2023, where I got a new costume for Pure Vanilla Cookie called "Wet Tingles." I woke up, and it was on my mind all day, so i decided to make an edited sprite of what it looked like

1ST ANNIVERSARY UPDATE !! :

remade the original sprite to make it look better :3

I posted it to Reddit, where it got pretty popular pretty quickly, but it ended about a week later. Then, fast forward to April 2024, suddenly it's everywhere on Twitter. People were making fanart of him, they were making fan costumes of their favorite cookies, and it even made it to the cookie run kingdom discord server.

September 18th 2024 Update:

A few nights ago i had ANOTHER DREAM OF HIM !! There was this one person on Etsy selling homemade CRK plushies and while i was going through their listings, I saw one with the name "Wet Tingles". This wasn't the same original Wet Tingles we all know and love, this one had a complete redesign with actual clothes this time, he had a cream colored long sleeve shirt with a collar with the top button unbuttoned with a brown diamond pattern pullover and the MyCookie pants but it was the same color as his notorious green towel. He had a mohawk and a few face markings, and a confident lookings pose. Funny enough, the cover art for this listing looked like it was drawn by one of my friends, @cortlandkaard, so I had asked it to draw him and we dubbed him "Awakened Wet Tingles". Basically Pure Vanilla Cookie when you awaken him with soulprisms but if you had the wet tingles costume equipped, the costume would change too. Here's the amazing art made by it ! :D

Wet Tingles Story

The story behind wet tingles is rather long. It takes place during Cookie Odyssey Chapter II. Clotted Cream Cookie invited Pure Vanilla Cookie, GingerBrave, Black Raisin Cookie, and Burnt Cheese Cookie to the Creme Republic to discuss the expedition to Beast Yeast. He sent a hot air balloon to the Vanilla Kingdom to transport them. After arriving in the Republic, they go to the council hall and have a meeting with Clotted Cream Cookie in the Council Hall. He tells them to relax for now and enjoy what the Republic has to offer. He grants them a royal credit card that has infinite uses, almost like in Amphibia. The GingerGang (GingerBrave, Black Raisin Cookie, and Burnt Cheese Cookie) are ecstatic and rush through the Republic, using the credit card on everything they can. Pure Vanilla Cookie, however, is having trouble keeping up with them. They notice and tell him to relax at the Creme Republic Spa. He is reluctant, but they force him to relax there. The lobby of the spa only had a reception table with an unknown character as the receptionist. The GingerGang leave him there and continue on their adventures through the republic, exploring the place and buying more things. Some time goes by, and Financier Cookie shows up and informs them that Clotted Cream Cookie summoned them back to the council hall. They rush to the spa and past reception to get Pure Vanilla Cookie. The actual spa area was a rather big locker room size area with a singular hot tub in the center of it. It was almost like a Japanese sentō, so yes, they were naked in the hot tub. There were a bunch of other INCREDIBLY BUFF cookies with white towels around their waists conversing with each other. Inside the hot tub, however, is Pure Vanilla Cookie with two other INCREDIBLY BUFF cookies. He seemed to be rather flustered being in there with them but is still enjoying himself and conversing with them about the glory days of the Pure Vanilla Kingdom. He spots the GingerGang, and they tell him they're needed in the council hall. He gets out of the tub (GingerGang looks away) and ties that notorious green towel around his waist. They leave the spa quickly, and Pure Vanilla Cookie keeps the towel on the for the rest of the day, even during the meeting with Clotted Cream Cookie.

(NOTE: Pure Vanilla Cookie is the only one with a green towel, and only INCREDIBLY BUFF cookies can have white ones)

Future of Wet Tingles?

I have already drawn Pure Vanilla Cookie's Wet Tingles, but I plan to draw all of the ancients with a Wet Tingles costume (Golden Cheese will have her girlies out)

My original plan with Wet Tingles since the beginning was to have it a real costume for Pure Vanilla Cookie in the game, and i believe together we can pressure the devs hard enough to add it

I never expected a simple dream I had to turn out to be this big within the community, and low-key do so much for gender equality in the community (Twitter oomf's words not mine). I am eternally grateful for everyone who partook in the trend back in April and for those who are still fans of the costume

Fanart?

YES!!!!! PLEASE PLEASE !!!!!! When posting your absolutely fucking awesome wet tingles fanart, please use "#wet tingles" and tag me. There are no limitations to what you may or may not draw, draw OG Wet Tingles, draw your OC in wet tingles, draw your favorite cookie in wet tingles, have the characters do anything you want !!

Here are some fanarts I've gathered through the year :3

- @cortlandkaard

- @original-oz-soda and @mein-schatz

- @rxhouse and @thelosers-club

[beatcroc]

a year!!! as of today i have now been drawing these funny little pizza freaks, to the exclusion of almost everything else, for!!! an entire year!!! i wanted to do a nice group shot/lineup of everybody to compare to when i first started trying to draw them because oh boy were they bad. i never even posted most of them anywhere because they were so bad. but im posting them here, now, to see how everything's changed/evolved.

this is probably the hardest time i've ever had trying to figure out how to work with a style, but we got there eventually; i'm pretty happy with the handle i've got on everybody now...dont let ur memes be dreams. lots of unimportant journaling and idle thoughts abt it below.

older pics

the first one is the VERY first time i drew them, before i thought i was going to actually have any interest in drawing them [lmao]; it was just the one isolated image, for my friendserver, to illustrate the funney message, so there was no attempt to make it Good or actually understand anything going on w/ the designs or style.

second is the original run of practices sketches to start trying to figure them out for real; done after i started having ideas for the comics and such and realized oh god maybe i am actually gonna draw fanart for this. [again, lol, and lmao.]

third one is the first pt art thing i posted on here. there were a couple weeks of sprite studies between this one and the previous image. the one on the top right wasn't part of that post i just threw it on as space filler; i'd intended to shift to doing Sprite Redraws But Stylized to explore tings more, but that was the only one i did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

individual characters

peppino: by far the hardest dear god. bro what ARE your shapes how DOES your face work. jesus christ. everything i have trouble with this style for, peppino has it in excess. i draw in polygons! i need consistency! and that is the last thing this kind of style is concerned with. they are made of squarshy clay and i do not understand how to mold them. i was really hoping trying to learn this game's style would GIVE me that kind of flexibility for fun exaggerated facial expression but i don't think much came of it in the end 😔. anyway on the bright side all this means once i got peppino figured out a little bit everybody else clicked way easier.

fake peppino: honestly i never did anything with him on purpose except for how his eyes work + the perma-smile thing. i figured ok hes supposed to look weird and off model so whatever happens with him happens. and it did. and it kept happening. it is still, in fact, happening.

noise/ette: somehow, for every bit that peppino was the least natural thing i've ever tried, these two worked pretty much right off the bat. i still don't understand it, seeing as pretty much all the things at play for peppino are also at work for them. i think the new sketches are actually a little worse than older ones but not enough that i care.

gustavo: really funny bc i drew him on model twice and just went 'okay, cool nice, easy, um. he doesn't have any fucking legs?' fortunately he was the only one i had a strong idea for how to stylize him [square] and it worked exactly as i was hoping so wahoo.

brick: is an animal and therefore 5000x easier and more natural for me to draw/stylize than anything else in the cast. that is Just a rat bro. i can draw a rat.

gerome: i think the funniest one here. the most drastic and least necessary change imo. i was gonna have him be really small at first, like smaller than the noises, but then i just... didn't. he's just peppino-sized now. also i gave him like. actual human facial structure, which is funny bc in most cases i'd do anything to avoid, but it works well for his being A Rock to give him some angles and definition like that+ to differentiate his vibe from the rest of the cast who are all very squishy. also since he is essentially Just A Head it's good to emphasize that too ig.

john: i only drew john a couple times but he gets to be here because i like him. and because most of the stuff i applied to gerome was readily applicable to john, though i did try to keep him a little more uncanny because he is a Huge And Lanky Freak. i hate that he is barefoot btw but idk how to make his color balance look right with shoes.

pizzahead: i did not want to put him on here honestly but i Have drawn him a handful of times and more importantly i didn't know what i was gonna do with john's pose if i didn't have him there to be glared at. the only thing that's different with him is giving him wider-bottomed pants, which i got from when i tried to draw these guys in clone high style [i never posted that one either][i will eventually]

snick: he gets to be here because 1. he's like 6 lines 2. i like him and 3. ive scribbled him a few times offhand and it went pretty well

misc

there are some guys missing because those are guys i didn't draw enough [or at all] to have gotten comfortable with them. sorry

i would have Liked to shade these but for the time being i have accepted that my grasp of light/shadow has decayed to the point im not going to be happy with anything i try there, so For Now i am working on my presentation with flats i guess. gerome has a shadow only because he's shaded like that ingame and looks naked without it

anyway if you are still reading [hi?] i get to shamelessly plug now. i'm over the hill of my pizza run now, and while i still have plenty of things i want to make here, most of the bigger more in-depth ones have passed. pizza tower was the first thing in THREE YEARS to get me out of my oc groove to doing fanart, and once i am done with my ideas here i will be going right back to it. if you like my art or how i write characters/interactions you should check out my oc/webcomic blog @jamverse . i can't promise people who like pizza stuff will be terribly into my designs, but i can guarantee i treat my guys with the exact same sort of tone i handle the pt guys with. and hell, i've mentioned it a few times before, but like 70% of my characterization for fake pep is just copied off one of my characters, so if u are going to miss him... he will still be there in spirit >;p

and if you dont care about any of that and are still reading thank you anyway. actually making these comics + seeing how shockingly well-received they've been has done a lot for my confidence, and for seeing that my kind of stuff IS something people enjoy :')

[subwaytostardew]

▽ Subway to Stardew - Adoptable Joltik ⚡️

This would play after Emmet's 8 heart event and getting Joltik up to 8 hearts as well.

I released a separate mod specifically for adopting Joltik, so you only need to get them up to 8 hearts to adopt them! You can do it right now!

Adoptable Joltik Mod Link: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/21002

And of course... Commentary under the read-more.

Joltik's adoption event sat in the drafts for quite a while. It took me whole a day to implement and I didn't let myself sleep until I finished everything. (It's 1 PM now...)

The event ended up wildly different because of how extra custom pets are implemented. You would think that they would be added in the same way as you get your cat/dog that you select during character creation. No. You have to buy a license. Only Marnie is authorized to sell them.

Here's the original script for Joltik's adoption event:

[Joltik Adoption Event]

Emmet: @! Joltik likes you verrrrry much. They want to stay with you. I'm letting you adopt them. Yup. I filled out all the paperwork. The Joltiks are legally documented now. 

I never gave ours a name... Galvantula wouldn't let me. She is verrrry picky about it. But that's okay. Joltik is yours. You should name them. She came along for approval. So. What name should I put on the adoption form?

[Name input box like Marnie's adoption thing...]

[Galvantula pauses for a moment to think and then offhandedly agrees.]

Emmet: Galvantula didn't shock me for that. That name is okay. Yup. I will file that with the Ferngill Republic. Don't worry about it. Make sure you take verrrry good care of our little Joltik!

[Joltik jumps and heart emotes]

◇──◆──◇──◆

The whole naming portion was a source of much more frustration than it should have been. In events, the name input box is brought up by the "catQuestion" command (which applies to dogs chosen at the start, too...

If you refuse, then Marnie also shows up no matter what you do. Farmhouse positions are also tricky and made even harder to find reference for after 1.6 added the farmhouse being moveable. Joltik kept spawning where Emmet was supposed to be so I had to use a move command just to get them to spawn one tile to the side. Galvantula was fine. I didn't get to updating her vanilla portraits yet so she's staying quiet.

The catQuestion command also only adds the pet you pick during character creation. There's no fields to target the usage. You have to buy a license. It's the only way to get another pet. I didn't want Joltik to replace a cat either since in-story you would have to earn the trust of both Emmet and Galvantula... There's no way you can do that by the first 25 days of spring. It's immersion breaking and you lose a cat.

I did find the license aspect funny though. It was oddly fitting for the mod's lore of Pokemon being pretty much banned from the region. Emmet is a threat to Stardew Valley's ecosystem. Not the best guy for the task of combating anti-Pokemon xenophobia.

Pet sizes are apparently hardcoded so I had to make a new spritesheet for Joltik as if they even need a 32 x 32 pixel area per frame. I did end up making new sprites for them while I was at it. I tried to base it off of the cat's behaviors so I have less animation fields to edit (I was tired). The cat loafs a lot. Trying to convey that in a tiny spider posed quite the challenge.

After everything was done, I figured that the whole adoption portion of the mod could easilly be taken apart to be its own mod as a demo of sorts for the expansion. So I went and made a content pack to post.

Bringing up your starter pet's friendship level takes quite some time, so it would be awkward if I let the event play with no preconditions. Because of that, I ended up including Joltik as an NPC and locking their adoption behind their heart level.

We actually only had two lines per day of the week (not including season) for daily dialogue. That shot up to six lines per day of the week for a full 0-2-4-6-8-10 in spring because I was determined to publish a mod. (I've been modding for nearly a year nonstop and I don't have anything playable... humiliating...)

Anyways! I hope you're all having fun with 1.6! It certainly brought new challenges and opportunities to the modding scene!

▷ Station Steward Thylak

[blazehedgehog]

Why do newer pokemon look so offputting? Older games had tons of diverse designs but newer ones look unfinished/not well thought out.

They might be. I dunno. There's a lot people have said about Game Freak's competency at handling the Pokemon franchise and how they've added too many new Pokemon to some of these games and are basically running the well dry on good ideas.

But I also just see it as, like, an extension of the Mighty No. 9 problem. I remember when we were still all starry-eyed and hopeful about Mighty No. 9, Inafune revealed the design and mentioned it had "increased detail to suit HD displays."

So he's got all these colors and patterns and grooves and slots, when Mega Man was basically just a kid in his pajamas and three solid colors:

Light blue, dark blue, and skin tone. That's it. That's all you needed.

And Inafune further explained that was because Mega Man had to be this tiny little 24x24 NES sprite. I'd have to look it up, but it wouldn't surprise me if the sprite came first. I know it definitely did with Mario.

So this is like designing a character with the rawest, most basic building blocks you can get. You are not adapting the above character art into this sprite. Instead, you are making a character that has arms that are a separate color from his body, you are giving him pants to denote where his waist is, and you give him the biggest eyes on earth just so people can tell that's his face.

You have the smallest canvas imaginable and have to make sure people can understand they are not only looking at the shape of a human, but watching it animate in various different poses, all when it's run through somebody's crusty old RF patch cable on their 12" CRT TV:

Whereas, in theory, Mighty No. 9 is going to be played at its native resolution in crystal clarity on a 40" flat panel display, potentially allowing you to see and understand a lot more detail.

So now we circle back to Pokemon, and a lot of those first Pokemon look like this:

They had a box, 56x56 pixels wide, just over double the size of NES Mega Man, and four colors of grey to work with. When viewed on a Gameboy screen, these monsters weren't even two inches tall. Those limitations meant they still had to keep things simple.

Whereas now, increased resolutions and screen clarity allows designs like these:

Now the point I'm trying to make here is that simplicity and limitations give birth to clear, highly focused designs created to be instantly identifiable and recognizable at any distance or resolution. More detail does not necessarily make for a stronger character. You can absolutely get caught up in adding detail to compensate for a bad character design.

...At the same time, let's play devil's advocate here. Pokemon is a very different creature now than it was 25 years ago. A single new Pokemon design probably goes through this huge insane iteration process where all kinds of departments touch and approve the design so it can appear in the anime, it can appear in spinoffs, it can appear in merchandise, so on and so forth. We're miles away from the days where one guy comes up with all the Pokemon just because he thinks it would be funny to have a fat duck with a headache.

Maybe as much as anything, you could blame the increasingly complex production machine on why these Pokemon look like this. After all, even by the second generation of Pokemon games, they were constantly chasing the dragon of trying to find "the next Pikachu."

Everything has to be polished and smoothed down, while also showing the increased capabilities of the hardware, while also staying appealing to Pokemon's core demographics (there are multiples), while also being something they can sell toys and shirts and hats of, while also being noticeably new and different from existing Pokemon, so on and so forth, on and on and on again.

Having so many Pokemon in each new game probably gives them some leeway to experiment, but I'm sure some of these characters get beaten with creative hammers in the search of their next superstar.

On top of whatever qualms people might have with the state of Game Freak as it stands today.

[notdogblog]

GENERAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THE PIZZA TOWER COLLECTOR'S EDITION

First off - OH MY GOD THE ART HERE LOOKS SO COOL!!! It's so nice to get some new McPig art after a while, I've seen people say that it looks off-model but honestly i love it! It's just really fucking cool. I've seen some people criticise how it "spoils" Fake Peppino but honestly I feel like if you're buying a collector's edition of the game you probably already know about him, and I like how subtly Pizzahead was added to the cover, it's done in a way where it doesn't look exactly like him at first glance. Also, I wonder if the back and other side of the box will have different art, would be cool in my opinion

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Legit thoughts: This is really cool, it'll be nice to get some of the concept art physically (Along with maybe some unseen stuff maybe? 👀) and the McPig comments will probably add a lot of context.

(Also, I noticed this sketch specificaly is the same as one of the sketches seen in the leaks, so that gives us some verified confirmation of them being real!)

This is just nice to have, if i end up getting this I may hang some of these on my wall, or just keep them since they're nice to have.

Definetely the silliest item seen from the collector's edition, i find it odd how this was the first item to be shown (And how for a while it was the only thing we knew we were getting, aside from the game)

I'm gonna lick it No but being for real this is kinda funny to have, although a bit useless

The game itself! Quite simple really, I do wonder what the reversible coverart will look like tho, I think it'll be either the box art but scaled down or...

THIS unused coverart that was originally meant for steam, just finalized. I think this could probably be it since it'd be nice to give this concept a purpose and it could roughly fit the size of a Switch case.

Also, I wonder if the game card will have just a sized down version of the coverart or maybe a small bit of custom art, who knows? It might have the logo on top of a background from the game

Once again, not much to say here, really cool poster, shoutouts to the artist!

This is probably the worst part of the bundle, the stickers are all shittily traced from in-game sprites, it's fine since all the other stuff is great but I do find it odd that Fangamer keeps hiring people that just trace official art.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Overall, the bundle looks AMAZING (Except for the stickers...) and I may even decide to buy it even tho I don't have a Switch, since I can just gift the game to a friend that does have one, and keep all the other stuff to myself >:)

[twistedminutia]

TWST Talk: Heartslabyul Face Markings

You know exactly what I’m talking about- the card suit markings on the faces of Trey, Cater, Ace and Deuce, and the assorted other background Heartslabyul students. There was a period of time when I was new to the Twisted Wonderland fandom when I thought they might be weird magical birthmarks (it made sense in my head…) but that doesn’t seem to be accurate, since it’s only the Heartslabyul students who have them. Excepting Riddle, but since he’s the Queen who rules over the card soldiers, that tracks. They’re clearly applied by makeup, possibly using stencils to keep them neat, but that raises more questions.

How do students pick which mark they get? Did both Deuce, Trey, and Cater pick their based off their last names, or did Riddle or someone else tell them that was their marking? What about Ace, who has no heart indicator in his name, but has a heart marking anyway? Did he pick it out himself? Why that mark, then? And how do they pick size and placement? Both Ace and Deuce have fairly large markings that each overlap with their eyes and they’re freshmen, and Cater and Trey have smaller markings on their cheekbones and they’re juniors. Does the size and placement indicate year or is it arbitrary? I went back and checked, too, and students with hearts always have them over their left eye, diamonds are always on the right cheek etc. Does that mean all marks have a specific size and place you need to put them? Do they need to specify how many people can get each marking so they don’t have a year that’s like 90% spades or something?

Also, they don’t seem to take it off even when they’re not at school. Ace and Deuce have their markings when they show up as a rescue party in Book 4- did they keep them on all break or did they do their makeup special when they realized they were going back to school (yes, I know it’s because they didn’t want to change the sprites for one scene but just go with me on this). Actually, it would be kind of cute if Deuce was like ‘we can’t show up at school without our makeup!’ And forced Ace to do it too. Or he’s too proud of being at Night Raven to take the makeup off even on vacation.

This isn’t a very serious post (obviously) just a funny little observation I had. I can think so hard about things that don’t matter at all.

[miloscat]

[Review] Dr. Mario 64 (N64)

A surprising spinoff.

Before I can get to more Wario games, this unusual crossover must be addressed. It represents two Nintendo R&D1 series—Dr. Mario and Wario Land—coming together, although strangely only characters specifically from Wario Land 3 make an appearance. It's the only time Dr. Mario has had a story mode, and its development staff seems to consist of many people who had little experience with game dev. Still, it turned out as a competent game with lots of modes and a nice art style, and yet it was exclusive to North America until rereleased in Japan's Nintendo Puzzle Collection for Gamecube.

The first Dr. Mario only had a single-board mode and two-player vs. mode. The SNES's Tetris & Dr. Mario (another one I had growing up, and the only video game my parents ever played consistently) established a "vs. Com", a standard feature of arcade block-dropping games of this sort. Dr. Mario 64 expands this out with between-bout story cutscenes, a more developed form of the campaigns seen in Wario's Woods or Yoshi's Panepon. These feature some light shenanigans but more importantly a lovely cardboard cutout art style for the characters; the rest of the game looks good, with nice sprite-based reinterpretations of the WL3 baddies and clear and readable graphics for the gameplay portion, but this Yoshi's Story-like mix of prerendering and craft-inspired looks really stands out.

Wario had previously co-starred with Mario in Mario's Super Picross and Picross 2, but the specificity of filling out a cast of CPU opponents with WL3 mooks is funny. Everyone's out of character too; flying in the face of WL3's actual story, Rudy is out in the world, the size of a normal human, and all the enemy characters are working for him. This is also the first game to retcon Dr. Mario as a GP who treats patients, rather than a pathology researcher developing cures in a lab as in the original game's backstory. Sure it's all just a cheesy cartoon where nothing matters, but as a scientist and keen observer of narrative continuity this kind of carelessness drives me up the wall! Nah jk, it's fine.

I'm not sure what else I can say. The basic gameplay is more or less unchanged since the NES game, save for the inclusion of optional drop shadows and opponent difficulty levels. Dr. Mario is one of the more basic of the falling-block-matching games, at its most engaging when you're spiralling trying to undo mistakes, so the vs. mode at least has combos mean something and garbage blocks for chaos. There are two decent new tunes alongside the classic Fever and Chill. I only played the story mode, but there are others available including the first-time 4-player mode. I ran through the campaign a few times, because there are different opponents and cutscenes whether you elect to be Dr. Mario or Wario, and if you do a run without failing a stage you get an additional final match that will unlock either Metal Dr. Mario or Vampire Wario. My final thought would be that this is one of the very few N64 games where the D-pad is preferred to the analogue stick!

[unlimitedtrees]

u ever heard of Pepsi in Sonic 1

(alternative title for this post: the weird rom hack i made 6 years ago)

hello. at the time of me writing this opening paragraph, it is november 7th, and my old rom hack 'Pepsi in Sonic 1' turns six years old today.

you probably have not have heard of it. if you have, you probably either watched somecallmejohnny play it once, or you ran into it while looking up sonic rom hacks on youtube, or you got a random DM from me asking "u ever heard of pepsi in sonic 1" for no reason other than because its funny.

if you already know me, you know i am bad with words and conversation and stuff. but if you dont, i hope that helps a bit of understanding in why i might randomly ask u if u heard of this weird little rom hack. i am bad with starting a conversation ! and my dumb little sense of humor thinks it's funny to bring up a rom hack that doesnt even represent any of the things i currently do !

anyways, even though i joke a lot about this rom hack now and for a few years even Hated its very existence... i also have a deep love for it, as it was one of the few fangames ive made that i feel were made of pure, unrestrained passion. and i dont think i would be the same person i am now if not for this dumb little hack existing.

so, if u wish.. you can click the little 'read more' thingy to learn a bit about this crazy sonic hack i made when i was like, 13.

Alright, so Pepsi in Sonic 1 is a rom hack of (you guessed it) Sonic 1 that i made in 2016 for the sonic hacking contest. at that point, i had only been making games for 2 years and this was one of my first rom hacks ive ever made...

On the Surface, it looks like just a simple joke hack that replaces Sonic with a can of Pepsi. there's also a ton of other sprites that get changed into random little jokes, with some of the more notable changes being Big the Cat replacing Eggman, Jimmy Neutron replacing the Newtron badniks, and the wrecking ball sprite being replaced by a sprite based off Somecallmejohnny's "amiibo face". The game also has a ton of other silly little jokes, such as changing every level's names to something dumb or changing the level art slightly. And the people who played it pretty much wrote it off as just that... just a weird little joke hack that you may or may not have found funny.

but let me tell u.. there is more to this dumb little rom hack than u think ! one of the most major changes to the original game is that every level has been edited to have almost completely new level design.. and honestly a lot of the levels hold up pretty well. the Are some problems which come from the way they were designed.. for u see, i still didnt know a whole lot so a lot of the levels are built on top of the original Sonic 1 layouts, with some sections in some levels being kept the same, as well as all of the levels being forced within the original size limits of the levels (on Top of me having to deal with all the hardcoded bullshit from certain levels like Labyrinth and Scrap Brain).

So, some levels like 'Not Green Hill Zone', 'Dimps Place Zone', and 'Pepsi City Zone' have some really huge changes to the level layouts, while the rest of the game is still a little recognizable from the original Sonic 1 levels.. but i managed to make enough changes to where the whole game feels wildly different from vanilla Sonic 1. Not Only are all the levels different.. but all of them have a hidden "emerald monitor" which u can find to unlock one of the emeralds. they're in pretty difficult to find places, and when u collect all 6 emeralds they give you extra lives when destroyed. The only problem with them is that you can keep collecting the same emerald monitor in a level by dying... so you could cheat and get all 6 emeralds in one level. Still, it's a nice little thing that i put a lot of effort into making.

another one of the main big things in the hack is the Playable Characters. the main character is just a Pepsi Can who is basically just a sprite replacement of Sonic, However there are three other characters in the game that you can play. there is Pepsiman, who's main gimmick is that he can't actually do Damage while spinning. he's basically the game's hard mode, and you actually have to explore the third act of each level to find an invincibility monitor, as he also can't do damage to the bosses. he is the Running Hero, after all ! his only desire is to quench your thirst.. oh and also he can destroy eggman monitors without taking damage from them so. Yea.

You can also play as Classic Sonic, who is his own separate character and uses sprites from the 8-bit games. unlike the other characters, he actually has his own special move: The Drop Dash. You See, in the middle of the hack's development, Sonic Mania was revealed. So, as soon as i saw the drop dash in that game i just Had to implement it in this game. And Well, with it being one of the first instances of the drop dash in a fangame, it is implemented Very Poorly. But It Exists ! and there's actually secret paths you can take using it in the levels (something i wish Sonic Mania did but oh well..). Something that Classic Sonic doesnt have that the Pepsi Can and Pepsiman have is that they can perform the 'Shield Double Jump', in which you are given the ability to double jump while having a Shield. the double jump is pretty powerful, but it stops your speed. i didnt give it to Classic Sonic for Balancing reasons (AKA: i wanted there to be a reason to actually play as the other characters)

the only other character is actually a very hidden secret character: a Very Broken version of Knuckles. all of his sprites are broken and also i think it plays loud music while u play as him. thats all there is to him LOL!

Anyways. Um Yea. i put a lot of work into this rom hack back then. i was still pretty new to ROM hacking, with this being my first time using a disassembly. so i had to both learn basic ASM aswell as figure out how a ton of tools worked just for this game.. and i didn't even understand how most of the stuff worked by the end of it ! and i spent pretty much every weekend Exclusively on working on the hack. also, i had pretty much No Help with this game, with me having to rely on the Very Old and Outdated sonic retro wiki aswell as old forum posts just to implement the things i wanted (and there's still a ton of ideas i didnt get to implement)

when the game finally released at the hacking contest, i was very proud of it but also very Burnt Out. there was still a Ton of issues with this game... for One, all of the pixel art was pretty Bad. not only that, but my method for implementing artwork was very Confusing and Time consuming, with the different playable characters being a huge hassel as i did not know how to make them have different "mappings", which made making the different characters very restricting. there's also little problems with the level design, such as certain "chunks" being misused at some points and also Labyrinth Zone being not as edited as the other zones

i think one of the biggest mistakes i made with this game is with the jimmy neutron sprite... You See, in the original Sonic 1, the Newton badnik has two variants with different behaviors. one uses the first palette line, which contains the colors used for Sonic and most of the objects in the game. the Other varient uses a separate palette line specific to Green Hill Zone, which gives it a more green color scheme. You See.. the jimmy neutron sprite wasnt implemented until the Very End of the game's development... and i never bothered to check the other variant of the jimmy neutron sprite to see if it worked with the new palette and Um..

Yeah . it is not supposed to look like that. this is something that i didnt realize until awhile ago when i replayed the hack for this post. i feel pretty stupid for not noticing it sooner.

anyways. part of what made me hate this game for awhile is The Humor. you see, when it came out, a lot of the people in the hacking community thought it was Unfunny and Dumb. So, by extension, i also started Hating it for being a Dumb and Unfunny rom hack. And well... i made this hack when i was 13, so there Are a lot of dumb unfunny stuff in this hack, like replacing the Points sprite with 'GAY', or having one of the sprites be of ken penders' face.

a lot of things in this hack havent aged well, but i think ive grown to accept this hack's existence. its one of the first things ive made that got Some sort of public knowledge, even if still very few people have played it. And i think, if it werent for me making this hack and joining the hacking community, i wouldnt have ended up in the crazy situation i am in today..

i may joke about askin people if theyve heard of pepsi in sonic 1, and although i would prefer if people checked out my newer stuff, i also hope at least Some One, Some Where, can appreciate the dumb little hack i made. this hack was very important to me when i made it, it was made before i even fully interacted with the hacking community. it has all sorts of dumb little ideas that i tried to do despite all the restrictions i had.. and it was a little soul crushing back then when no one payed much attention to the game i spent Months working on. nowadays, i think ive come to accept being a niche little game dev.. but also i cant help but wonder if there are people out there who like my strange little creations as much as i do...

anyways. Idont know. i probably am missing out a lot of things that i wanted to say. this whole thing is probably incomprehensible (i am currently writing this paragraph at 1 am on November 13). it has been Very Hard for me to Do Things or to even Write Down my thoughts on things. but i hope you appreciate this little thing i wrote about the thing i made.

Oh, And By the Way, pepsi in sonic 1 is open source on github. mostly for archival reasons but if for some reason you wish to mess around with it... it is there for u to do whatever u want with it. Lol.

that is all. goopbye

[flutterclouds]

This was such an amazing chapter, Tesh! I really loved the rush of emotions Nia experiences throughout the chapter. She’s scared and alone, but she’s also angry at both Tobias and herself. She hates that he was rash enough to go down to the mines in the dead of night with basically no backup, and she went along with it. Then, during her frustrated and isolated wander through the tunnel system, she sees the being that’s being following her for weeks: Giratina. I loved the imagery of a fragmented Giratina staring at Nia from the mirrorstone cave wall. I also loved the transition of Nia’s state of horror into one of incredulous disbelief as the god in the fragmented stone wishes for her to follow him. I thought it was really funny when Giratina’s furrowed brow and body language betrayed he was frustrated that Nia would not follow him. It really gave some fun insight into Giratina’s less eldritch and stoic side.

I also really loved reading about how Nia and Giratina’s relationship got fleshed out in this chapter. Given their history, she clearly doesn’t trust him at the start. This clearly starts to change a bit after the Steelix dodge scene. Giratina wants her alive for the moment, but I do have to wonder for what reasons. I also have to wonder if Giratina has tried to get into connect with other transformed humans over the years, or just with Nia. I recall in one of your animatics that Will has some connection to Giratina, but at this point I’m not sure whether they’re working together or have some other dynamic.

I really loved getting to see how Nia has gotten closer to Samir during their time in Asra. As previously established, Samir has been lonely for quite a while after their former partner left them. I can only imagine how much it means for Samir to open up to another person again. I think that really goes to show at her core, Nia is a person capable of forming connections with others most Pokemon would have given up on. Tobias and Samir are good examples of this. I only just realized that particular parallel between Toby and Samir, and I love it so much.

Finally, I want to say how much I adored the fight scene with Eddy and the Steelix. The fight against Eddy was so fun, with Team Scarlet and Samir being able to take him down after all he’s done to Asra. The fight against the Steelix is another beast entirely. Steelixs as a species are known for their vast size and ability to drill through solid sheets of ground. In addition, Steelixs are some of the largest non-legendary Pokemon. Steelix is an entirely new foe compared to the likes of Panpour, the Sevipers, or even Eddy. The stakes of this fight are terrifying in a very new way at this point in the story. Toby and Samir have type advantages, but that isn’t enough to win the fight. Steelix uses the cave environment against the team, burying Toby and Rubble and smacking down Samir with his tail. At this point, Nia is on her own and Giratina can only watch from his fractured vantage point on the cave wall. I loved seeing how even in the midst of such a bleak fight, Nia’s love for her friends gives her the determination to fight on against seemingly impossible odds. It’s such a great moment, and it’s honestly such a good embodiment of the themes of PMD as a series. I think Seekers of Soul works so well because you take the themes and charm of PMD and expand on it in the written format, where you aren’t limited by code, character models or sprites. It’s been such a joy reading this story, and I look forward to reading a chapter every month. Recently I’ve been drawn to stories about confronting loss, such as Final Fantasy 7, Persona 3 Portable, and Night in the Woods. I think Seekers of Soul is one of those stories, one about experiencing loss but still finding the will to live on, whether it be related to the loss of a loved one, finding oneself in some strange new environment, or simply dealing with the world changing. Like the aforementioned games, Seekers of Soul really captures the feeling of somehow finding the strength to go on despite dealing with hardship, and I think that’s a theme the world really needs right now.

Overall, I just want to say thank you for writing such an amazing story. I always appreciate reading your work, and it’s always fun gushing about what I enjoyed in any given chapter. As always, I’m looking forward to seeing what Team Scarlet get up to next time.

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Seekers of Soul

[Chapter 45]

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Nia, Tobias and Samir are trapped in the tunnels beneath Asra with two dangerous outlaws. Can they defeat them and escape?

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The earth is crumbling beneath Nia’s feet, and she struggles to stay upright despite the solid press of Samir against her side. She sees the floor open up beneath Tobias, and he falls into the blackness without a sound.

Her stomach drops with him. “Tobias!”

She pushes away from Samir—to what? To dive after her partner? But the ground finally cracks apart beneath Nia’s feet as well.

She falls with a breathless shriek. For a beat, weightlessness. Then the ground slams into her all at once, rocky and uneven, knocking the breath out of her. She keeps her eyes squeezed shut as she rolls deeper and deeper, the satchel alternating between cushioning her movements and slapping her in the face.

It’s not until she finally slows to a stop, skin blossoming with painful new bruises, that everything starts to register. That Pokemon—a steelix?—attacked them. Tobias fell. She fell too.

She pushes herself up with a groan, looking around. She’s in a long tunnel similar to the caverns above. The glowing crystals down here seem less gentle, more a blaring red than a cozy rose tone. Mirrorstone still lines the walls in patches, and Nia can tell by her reflection that she looks as roughed up as she feels from that fall.

She’s also entirely alone.

Nia inhales, sharp, and staggers to her feet, looking one way and then the other. “Tobias? Samir?”

No luck, and no sign of either of them. Is it possible the steelix manipulated where they would fall to separate them? Nia glances up, but the earth above her has closed up once again, a few faint cracks and uneven slabs of rock the only sign of its shifting.

A distant, faint vibration makes Nia jump. Fear rolls through her gut, and she stumbles in a random direction. She doesn’t know where she’s going but she feels like a sitting duck here, dropped in the middle of a maze of tunnels that their enemy dug himself. Running feels like a hopeless effort, but what else is there to do? Her best bet right now is to move, to try and find Tobias and Samir and get out of here to find some help.

She knew they shouldn’t have come down here on their own. But she didn’t want to disappoint Tobias because she’s a stupid, stupid people-pleaser and now they’re all in danger. She hasn’t been this angry at her partner in a long while. Probably not since Afon’s Cap.

She swipes tears from her eyes as she jogs down tunnel after tunnel. Her reflection follows her in bits and pieces out of the corner of her eye.

She hits a fork in the road, and glances frantically between the two paths. Which one will lead her back up to the surface? Will either one lead her to her companions? They look exactly the same, identical tunnels of packed dirt walls and cracked patches of crystal.

“C’mon, c’mon!” She whines, bouncing in place. “Make a decision!”

The rumbling in the earth had drifted away a minute ago, but that doesn’t mean the steelix won’t be back soon. Or that he isn’t currently chasing down Tobias or Samir.

Nia goes right on impulse. For a moment she thinks she sees movement out of the corner of her eye that doesn’t match her own, and hopes that it’s Tobias or Samir. But when she looks, it’s nothing. Just her own reflection and the low light playing tricks on her frazzled mind.

Nia slows to a stop at another fork in the road, her fear sharpening to frustration. She feels like a rat in a maze, running around until her eventual demise. Is there even an exit? What if there isn’t?

Nia thinks of the way they usually escape mystery dungeons—which this underground labyrinth probably isn’t, even if she’s bad at telling—and suddenly recalls their rescue badges. She digs through their satchel, pulling out her own badge as well as Tobias’ and clutching them in her hands like lifelines.

But slowly, her mind catches up to her relief.

Even if she did send out a signal to the psychics at the guild to teleport her to safety, Tobias’ badge is with her (stupid, stupid, stupid—why don’t they wear them?!), and she doesn’t have a guarantee that Samir would think to use theirs. She can’t risk just leaving the two of them down here alone.

Besides, the psychics could only teleport her and Tobias so far away from the Lexym guild for their journey. They probably have a limited radius that they can pick them up from, too, and Nia is sure they’re outside of that range. Even the nearest guild, where Samir came from, is likely too far away to pick up their signal out here in the desert. Asra is a small, secluded town, with little authority to help protect it.

A perfect target, really.

With a frustrated little growl, Nia throws her badge down. It bounces with a metallic ping before stopping, wobbling in the dirt as it settles. Very unsatisfying, really.

Nia wipes at her eyes, then bends to pick the badge up. She brushes it off almost apologetically before tucking it away into her satchel again.

She looks up, intent on continuing forward, only to come face-to-face with Giratina.

Nia yelps, falling onto her tail and scrambling back. Giratina stares down at her from bits and pieces of reflected stone, the titan a fractured mosaic of red and black and gold.

Nia holds her breath, heart slamming in her chest as she stares back. She expects Giratina to react in some way. Maybe try to reach through the stone, or beckon her closer. Heck, she half-expects him try bashing through the barrier between their worlds, probably bringing the caves down on all of them in the process.

But no. Giratina just…waits, body and wings swaying behind him against the backdrop of whatever strange void he lives in. His glowing red eyes are as cold as distant satellites, giving no hint as to what he’s thinking.

She imagines this is what it feels like to be a cornered mouse, staring into the eyes of a hungry cat. Except he still hasn't done anything. Is he just playing with her? Or can he physically not do anything? She supposes that might confirm what they’d thought—that Giratina can’t actually touch her unless she makes contact with the reflection too.

Slowly, Nia gathers her shaking legs beneath herself, body still poised to run. Or fight. She doesn’t look away from Giratina.

Giratina nods, once. Approving. Then jerks his head to the right tunnel and slithers through the reflections like a snake through water, down the wall of the tunnel and away from her.

Stunned, Nia blinks after him.

After a moment, the titan slides back into view in front of her, head crest lowered in distinct irritation. Nia's a bit distracted by the fact that his head is larger than her whole body. Giratina jerks his chin to the right again. Insistent.

It suddenly dawns on Nia what Giratina is doing. She barks a hysterical laugh. Maybe there’s a gas leak down here.

“Are you telling me to follow you?”

Giratina gives her a nod, like this is a completely normal thing to be happening.

“And why in the world would I do that?!” Nia asks, throwing her arms up. “Will warned me about you! Plus, all you’ve done is stalk me and try to yank me into your world when I was taking a bath!”

Giratina gives her a flat, unamused look. Well, good—she’s not exactly in a good mood herself.

Nia shakes her head. “Nope, nuh-uh. If anything you’re probably leading me right into a death trap. Not happening.”

Before she can say anything else, the earth around her shakes, a bit harder than before. Nia has to crouch to keep her footing, glancing over her shoulder. She's dreading the thought of seeing that steelix’s terrible face rushing up behind her.

When she looks forward again, Giratina is still glaring down at her, clearly frustrated despite how inflexible his face plates are. His centipede-like legs are moving in an impatient wave down his body. It’s as mesmerizing as it is unsettling. Nia grimaces and takes a step back.

She has to make a decision, here and now. Does she take the advice of an eldritch horror monster who literally every scary story in this world has warned her about, or—

Okay, yeah, this one’s obvious.

Nia marches down the left tunnel. Giratina flickers into being in the reflections at her side, body taking up the whole length of the tunnel. He glares at her silently.

Nia sticks her tongue out at him. He feels a lot less scary when she knows he can’t touch her.

The tunnels rumble distantly with more movement, and Nia picks up her pace a bit. Unfortunately, she still doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t come across another fork in the road over the next few minutes, but the rumbling grows slightly closer and more powerful before dying away again.

Nia wonders how many tunnels there are down here beneath the town, heavy with stale air and danger. If they've made the foundations of the land unstable. If the steelix uses too many ground moves he could probably level the whole town, not to mention bury all of them alive.

She really hopes her friends are all right.

The path has been curving for a little while, but Nia's having trouble figuring out if it’s going up or down. Logic says she wants to go up to get closer to the surface, but…

The distant rumbling of the steelix grows more prominent.

Nia speeds up, glancing over her shoulder. She can't do much else, other than hope that the steelix will change direction and the shaking will die down again.

Instead, the rumbling grows stronger second by second, shaking the ground under her feet and making her stagger. She hears a low, distant roar.

He’s coming this way.

Nia takes off, sprinting and hoping for a fork in the path or—she doesn’t know. A miracle.

She didn’t really see the steelix in motion before, but knowing how large he is, seeing the tunnels he’s dug, knowing how effortlessly he’s been destroying the town above…

She knows she’s done for if she’s caught by him down here. He’s in his element.

Nia feels numb with panic, panting as she runs and runs down the neverending cave. Giratina speeds through the reflections at her side, but for the first time since appearing he isn’t staring her down. He’s looking intently ahead as he spirals through reflections with ease.

The shaking grows stronger, and Nia's steps start to stumble as she tries to run and finds that she can’t keep her footing. She falls into the wall with a gasp. She squints against the almost painful shaking as the steelix grows ever closer.

Giratina catches her eye. He’s flaring his spidery wings out in the mirrorstone a few yards ahead of her. Once he sees her looking, he gestures his head down with urgency, towards a large chunk of glowing red stone.

Nia doesn’t know what he’s suggesting, but right now the banished legendary seems a lot less threatening than the steelix literally about to flatten her into the dirt. She scrambles for the spot Giratina pointed out, crawling through the increasingly powerful jerking of the earth.

When she reaches the crystal, gripping its warm, smooth surface, she’s surprised to see a sizable dip in the cave wall behind it. It's small, just a natural crevice in the dirt. But still…

It looks just big enough for Nia to squeeze into. She hurries to do so, yanking her satchel in with her after it gets caught on the gemstones. Her knees are jammed into her chest and her head is ducked at an uncomfortable angle, breaths puffing hot and humid into her chest.

The shaking gets louder and stronger, and she feels her brain rattle around in her head. She wonders with a pang of terror if Giratina lured her back here to get smashed like a bug under a rock.

Then, with all the force and sound of a subway train, the steelix rushes past her hiding spot. He’s a blur of silver segments, just visible through a gap in the gemstones. One second, two, and then his long body is burrowing down the tunnel and away. The shaking slowly recedes.

Nia gives it a minute. At least until the shaking is nearly gone. Then the space feels too tight, too cramped, like she’ll be crushed if she doesn’t get out. She thrashes and finally manages to squeeze an arm out of the cubby. The rest of her body follows, and she collapses onto the tunnel floor on her back. The dirt under her is smooth and packed, almost hot with the speed in which the steelix moved through.

She would’ve been dead if she’d been caught up in that.

The thought sends a fresh bolt of panic through her. She looks up, still trying to catch her breath, only to see Giratina staring back down at her from the mirrorstone in the ceiling.

“You saved me,” she rasps, somewhere between a statement and a question.

Giratina nods. Then he gestures towards the direction they came from.

For the first time, Nia considers the possibility that Giratina might genuinely be trying to help. But why? Will was very clear that the banished legendary was not to be trusted. And it’s not like he has a stellar reputation even outside of Will’s words. He tried to yank her into the distortion world, for God’s sake!

…But he did just save her life. So he at least wants her alive, for whatever reason. Maybe a nefarious plan where he later steals her soul to destroy the world or something. Chances are he isn’t working with these goons who are only in it for the money, so that means he might actually be leading her to safety.

“This is such a bad idea,” she murmurs, still shaky as she sits up. Giratina flickers out of view only to reappear in the wall, closer to eye level.

Nia raises her voice just loud enough to be heard. “O-Okay. Okay. You’ve got my attention. Um…thank you.”

Giratina makes an insistent gesture with his tail for her to turn around and go back the way they came.

Nia gets to her feet, brushing dirt off her fur, and takes a deep breath. “All right. Lead the way.”

Giratina wastes no time, silently slipping away in a blur of muted color. Nia breaks into a run to follow him back the way they came, the satchel bouncing along with each stride.

Giratina leads her through tunnel after tunnel, clearly reluctant to pause and let her catch her breath or stretch out the painful stitch in her side. When he does finally slow to a stop, Nia takes the break gratefully, gasping for air as she rests her hands on her knees.

“W-What is it?”

Giratina doesn’t answer her, looking off into the distance and narrowing his eyes, as if hearing something. Then he flickers out of sight entirely.

Nia yelps. “Giratina?”

Nothing. She’s alone again.

She looks around uneasily, suddenly back on-guard. Was he leading her into a trap? She knows she shouldn’t trust him but she doesn’t exactly have a lot of options right now. Should she go back the way she came? Keep moving forward?

Nia bites her lip. Then, almost hearing Tobias scolding her for trusting too easily, she tentatively continues forward in the direction Giratina had been leading her. She jogs lightly, trying to keep her ears open and her body ready.

To her relief, while she occasionally feels and hears the steelix roaming around, he doesn't comes barreling her way again.

Still, she slows to a stop when she hears something new and out of place. A faint tap-tap, tap-tap. Like a gallop. The steps sound too sharp to be Eddy or Tobias’ softer feet, more like…hooves?

Samir!

Nia runs forward again. She bounds around the next corner and sure enough, nearly slams right into the skiddo.

“Samir!” She cries, thrilled to see at least one of her friends unharmed.

The grass type is clearly relieved to see her too, posture relaxing even as they pant hard to catch their breath. Giratina flickers back into sight beside both of them. Samir jumps, but otherwise looks a little too familiar with the presence for this to be the first time they’ve ran into one another.

Nia blinks, looking between the two. “Was he…guiding you too?” That would explain why he disappeared on her.

Samir nods, looking warily at the legendary. Giratina stares down at the both of them, impassive.

Huh. Another point for Giratina not being a total jerk, then. Good to know.

Another rumble sounds off in the distance, and everyone tenses, looking down the tunnels. When the vibrations settle, Giratina catches their attention with a jerk of his head, gesturing back the way Samir had come from.

“Can you lead us to Tobias?” Nia asks.

Giratina nods, then zips away. Nia and Samir exchange a look and follow as fast as their legs can carry them, since they don’t really have the time to mistrust Giratina right now.

Nia can’t tell the tunnels apart at all, so all she can do is follow and hope Giratina is leading them in the right direction. They all look the same to her: rosy red light like a warning sign and flashes of reflections set into rocky walls and soil. She thinks there might be a slight incline to the path now, making the burn in her legs more pronounced, but she can’t be sure. All she knows is the constant rhythm of her panting breaths, the pain in her lungs, the tingling exhaustion in her legs, and the sound of her and Samir’s footfalls.

Finally, she hears a distant sound. She can’t pinpoint what it is right away, but it isn’t the rumble of the steelix. It almost sounds like…battling. The faint noise of attacks being used.

Nia’s heart jumps hopefully. She follows the sound to the tunnel’s end, where it opens up to the same large cavern where they first saw Eddy with the steelix. Inside, a familiar flash of fire catches her eye immediately.

Tobias is fighting Eddy, barely dodging the otter's weapon: a shell acting like a hilt for a short blade of bright blue water. Tobias is breathing hard, clearly scuffed up. Blood runs down his leg where the wound he’d gotten on the way to Asra has been reopened, but he’s still keeping Eddy on his toes. Considering the charmander is fighting an older, more experienced water type all on his own, he’s doing considerably well.

Still, Tobias' fierce expression and tense shoulders drop when he glances their way, clearly relieved to see them too.

Eddy looks much less pleased. He spits blood into the dirt, lip curling to bare sharp teeth. “You’re kidding me. He didn’t get either of you? That useless lump of steel—“

Tobias cuts him off by smacking him in the face with his tail. He follows up with a one-two swipe of metallic claws.

Samir bounds into action, beelining for Eddy. They swing their head forward as they run, launching razor-sharp leaves at the water type. Eddy flinches and hisses as they hit their mark.

Nia follows right behind. As physically tired as she is, she’s glad she hasn’t used much aura today. She draws on that energy, forming an aura staff between her paws. She slips behind Eddy and sweeps her weapon low to catch his feet. He stumbles but doesn’t go down, sending a spare water attack behind him that nips Nia’s side and sends her skittering back.

Tobias takes the distraction, lunging forward to slash at Eddy again with his claws. The otter grunts with pain, but kicks Tobias away.

Samir shoots forward to take the charmander’s place, lowering their head to tackle the water type directly in the gut. Nia hears the wind whoosh from Eddy’s lungs. The otter doubles over, the bright blue water around his shell falling to the dirt with a splash.

Nia takes the opening. She hauls her staff back like a baseball bat before slamming the otter in the back. Eddy staggers forward from the blow.

Tobias jumps in next, knocking the otter’s shell from his grasp and slamming him with his tail on the backstep.

Samir finishes it, locking their legs and launching a volley of razor leaves at Eddy. The water type covers his face, trying to stand his ground as they rip at his skin. But as soon as the bright green glow of the attack fades, Eddy falls onto his front and lies still.

For a moment, the three of them stare down at their opponent, attack stances still in place.

When Eddy still doesn’t move, Tobias finally inches forward. He uses a foot to roll the otter over. Eddy groans, still alive but clearly down for the count.

Nia relaxes, and shares a triumphant grin with Tobias and Samir.

It’s Giratina, flickering into view on the far wall and flaring his wings to catch her attention, that makes Nia take notice of the slight vibrations under her feet.

Right. They’re not done here yet.

The now-familiar shaking of the earth picks up as the steelix approaches, making all of them crouch to stay on their feet. Tobias in particular looks pained by the motion. They don't have the time to make a run for it, Nia knows. Not if the steelix is this close.

Nia takes a deep breath and tries to reign in her fear. They’re together again, and they already defeated Eddy. The steelix is a terrifying foe, but together they should be able to figure something out.

She looks to the tunnel her and Samir arrived from, hoping that the steelix won’t appear from underground or something. Luckily, she catches a distant glimpse of silver as the steelix rounds the far bend, metal flashing in the warm glow of the crystals.

Unluckily, the steelix barreling towards them looks furious, segments churning as he charges forward with the speed of a semi. He ducks his head as he enters the cavern, and Nia suddenly realizes that he’s not slowing down. They won’t be fast enough to dodge that. Tobias especially. They're going to be smashed like bugs on a windshield.

She feels like she’s back in Ghatha, watching that wreckage come hurtling down to bury her and Junie. She has the distant feeling she's looking death in the face, and something in her desperately wants to cower in terror.

But her aura saved them last time, right?

Nia shoves herself in front of Tobias and Samir. She braces her feet and grits her teeth and hopes that her self-preservation instincts will be enough to trigger—

Blue filters across her vision. Just quick enough for the steelix to crash headfirst into her shield like a train against a mountain.

Nia’s shield breaks. She cries out as a horrible pain lances through her head, vision spotting and quickly going black. Her legs buckle beneath her, and she barely registers a pair of warm arms catching her.

It feels like an instant later that Nia starts to regain consciousness. She catches flashes of sensation as she comes back to herself, trying to work through the cotton-like pain stuffed inside her skull. Tobias’ muffled voice is saying something near her, tone sharp and worried. The leafy scent of Samir has drifted away. The earth jolts in short, harsh movements, like a giant is wrestling nearby.

Nia tries to pry her eyes open, squinting against the rosy light. The ringing pain in her skull has died down, and clearer sound starts to filter back in. Tobias, yelling something. The angry snarls of the steelix. The crumbling and cracking of stone and earth. Samir’s quick hoofsteps.

Nia finally looks up. She’s been shuffled back to sit against the cave wall. Tobias is running defense from a few paces in front of her while he and Samir battle against the steelix.

Samir is using nimble leaps to weave over and under the steelix’s flailing weapon of a tail. Occasionally they even leap off the side of the cave or the steelix itself, sure-footed and nimble as they shoot off razor leaf attacks between strides.

Tobias has stayed closer by, probably in case the steelix tried to take her out while she was incapacitated. He yells distracting insults at the steelix, occasionally shooting bursts of flame that make the giant flinch.

Both types of attacks seem to be dealing heavy damage to the steelix. Tobias’ fire even makes the serpent’s metallic hide glow like molten metal when he lands a direct hit. The outlaw is definitely a steel type Pokemon, but what else could he be? Rock? Ground, maybe?

Either way, fighting type moves would be super-effective if Nia could just use them.

Nia grits her teeth and rises to wobbly feet. She has to help. Even if she can’t use many moves, she still can’t let them handle this guy alone. He’s twenty times their size and willing to kill. If he gets in one good hit they’re done for.

While she steadies her spotty vision, Nia scans the walls for a sign of Giratina. Surely he wouldn’t abandon them now, right? Even if he can’t do anything, surely he’d stick around to see their fates?

She realizes then that most of the mirrorstone in this cavern—the largest chunks at least—have been cracked by the steelix’s rampage. Nia thinks she sees fragmented glimpses of black and gold and gray flitting between stones, but it’s hard to tell what Giratina is doing or thinking.

Nia’s attention jumps back to the fight as the steelix lunges for Tobias, snapping blocky jaws down with enough force to crush a car. Tobias barely steps back in time. He lashes out with his claws in retaliation and scratches the steelix right below the eye.

Nia doesn’t expect the weak move to do much, but the steelix roars, clearly pained, as he rears back. Tobias falters, clearly as confused as she feels. It’s not until the steelix’s face tilts down again, his left eye squeezed shut and furrowed with pain, that Nia thinks she understands.

The steelix’s scar. The long, deep furrow cutting through his face like a canyon must be more vulnerable than the rest of his steely hide.

“His scar!” Nia calls, still trying to gather herself enough to push away from the wall and help. “I think it’s a weak point!”

Tobias and Samir look back at her, clearly surprised that she’s up. But then Samir nods, shooting off another razor leaf attack to get the steelix’s attention. Tobias follows them now that Nia is conscious, attacking the opposite side with his fire to keep the beast busy.

Nia takes a deep breath and stumbles away from the wall. She needs to get in there and help somehow. She can feel her aura settling again, even if it’s nearly depleted after using protect. The ache in her skull has died down, at least.

Nia staggers forward, pulling her hands apart to form her aura into a staff. She manages to get it nearly full-sized, solid and thrumming with quiet energy. Good.

While the steelix is distracted, Nia runs forward and hauls her staff back in a batter’s swing, then slams her aura into the steelix’s side with all her strength.

Her aura splinters out of existence beneath her palms. The steelix doesn’t even seem to notice her, too busy chasing down Samir and Tobias.

Nia steps back, heart dropping. That did nothing. She should’ve guessed as much—a normal type move like that, without any fighting type energy behind it? No way that would even leave a scratch on a metallic tank like this.

She’s useless in this fight.

Nia steps back and looks around, desperate to help.

She’s watching at just the right time to see Samir slip. The skiddo is bouncing off the wall to give themself some height, when a chunk of stone gives way under their hoof. Nia sees their eyes widen. Sees the sudden loss of grace as they scramble to catch themselves.

She also sees the steelix notice, a nasty grin spreading across his face. He turns, heavy tail swinging around like a wrecking ball, and slams it into Samir. The hit sends the little goat flying across the cavern.

Samir hits the far wall hard enough to send cracks webbing outward, then drops lifelessly to the dirt. They don’t get back up again, and Nia can’t tell if they’re still breathing from this far away. She stares at them, willing them to get back up. To be okay. She feels numb, suddenly, caught between terror and nausea and—

"Nia!" Tobias yells.

She snaps to attention, just in time to drop and flatten herself to the ground. The steelix’s tail swings by right overhead, a wind buffeting her from the momentum.

Shaking, Nia sits up. She looks to Tobias, only to see the charmander trying to inch his way around the cavern to Samir. He’s still dodging and attacking, but he keeps glancing towards the downed skiddo.

The steelix roars and slams his tail into the earth, but Nia can tell that this motion is different than before. She senses something—move energy, maybe. The dirt fissures in a line, shooting under Tobias’ feet like lightning. It continues past him and up the wall of the cavern.

A sickening crack is the only warning before the wall behind Tobias shifts and buckles. A wave of rock and dirt slides down quick as an avalanche. Nia sees Tobias go pale. Then the wave swallows him whole, burying him alive in a mountain of earth.

“Tobias!” Nia shrieks.

Before she can even think—can even doubt or hope or grieve or try to help either of her friends—the steelix turns to her. He’s not smiling, but there’s something satisfied in his expression that feels even worse. Like he’s an exterminator wiping out pesky vermin.

And Nia, with nothing but normal type energy to her name, is left alone to fight him.

Terror and grief makes her stumble back. Her attack earlier did nothing, and she’s sure that a quick attack would be equally unhelpful. She can feel her chest squeeze with panic.

Her teary gaze flicks to the nearest wall, to Giratina scattered and broken in abstract bits, but the legendary seems equally frazzled, moving in erratic movements. He almost looks like he’s trying to ram his way through the reflections, to no avail.

Somehow, that only makes her feel worse.

The steelix lunges for her, and Nia dives under his head to dodge. Panicked, she finds her aura and pumps it into her paw, lashing up with a desperate, sloppy punch mimicking Val’s power-packed moves.

(Wait—mimic?)

But her move bounces harmlessly off the steelix’s hard coat, and her fist blooms with a painful bruise from the hit. Nia bites back a cry and scrabbles out from under the steelix before she’s smushed.

Mimic. Right!  She’s been trying to learn mimic. If she could just use one of Tobias’ fire type moves, or Samir’s razor leaf, she might have a chance.

The steelix swings his tail at her, gouging a furrow into the dirt. She nearly trips running out of the way. Then, panting, Nia scrambles over to Samir. The goat is still unnervingly still, but when Nia gets closer she can see the faint rise and fall of their side.

Oh, thank God.

Nia couldn’t figure out how to use mimic on a good day, let alone in the heat of a life-threatening battle. She hasn't even really asked Val how to do it yet, but it’s the only thing she can think of. She’s desperate.

Nia puts her hand on Samir’s leafy mane, where his razor leaf attack seemed to come from. Then, with no better idea of how she could even go about “borrowing” a move, she shoots her aura down her arm until it brushes against Samir’s.

Samir’s aura is…silver. She doesn’t try to look, really, but it flashes into her mind before she thinks to look away. Their soul is silver like steel, ironically. Solid and unyielding. Silver like a mirror, reflective and quiet. Silver like a sword and shield, sharp but protective, hard and seemingly cold. But steel makes tools, steel means safety and strength and durability and—

Focus, Nia! You’re not here to read Samir’s soul. You’re here to grab the last move they used, their razor leaf attack.

…Except Nia has no idea how to do that. Does it even have anything to do with the skiddo’s aura? Surely it does since aura is the basis for move energy, but how can she mold her own aura to match it? How can she even single out an attack from who Samir is, from the lifeblood running through them?

Nia realizes with a pang that she can’t. She simply doesn’t know how. And her instincts as a riolu are apparently not enough to learn on the spot.

Nia’s eyes snap open, breath catching as she sees the steelix’s tail bearing down on them again. Nia loops her arms around Samir’s body and lunges as far as possible.

The steelix’s tail slams down not a foot away from both of them, making their bodies jump off the ground. The attack leaves an indent like a trench in the dirt, and Nia’s heart jumps into her throat.

She needs to move this fight away from here. Samir and Tobias are unconscious, and the steelix is after her now. Her partners are in the line of fire as long as the fight continues in this cavern.

Nia shoves away from Samir and bolts for the nearest opening, the one leading down into the tunnel system. She hears the steelix let out a booming laugh far behind her. She’s confused until she realizes he must think she’s trying to run.

For the first time since this fight started, she feels angry rather than afraid. He thinks this is funny? Thinks it’s hilarious to bury her partner alive and slam Samir into the wall like a doll? Thinks it's funny to hurt them, terrorize them, endanger the whole town?

It feels easier to think, suddenly, with her terror sharpening to fury. She understands why Tobias chooses anger now, instead of losing himself to despair. It feels more like she's in control. Like she can use this fire under her skin.

The rumble of the steelix following her into the tunnels makes her stumble. She picks herself up and runs harder, gasping for breath. Giratina flickers into view at her side, whole again.

When Nia reaches the first fork in the path, she hesitates. She just—she needs a second to breathe. To think. She needs a plan. Her lungs are on fire and she tastes metal in her mouth. Her emotions are a frayed knot of fear and grief and anger. But that doesn’t mean anything to the creature trying to kill her.

The shaking of the earth grows stronger, almost shaking her off her feet. On a whim, Nia staggers down the right path and around the bend until she can hunker down against the wall.

All she’s working with at this point is luck. Hoping that by pure chance, the steelix won’t pick this path. That’s what their lives are depending on.

Luckily, some kind of deity must decide that her fortune has been bad enough today, because she feels and hears the steelix rumble down the left path, his movements slowly fading away.

Nia breathes out a shuddery breath, sliding down the wall to the ground. That stroke of luck bought her a minute, maybe, before he turns around. She has to think.

She has to get them all out of here, but even if she turns around now, grabs Samir, and manages to haul the two of them up the ladder and to safety before the steelix can stop her (which is unlikely), she’s not just going to leave Tobias down here, buried under a mountain of rubble.

Giratina flickers into view across the tunnel. Nia looks up at him as she slows her breathing, knowing her emotions are clear as day on her face.

Giratina looks irritated.

And Nia feels angry in return.

“What?!” She hisses, careful to keep her voice down. “You have some great idea?! It’s a little hard to feel optimistic when I have no way to fight that thing!”

Giratina’s eyes narrow, moving around as if trying to think of something. Finally, they settle on the satchel still looped over her shoulder.

Nia, teetering violently between despair and fury, rips it off and throws it down. She yanks it open and turns it over so their meager collection of items spill out.

“There’s nothing here!" She says, voice breaking. She swallows hard and gestures at the mess. “What? What’s going to miraculously beat him for us? Berries? Half a flask of water? Badges that won’t even work? Blast seeds?“

Nia pauses, panting, and stares at the unassuming little yellow seeds sitting on the ground. The ones they’d gotten as a reward from their last client.

“Blast seeds,” she breathes.

With something like hope blossoming in her chest, Nia stuffs the rest of their items back into the satchel and pulls it back over her shoulder. Then, delicately, as if handling precious jewels, she scoops the little seeds into her hands. There are only three of them, small and unassuming. But she recalls Tobias’ words about them.

If she ate one, it would give her a short burst of flames to attack with, even without any move energy. And that would hurt even the steelix, right?

But there are only three. And even if they’re strong, what if they’re still not strong enough? Tobias’ flames clearly hurt the steelix earlier, left his hard hide soft as molten metal. But she needs a surefire way to take him down for good.  A weak point, maybe—

A weak point exactly like that scar of his.

Nia laughs a wet, weak laugh, and wipes at her eyes. A plan is unfolding in her mind, and she can only desperately hope she can pull it off.

The steelix’s rumbling had faded away, but it’s starting to strengthen again as he returns. Nia gives Giratina a nod of thanks before hurrying back to the main cavern where Tobias, Samir, and Eddy are lying unconscious.

When she arrives, none of them have moved. That’s worrying on its own, but Nia doesn’t have time to fret over them, not until the steelix is dealt with.

Nia puts two of the blast seeds back in the satchel. The third she clutches in her paw, before moving to stand off to the side of the cave entrance.

Then, she waits.

The steelix rumbles back to the fork in the path, his cursing audible even from where she is. She hears him check out the other cave, but he doesn’t go far before turning around. He moves closer and closer to where she is, the ground shaking under her feet while she clings to the wall for stability.

Nia holds the blast seed up to her mouth. As soon as that giant silver face emerges from the cavern, she takes a note from Tobias' book and shouts, “Hey, ugly!”

The steelix’s head swings around to look at her.

Nia cracks the blast seed between her teeth, swallowing.

And immediately she feels an unfamiliar flare of energy erupt in her stomach, hot and powerful. It pushes up into her throat and out through her mouth and—

The explosive blast of fire nearly blinds her. But the pained roar of the steelix tells her she hit her target head-on.

A great thrashing follows. She feels more than sees the steelix’s tail swing dangerously close to her head as he roars with pain. Coughing up smoke and an unfamiliar sense of heat in her airways, Nia stumbles away from the blast zone. She blinks hard, squinting, until she can see the steelix writhing on the ground, churning up the dirt. The left side of his face is glowing white-hot with lingering heat.

Nia feels a thrill of victory, but hurriedly pulls out the second blast seed. Without giving the steelix time to recover, she runs straight at his face and cracks the second blast seed between her teeth.

He must hear her coming, because he pulls away just in time, dodging the majority of the seed’s explosion as he twists upright. Wavering, but once again stories above her head.

Nia curses, biting back a stab of panic. Only one seed left. She can’t afford to mess up with this one, and since he’s upright again, she’s going to need some leverage to use it.

Nia picks up a nearby rock loosened by the hubbub and launches it at his side. It pings uselessly against his armored body, but catches his attention. He squints down at her, clearly still blinking the explosions out of his vision and battling the pain.

Nia sticks her tongue out at him, then turns tail and sprints for the first cave, where the rope ladder leading outside hangs.

The steelix follows, slamming into walls in his dazed state and making it even harder for her to stay on her feet. She stumbles, but manages to stay ahead of him until she hits the cave. The bottom of the rope ladder is just visible in the little alcove off to the side. Nia ducks inside and jumps onto the rope ladder just in time.

The steelix slams into the wall separating the little space from the main cavern. The vertical tunnel around her shakes, and dirt powders her fur like snow.

Nia climbs higher, up and up as the steelix batters the wall with mindless fury. He must think she’s trying to escape. The rope ladder swings slightly under the onslaught. The wall behind her cracks ominously under the steelix’s weight.

Finally, Nia thinks she’s high enough. She turns around, facing the wall and the steelix behind it. She rummages in her satchel until she finds the last blast seed, then places it between her teeth.

The steelix is still roaring, slamming into the wall of the alcove over and over again. Nia clings to the rope ladder, locking her arms and praying this will work.

Finally, the layer of rock between the two of them begins to crack and crumble. It falls away in noisy chunks that plummet to the ground far below. The steelix’s face becomes visible, right at her level. He tears away the last chunk of rock between them, looking like a frenzied animal after its prey. Once she’s in sight, mere feet away from his giant maw, he goes for her.

And Nia swallows the blast seed.

Like the two times before, the seed immediately erupts. Flames explode in a cloud of biting heat. The steelix’s agonized roar only barely registers over the ringing in her ears. She remembers to close her eyes this time.

When she opens them, her heart skips a beat. The steelix is still upright. Rearing back with his face a molten hue, clearly hurting, but not unconscious.

One more final push. That’s all she needs. The heat should’ve softened the metal a bit, so—

Nia snaps her arm out and summons a staff of aura, feeling her reserves run low. Then, she pushes off the back wall of the alcove and leaps. For an instant, she feels like she’s flying. It’d be enjoyable if she weren’t flinging herself directly at the mouth of a monster.

Then she swings her aura staff up, and brings it down with all the strength left in her body.

The makeshift weapon hits true. It meets the softened split of the steelix’s scar with a crack like a gunshot. Nia isn’t sure if the sound is from the force of the blow, from the steelix’s shell splitting open further, or from her aura snapping to pieces in her hands.

Whatever it is, it seems to be enough.

The steelix doesn’t roar, or cry out, or rear back. Instead, he drops. Nia, who had landed on his head, struggles to hang on to the metal surface as the huge Pokemon topples. When he hits the ground, the earth itself shakes, throwing up a plume of dirt and dust that has Nia hacking.

An unnerving quiet falls over the cavern. The only sounds are her panting breaths, the quiet settling of dirt and earth, and the heavy puffs of the steelix passed out like a derailed train below her.  

Giratina flickers into view off to the side, looking solemn as ever. He meets her eyes, then flicks his head back the way they came, to the other cavern.

She feels a cocktail of emotions building in her chest, but tries to stuff them away. At least for now. Relief and exhaustion make her limbs feel like jelly, but she’s not done yet. She has to get to her friends.

Nia slides down the hulking mass of the steelix. She staggers through the cavern, still coughing up smoke. She feels like her throat has first degree burns.

Finally, she finally makes it back to the cavern where Tobias, Samir, and Eddy lie knocked out.

She’s relieved to see Samir is waking up, dragging themself into a sitting position. They’re grimacing, one eye squeezed shut with pain, but they look coordinated enough.

“Samir!” She gasps, hurrying to their side.

The skiddo jumps, looking first at her, then around the cavern. Their anxious expression melts into confusion.

“The steelix is down,” Nia says, kneeling at the skiddo’s side and peering into their eyes to see if they have a concussion or anything. She doesn’t even know what she’s supposed to be looking for. “How do you feel?”

Samir blinks at her, clearly bewildered by the easy dismissal. Their gaze flicks over Nia’s shoulder, as if not quite believing her.

“I’ll tell you later,” she says, too tired to deal with this right now. “Seriously, are you okay? You got thrown into a wall and I thought…”

Samir must hear the way her throat closes up, because they finally soften and focus on Nia’s questions. Hesitantly, they nod. Their eyes flick down Nia’s form as they tilt their head with a furrowed brow.

“I-I think I’m okay?” Nia answers. She stumbles back to her feet, helping Samir up after. “But we need to find Tobias.”

Samir’s eyes widen. The skiddo went down first so they’re probably wanting to know what exactly happened, but Nia doesn’t have time to explain. Now that her adrenaline is fading, the fear is returning tenfold.

She really, really hopes Tobias is okay.

“This way,” she says, hurrying as fast as she can to the mountain of earth and rock that buried the charmander. The closer she gets, the more her distant panic surfaces.

This is…a huge mountain of dirt and rock. And while she saw Tobias get buried, she’d been too focused on his face to notice where exactly he would end up by the end of it. But she needs to get him out of there. What if he’s seriously hurt? What if he’s—

Fear spiking, Nia kneels in the dirt at a random spot and starts digging with her hands. She was hoping it would be easy to move, but the rocks and chunks of earth make it painful and clunky to handle, and the clay-like soil sticks everything together.

Nia feels her eyes sting with tears. She digs harder. Faster. Samir tugs on her satchel, but she doesn’t stop to look at them.

She doesn’t know where Tobias is. What if he dies because she can’t find him? What if he’s suffocating?

Her eyes blur with tears as she chokes. Desperately, Nia looks up at the nearest cave wall to find Giratina. The titan is still there, fragmented and a bit hard to see in the broken chunks of mirrorstone. He shakes his head. Nia isn’t sure if that means that he didn’t see where Tobias ended up either, or—

Samir is tugging at Nia’s satchel with their teeth again, hard enough to disrupt her work.

She finally turns to them, snapping, “What?!”

Samir looks concerned, but their gaze darts nervously to where Eddy is lying on the ground across the cave. They jerk their head towards the tunnel leading out of here.

Nia shoves the goat away, panic making her movements and words sharper than usual. “I’m not leaving him down here! W-What if he’s suffocating?!”

The thought only makes everything worse, and Nia’s breath hitches with a sob as she gets up, skittering around the cave-in, pawing small handfuls of rubble free before moving again to a new spot. Where is he? Where is he?!

Samir doesn’t argue again. Just staggers over to her side and starts trying to dig with their own hooves. After only a few seconds they stop, looking over at her with clear conflicted feelings.

She knows. She knows. It’s going to be impossible to find the charmander in this mess since neither of them know exactly where Tobias is. But she can’t just leave him down here! What if he dies because they take too long to get help digging him out? What if Eddy or the steelix wake up and find him first? What if the whole tunnel system caves in?

Nia is crying openly now. She ignores the pain of rocks and dirt straining and scraping at her desperate hands. She can hardly see in front of her through her tears, and swipes a frustrated, dirty arm across her face.

She can’t let Tobias die here. He’s her partner! Her friend! She can’t just let him go!

A small flash from her chest startles her and Samir alike. Nia sniffles, looking down at herself. She’s not surprised to find her body outlined with blue, the tired remnants of her aura manifesting with her rising emotions. Another spark flashes off her body.

Frustrated, she takes a moment to ball her fists against her temples and shriek into her inner arms. She supposedly has this great power, this ability to use her energy like no other species of Pokemon, and still she’s useless when people really need her.

Would one of her moves help if she could actually use them? She feels as powerless as she did in that fire in Ghatha. Or in the fight against the seviper. Or when she was grabbed by Giratina. When she was first transported to this world, scared out of her wits. When her and Tobias were trying to find that tropius calf, trying to see an enemy ambushing them from beneath the earth and Nia had tried and failed to—

Nia’s breath catches, tears and snot and grief making her cough. But wait, wait. That time in the cave dungeon, she’d tried something with her aura. Tried to find that burrowing enemy by sending out a pulse of her aura, like radar.

She didn’t even get close to succeeding then. And she hasn’t tried anything like it since. Her attempt at using mimic earlier was a total failure. But…

What other option does she have?

Nia’s aura flares, making her flinch as it pulses through her like a rush of energy. Nearby pebbles rattle and roll away. Distantly, she registers Samir stepping back out of the corner of her eye.

This is dangerous. She can’t control this yet. She could make the rock slide worse, could unsettle the precarious stability of the earth. They could all be buried alive.

But if she does nothing, Tobias could die. And it’s worth the risk if it might save him.

“Samir, step back,” Nia whispers, widening the arms she has braced against the dirt and rock. She hears the skiddo follow her order without complaint, scrabbling away.

Then, Nia takes a deep, shuddering breath. Tries to imagine her aura coursing through her body. Tries to remember what Val told her, long ago, about casting her aura out not as a solid stream, but as a veil. A wave.

Her first attempt erupts from her hands with an earth-rumbling burst. Nia flinches, gritting her teeth. Too strong. Too much, all at once.

She tries to slow the flow of her aura, less like a faucet full-blast, and more like barely nudging it on. Lets her aura trickle out at a much smaller, much steadier pace.

Like this, it’s easier to control how the aura disperses. She can hold the contents of that gentle flow, then scatter it like water drops from cupped hands. Like a fine mist, rather than a stream.

She tries it. The energy disperses, and for a moment Nia fears nothing has happened. Did she still not get it right? Val said she should be able to sense any aura hers bumps into.

Could Tobias already be..?

Nia whimpers and tries the technique again, struggling to keep her emotions from getting out of control. She can’t let them get out of control. She has to do this. She has to help Tobias!

She just…she just wants him to be safe.

The second try is better than the first one. Less a net with gaping holes in it and more a…pulse. A wave, gently passing through the earth beneath her.

For an instant, there’s nothing.

Then, a new color flashes in her mind, there and gone in an instant. Red. Not the bright blood red of Xander or their scarves, but a deep, maroon red.

Nia’s breath catches.

“Tobias..?” She murmurs. Desperately, she sends out another pulse. The second time her aura brushes against another’s makes her choke out a sob.

There’s life there. And despite the fact that Nia has never seen Tobias’ aura before, despite the fact that she’s trying not to look too deeply into it, she knows it’s him. She can feel it’s him, almost as clearly as she knows her own soul.

And he’s still alive.

Nia sends another pulse of aura into the earth, hands shaking. Then another. Tries to pinpoint with her aura exactly where he is in this mess of rubble. It’s hard, when she isn’t familiar navigating this disconnected part of herself. But after a few more times, it starts to make sense. It’s like…sonar. Like a radar. Like a beacon.

“I found him,” she says, breathless. Her heart pounds in her ears. Her eyes snap open, blue still outlining the edges of her vision, and she slides clumsily down from the top of the rubble.

Samir trots to her side, wide-eyed but looking to her for direction. Nia hurries to the edge of the debris, biting her lip and sending another pulse of aura into the pile. She swallows down a cry when she “sees” that same flash of red, only a few feet forward.

“Here,” she says, getting to work. “Just ahead!”

Samir nods, then immediately joins her in digging. After a minute or two, Nia’s bloodied hands have made a sizeable dent in the earth. Samir has adjusted their strategy to start moving the discarded dirt further away, and they stabilize the gap Nia is creating. Nia wants to use her aura and blast the rubble away, or ask Samir to use one of their own attacks, but she knows they risk hurting Tobias if they do.

Still, it seems like it takes forever to dig deeper and deeper into the loose rock and earth. Nia sends the occasional pulse of aura out to make sure they’re still on the right track.

Finally, Nia pulls away a small slab of rock to reveal a dusty orange arm.

“Tobias!” She gasps, fresh tears flooding her eyes. She frantically digs more, using her aura to help fling away the larger chunks.

Once they uncover half of Tobias’ body, Samir helps to drag him free completely, trying to be mindful of any injuries.

The charmander's face is bruised and slack, eyes closed, but his tail flame is like a breath of fresh air. Small, but bright.

Nia gathers him into her lap, hugging his warm body close. She knew he was her friend, she knew she cared about him, but she didn’t realize how much the thought of losing him hurt until she nearly did.

“Gh…Nia?”

The throaty whisper makes Nia pull back, looking down at Tobias through a blurry watercolor of tears.

He squints up at her, wincing and lifting a hand to his head. “What happened? Feels like I got hit by a mountain.”

“More or less,” Nia says, voice aiming for joking but coming out strangled.

Tobias blinks up at her, frowning, probably about to ask more questions, but Nia can’t resist. She leans down and wraps him up in another tight hug, crying into his dusty scarf.

“N-Nia! Hey!”

“Are you okay?” She asks.

“I think so? What—“

That’s all Nia needed to hear. She ignores Tobias weak protests and flailing limbs, hugging him tighter. After a few moments, he seems to give in, grumbling something and letting his arms fall heavily around her back.

Samir is the one to interrupt the emotional reunion. They tug at Nia’s scarf, tied around her bicep. When she looks up, wiping at her eyes, the goat gives her an apologetic but nervous look, glancing once again at Eddy. The otter Pokemon is still knocked out for now, but Nia heard him groan earlier. He could wake up at any moment, and none of them are in any condition to fight.

“R-Right. We need to get out of here and grab Calder.”

Samir nods, helping Nia to her feet. Then they lean into Tobias’ other side to force the charmander to use them as a crutch.

“‘M up, I’m up,” Tobias grumbles half-heartedly. Nia can tell he’s exhausted by how little he protests their help.

“Let’s go,” she says, looping his free arm over her shoulder.

Slowly, the three of them hobble past Eddy, back through the tunnel and into the first cave with the rope ladder. Both Tobias and Samir stop sharply when they see the downed steelix surrounded by rubble.

“How..?” Tobias chokes. She feels him turn his head to look at her. “Did you—“

“Later,” Nia insists, too on-edge to feel flustered.

When they finally make it to the ladder, Nia has to spend a full minute convincing Samir to go first. She knows they’re the slowest climber, that’s why she wants them to go first! She doesn’t want to have to worry about accidentally leaving them behind.

The skiddo looks bitter at that, but finally acquiesces when Nia gives them a pleading look and reminds them that it’s really not a good time to be arguing.

Nia sends Tobias up between them, to give the charmander someone to follow but to allow her to try to catch him if he slips. She can tell that almost starts another argument, but Samir, thank God, starts climbing and Nia puts on her I’m Serious About This face so Tobias finally starts climbing himself. Slower than Nia would like, but it’ll have to do. Nia shoots nervous glances over her shoulder at the steelix and towards the tunnel where Eddy lies unconscious.

When Tobias’ tail flame is high up in the tunnel, he calls down, “Nia!”

“Coming!” She whisper-yells back, finally scrambling after the two of them. Her tense muscles are sore and heavy with exhaustion, but she doesn’t think she’s ever climbed so fast in her life, leftover terror giving her energy.

She catches up to Tobias just as Samir is hauling him over the edge and into the surface cave of the old mine. When she’s out too, Nia takes a moment to catch her breath. Tobias looks seconds away from passing out, and Nia is tempted to let him, but…

Samir tap-taps in the dirt. They jerk their head towards the mouth of the tunnel, in the direction of Asra. Their brown eyes are tired and sympathetic, but unyielding.

“I know, I know,” Nia groans, pushing herself to her feet. Tobias hisses a weak protest when she drags him up too, slinging his arm over her shoulders again.

Slowly, the three of them trudge back to the opening of the cave. Nia sees the dim gray light of early morning, dawn just starting to touch the horizon, and tears flood her eyes again. The cold desert breeze brushing against her face is the sweetest air she’s ever tasted.

When they step outside, Nia can see the vague mass of Fort Asra in the distance, and she wants to cry for another reason entirely. It’s so, so far. She’s not sure they can actually make it.

A quiet sound behind Nia makes her instincts jolt. She sees Samir tense at the same time, ears swiveling back.

Nia spins, Tobias stumbling without her support. But she’s just in time to put up a weak screen of aura, a poor imitation of her earlier protect.

Bright blue slices of water hammer against her shield, cracking it. Nia grunts and stumbles back from the blow. Tobias catches her, nearly falling himself. Samir steps in front of both of them.

Eddy is at the mouth of the cave, leaning heavily against the wall. He sneers at them with bared, bloody teeth and wild eyes. If they were at full strength, Nia is sure they would be able to handle him as easily as they did earlier. But after that Steelix..?

Nia can barely get her legs under her again. She and Tobias are holding each other up like a wobbly tower of cards. Samir’s legs are visibly trembling with fatigue.

Eddy snarls, lunging forward with his shells drawn. Nia tenses, and she sees Samir do the same.

A familiar jet of water shoots past her shoulder, slamming into Eddy and sniping him out of the air.

Nia blinks, then whips her head around to see none other than Calder rushing up to them. Behind the inteleon, Nia is even more surprised to see Takeo and Granite hauling themselves up the rocks.

“Calder?” She asks, bewildered. She must be hallucinating.

But the inteleon runs past them without a word, tackling Eddy to the dirt and pinning him easily. The dewott snarls but can barely put up a fight.

A light touch to Nia’s back makes her jump, but when she looks it’s just Granite, reaching out with his trunk to get her attention. The donphan scans her and then Tobias with serious eyes.

“You three all right?”

Tobias snorts weakly into her neck, clearly thinking a sarcastic retort but too fatigued to verbalize it.

“Tired,” Nia manages.

Granite nods. “I’m guessing ol’ Ed here was up to no good to have you three looking like that?”

“Caused the quakes,” Tobias says, words half-slurred as he struggles to stay conscious.

Takeo, who had crouched in front of Samir to check them over, matches Granite’s surprised expression. The two of them openly stare at the charmander.

“Eddy can’t use ground moves,” Granite finally says, dumbfounded.

“He's working with an, um…a steelix,” Nia says, struggling to recall the species. “He’s knocked out, but he’s still down there.”

Calder, with Eddy’s unconscious body tucked under his arm like an unruly toddler, steps back over to them. He frowns. “There’s someone else involved?”

Nia waits a beat, before realizing that Tobias is legitimately passing out as they speak and Samir is almost there as well, swaying on their hooves. Not to mention mute.

She rubs at her eyes. “There’s a tunnel leading under the mines. Beneath the mine cart. Leads to a tunnel system. A steelix was causing the quakes. Eddy was making it rain so much to increase the damage.”

Nia can see all the adults taking that in with furrowed brows. Calder’s grip on Eddy grows tighter. Takeo narrows his eyes and glances at the otter with a dark expression. Granite curses under his breath, steadying Tobias when he starts to to tilt.

Finally, Calder nods, handing Eddy off to Takeo. The spidops wordlessly gets to work bundling the smaller Pokemon up with…silk? He skillfully twines it around and around the otter with his long arms weaving like a loom. Nia watches the motion as if in a trance, blinking sluggishly.

“Should we call for backup as soon as we get back?” Granite gruffs.

Calder nods again. “Yes. Send Lara and Cody for sure. We need a sleep powder and a heavy hitter to make sure we can keep the steelix controlled until authorities arrive. Send Jay to the guild. He’ll need to grab some psychics to take these two in.”

Nia barely registers the words of the three Asra ‘mon as she fights to stay standing. Tobias is leaning more and more heavily into her as he slowly slides to the ground. She eventually gives up and goes with him, sitting down in the dirt.

She must start to doze, because she’s woken up by Tobias’ weight being shifted off her shoulder. She looks up, bleary-eyed, to find Takeo securing the unconscious charmander to Granite’s broad back with some of that same silk. A string shot attack, maybe? Samir is already tied down as well, their head up as they fight to stay awake. Their eyes are lidded with exhaustion.

“Wh’re we going?” Nia mumbles.

Takeo effortlessly scoops Nia up to hold her in his arms. She doesn’t have it in her to feel embarrassed about being carried like a child. At least she’s not swaddled up in a cocoon and strapped to the bug type’s back like Eddy is.

“Taking you kids back to town,” Takeo grunts, starting to carefully pick his way down the rocks. Granite follows with a clumsy slide that sends pebbles raining down after him.

Nia blinks up at the slowly-brightening sky framing Takeo’s chin. The air is still cool with night air, but the dawn is turning from gray to blue, clear and lovely.

Her eyes slide to the side, until she catches a glimpse of orange and green atop Granite’s gray back.

“Are they gonna be okay?” She asks.

Takeo hums. “They should be fine. You kids are tough, and smarter than we gave you credit for. Dumber, too.”

Nia huffs something like a laugh as she closes her eyes. She can’t really argue with that.

[rapid-prototyping-project]

Health Brickke

One of the answers to my questionnaire was that I could add a brickke that gives the player another life. This should help balance out the difficulty a little. The first thing I did was, as for the rest of the funny brickkes, make a new material and add code to set it in the brickke itself.

And then i had to fix the animation. See, the problem is that the amount its increasing to in the scale and location can be different so i don't get to use the code i used previously for the life bar. This did NOT work, so i decided to get rid of it all and rewrite the code.

After a lot of suffering, this pretty much works. My issue was that Return Value Z was being set after the bar decreased, so it would ALWAYS be 100 less than what I need. My only issue now is that it moves normally in accordance with the timeline, but the size increases immediately. For some reason.

Now the colours are fixed. I have the same issue as with the size in that it occurs immediately. I also HATE having to program it like this but I'm too tired to think of a different way so this will have to suffice. Unfortunately.

wow, the green is a lot brighter than the rest despite having the same luminosity. I'll have to turn that down

I have removed all of this MESS of code so I had a way of dealing with the changing colour and size on my healthbar. This is it now.

good lord. It works a bit differently, now flashing yellow [?????] but it works and GOD is it neater

I even replaced the code two images above triggered by the health brickke which causes to pulsate when triggered if at full health. Not the intent, but a nice effect. I'll keep it.

ill fix this later though.

I LIED, YOU FOOL. I FIXED IT LIKE A MINUTE LATER

Yeah so the mess of code is no longer as foul. Hell yeah!

OH YEAH I AM SO GOOD WAHOOOOOOOOOOOO

so all in all, i think i did well.

This is also the redone code for my heart sprite, using the same code as my healthbar as the sprite wasn't being repaired.

[groundlevelcliff]

Point of view (making it harder than it has to be)

Learning RPG Maker MV is going well - as well as one can judge that when they're on the third 10-minute tutorial video - but the thing that struck me once I ran the thing was how small every tile and character is.

That doesn't pose a problem in and of itself, but the player character in this project is a housecat. Since cats are tiny in relation to their surroundings, I had already intended to double the size of each tile. At this point I'd have to blow up each non-player sprite by four just to get the scale right! I'm already going for a pixelated look, but scaling to that degree is excessive - not to mention that it'd make placing even a single item a multi-tile ordeal. What I'll likely do is double each person-sized sprite, then find a plugin to double the zoom level from there.

That's a minor concern, though. What really bothers me isn't the size - it's the perspective.

The perceived size of a sprite is going to carry the tone far more than the actual height and width would. I could quintuple the size of the entire game, but if it's all in top-down view, the player is still stuck looking at the top of everyone's dome. They're going to feel bigger than both the character and the scene, which is antithetical to what I'm trying to convey.

The 3/4ths view is MV's default - not because of anything inherent to the engine, but because every innate sprite resource is drawn in that perspective (as are most user-made resources). It's something we're all used to seeing by now, so we usually ignore the implication that the viewer's watching things happen from the sky. Since most people interpret this view as the "normal" perspective, though, I worry it would struggle in communicating situations where the player character themselves is smaller than the average person.

Side view...just feels flat to me. I don't think anything scary has ever happened in side view.

If I want the player to really feel too small for their surroundings, the only other option I can see is to put the camera in between those two views - something approaching a 1:2 perspective. But I had no idea just how hard it is to find examples! Just about every pixel art tutorial focuses on 3/4 view, side view, or isometric. Isometric actually is pretty close to a 1:2 ratio, but the viewpoint is always at an angle! It's made up of diamonds more than it is squares, and even if that's something MV is capable of handling, I really don't want to mess with all that.

I realized today, though, that working from zero like this is going to get me so wrapped up in theory and research that it's going to be half a year before I ever put tile to map. Why not do a case study of other games?

Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite!

This is a weird pick, but this Game Boy Color title informed about 80% of my taste in games (the other 20% was Fallout: New Vegas.) Just a straight-up adventure game. No combat. Just puzzles. It's clearly inspired by point-and-click adventure games without any of the clunky UI weirdness of other genre titles ported to console (COUGH, Maniac Mansion for the NES). I really could talk about this game all day if I don't rein it in, though, so I'm going to focus purely on the visual design.

Hamsters are about three inches tall, which means everything in the environment has to be HUGE in comparison. This is way more dramatic than what I'm planning, but looking at an extreme example may make it easier to see what makes it tick.

Here's what's interesting: the perspective in this game is all over the place.

Locations are divided into chunks that I'd say are roughly twice the size of the GBC's screen. What's funny is that the perspective often changes from one chunk to another.

The environments are often in plain old 3/4 view - like in this first screen of Sunflower Market - while the characters are in profile. They don't feel conflicting...though the scene kind of breaks apart if you stare at that bicycle for too long.

But then you get scenes like the very next room - the characters, floor, left wall, and cardboard boxes (including the "alley" between them) all seem to be at a closer angle, with only the slide being somewhat off.

Look at the left wall and where it meets the floor - it's angled towards the horizon because it's in perspective. But in the previous screen, the angle of the newspaper stacks and the little curb behind the sick hamster are completely straight, because they're purely being seen from a top-down perspective.

The produce shelves are in 3/4 and straight:

But the outside of the fridge is in perspective again:

There's also this screen, which is fun despite the front and back shelves disagreeing on where the vanishing point is:

So the artists couldn't decide what view to use either! But one thing you notice when looking at all the screens together is how every single one includes something that reinforces how small you are and how big the world is. The newspapers, the strawberries, the tape on the cardboard box. The fridge door's handle peeking from the top of the screen places it far lower than it should be in relation to Hamtaro, but it was included for readability; if it wasn't there we might mistake it for a building or weird wall.

Let's leave the market and look at this classroom "cafe" from Sunflower Elementary:

You access this tabletop by climbing up a broom handle (bottom right). The artist could've just colored the floor and wall and called it a day, but they made the conscious decision to have the foot of the life-sized skeleton model visible in the corner. You can examine this model when on the ground floor, and it's enormous. What point is there to include it, other than to emphasize how this grade school child's desk is a staggering height for the player?

Little Nightmares

Maybe it would've made more sense to start with this one? Well, whatever.

I knew I'd have more luck finding write-ups and dissections on this game than an obscure licensed title from 2002, and I wasn't disappointed. In an article published on Game Developer (formerly Gamasutra), Chris Priestman writes "The world that you travel through in Little Nightmares is clearly built for people who are much bigger than Six and so travelling through it is both unwelcoming and challenging. To enhance that, shapes and bodies are exaggerated and bloated, stretched into surreal and sometimes horrific forms."

And he hit the nail on the head! I've actually been playing with the perspective of the cat's owner specifically, tweaking the angle and exaggerating the proportions of his body to make it seem like he's looming over the world around him. But there's a fine, fine line between "mild fish-eye lens effect" and "this guy's straight up drawn in the wrong angle." There's also a drastic difference between pixel art and Little Nightmares' 2.5 D space, but seeing the latter successfully convey that feeling just makes me more determined to make it work.

Focusing on the environment itself, it's not that the player doesn't fit in their surroundings - it's that they're entirely, completely engulfed by them. A good few rooms wouldn't feel unusual in another game with a human-sized character, but open stretches of floor feel yawning and insurmountable. And it's not actually all due to size! Speed plays an enormous role. Six is small, but unlike the lumbering giants of Shadow of the Colossus or RPGs where everyone has the same walking speed, she's also not very fast. In fact, Little Nightmares' giant enemies are pretty spry!

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

Let's not look at this one for perspective tips, okay?

Stuart Little 3: Big Photo Adventure

Sure, why not? I didn't think 3d sandbox games were worth looking at since there's no real shot composition and you can, y'know, just make the models bigger, but I like this shot. Placing the camera just a couple inches off the ground stretches out the stage more than I expected.

In any case, I've got a lot of playing around to do before I find something that clicks, but I think I've got more direction than I did before.

[gayvorestories]

Dinner Date

This story is a little different, no vore. I've just had this idea rattling in my head all week and I really need to write it down.

Also I'm still working on that neocities site to back all of this up. Work has been busy.

========

Keith took a quick bite of pizza before sprinkling cheese onto a new one and popping it into the oven. He finished the slice off as he started to roll out more dough for the next pizza. Roll it out, sauce it, toss on the toppings, move to the next one. The oven dinged and he took the pizza out and set it into the warmer. His belly gave a soft groan and he leaned against the counter. No more orders coming in. He opened the box back up and took out another slice. If a customer didn't pick up their pizza within an hour and a half, they were supposed to throw them away, but Keith couldn't bring himself to throw away perfectly good pizzas.

As he was putting the last bite of the final piece into his mouth, Keith saw Trent, their Saturday driver, walk in from the back.

"My next trip ready yet?" he shouted to the front. Keith pulled the two he had just finished and boxed them up. He tried hard to keep his eyes on Trent's face. Keith was almost certain Trent got his company polo two sizes too small on purpose, there was no way he would be able to fasten those buttons over his broad, handsome, muscular... Keith looked up and Trent was grinning a little funny at him, "you uh, got something on your face there."

Keith turned bright red and pushed the pizzas forward, wiping sauce off the corner of his mouth with his other hand. Trent smiled at him and he felt like he was going to die right there. "I was, uh, they never. Never picked it up."

Trent laughed a little, "hey, better than throwing them away." His expression changed and he started, "hey uh, I was wondering, if you're, you know, not working-"

The phone rang and Keith went straight to it. He took some details down on the pad and Trent checked the time. 'I'll be back later,' he mouthed to Keith as he opened the door. Keith held up his thumb in acknowledgement and finished taking the order. Four pepperoni, 2 garlic sticks, and a two liter of sprite in 45 minutes. Barely enough time, but he could make it.

He worked as quickly as possible, rolling out dough and tossing cheese, his belly sticking out slightly from having just eaten an entire pizza. Covered in flour, he closed the oven door with everything inside. 20 minutes, just enough time to get them cooked and boxed. He opened up a medium that had been there almost 2 hours now and put a piece in his mouth. His stomach let out a quiet grumble as he swallowed the first bite. "Hush, I'm sure there will be more before we close." He looked at the clock. Unlikely, this would probably be the last order of the night. He put another piece in his mouth and sighed.

Tossing the empty box to the side, he took the pizza and breadsticks out of the oven and boxed them up just in time for the phone to ring.

"Hey, is this the Rockford street location?"

"Yeah, did you want to place an order?"

"No, no, I just wanted to let you know some lady came in wanting pizzas. Mixed up the locations. We're over an hour away and she's not willing to drive out."

"Oh."

"Yeah, just wanted to let you know. Have a good night."

"Yeah, you too."

Keith hung up the phone and looked at the stack of food and soda. "Ah fuck, there's no way I can do all that." He took it all to the back, popped open a box of bread sticks, and bit off over half of it in a single bite. His stomach gave a hungry growl and he swallowed, giving it a pat. The breadsticks were soft and warm and fresh, and he dug in so fast he was surprised when his fingers hit the bottom of the box. He set the empty box to the side and replaced it with a pizza box, taking a fresh-from-the-oven slice out and nearly cramming the whole thing into his mouth at once.

The warm cheese coated his mouth and he let out a content sigh. It was so soft he practically swallowed it whole, quickly replacing it with another, and another. He picked up a fourth piece and walked up to the front to lock the door for the night. He finished the slice as he walked back into the kitchen and found Trent looking over the tower of boxes.

"What's uh... all these for?" he asked.

"Oh, a custom-URPH-customer made a big order to the wrong store and isn't gonna come get them." Keith picked up another slice and started eating.

"You gonna try to eat all of that yourself?" Trent asked, looking at Keith's belly that was starting to noticably push against his shirt.

Keith turned red. "I-uh. There's no way I c- I mean I could eat a lot of it, but you know, I uh, I couldn't even if I wanted to, not that I don't want to I like to think I'm, uh... no."

Trent gave him that smile again and leaned back against the wall. 'Don't look, don't-shit,' Keith said to himself, trying desprately not to look at Trent's pecs through the unbuttoned collar. "Gonna give up that easy?" Trent asked.

"W-what?"

"Nothin'. I just never doubted you could until you said you couldn't."

"Oh! Oh, yeah. Well, maybe. Usually I would spread out this many pizzas all night though."

Trent's eyes widened a little, "wait, you mean you've eaten this much in a night before?"

Keith could swear he saw Trent blush slightly. "Well, close to it, but it was from the start of my shift until the end so it's a little different."

"No fuckin way," Trent said, eyeing Keith's belly again.

"I.. could give it a shot?" Keith said, unsure about whether he could eat all that. Now he was sure Trent was blushing. He picked up another slice of pizza and bit off as much as he could, finishing it off fast. His fingers hit empty cardboard and he realized he must have been eating without realizing it while they were talking. He set the box with the empty box of breadsticks and when he turned around Trent had the box open and a piece in his hand.

"Here," he said in a quiet tone Keith hadn't heard before.

Keith reached forward with his mouth and caught a glimpse of Trent looking at him confused. "Oh, oh you meant you were handing me the.. I thought you meant... fuck I'm awkward."

"N-no, it's fine, here. I don't mind." His face was burning red as he put the slice to Keith's lips, and so was Keith's. He fed Keith the slice, and another, and another, and three more after that. Keith gave a little burp and rubbed his belly, "starting to feel tight in there." He leaned against the table and his bloated belly was very visible.

"You should lean back more, why don't you hop up on the table and lean on the wall?" Trent suggested.

"I'm 5'4" and absolutely stuffed with pizza right now, but otherwise I would."

Trent pushed the slice of pizza in his hand as far into Keith's mouth as he could, leaned down, and lifted Keith up. Keith's face went right into his pecs and he swore he felt his heart stop. He set Keith on the table, his eyes wide and his face redder than the sauce on the pizza. Trent gave the pizza in his still mouth a little push and Keith absentmindedly swallowed the slice whole.

Keith ate the last few slices from that box leaning against the back wall, his belly gradually filling up in front of him. Trent opened the box of breadsticks and started pushing them into Keith's mouth. Keith tried to lean forward, but leaned back when a warm finger pressed against his mouth accompanied by a gentle, "shhhhh, just lean back and eat." Something about the tone of the voice compelled him and he did as he was told and opened up for more. He closed his eyes and focused his full attention to eating.

The warm bread, the savory tastes, the way it felt when he swallowed another bite, he hardly noticed when Trent switched from breadsticks back to pizza, and when he opened his eyes again he was licking sauce from Trent's finger.

"Oh, fuck... did... did I eat all of it?" he groaned

"Not yet, you still have half a pizza left."

"Fuck... I feel like I'm gonna explode..." he said as he rubbed his round belly. His shirt was riding up around his bellybutton as his stomach let out stressed, uncomfortable groans.

Trent moved his hand close to his belly but stopped just before touching. "D-do you want me to-" he started, but was interrupted by Keith arching his back forward so his belly made full contact with Trent's palm. Keith closed his eyes and opened his mouth again.

The last few pieces went down easy while Trent massaged Keith's round, solid belly. "All done," Trent said in a soft voice as Keith's eyes opened.

Keith looked up at Trent and froze when he realized he's pushed his belly into Trent's hand and Trent had started rubbing his belly. He opened his mouth to say something but only let out a low burp. Trent gave him that smile again.

"Maybe you should come home with me, you don't look like you're in a good state to try and drive home yourself," Trent offered.

Keith swallowed hard. "I uh... I'd love to but, I don't know, I don't wanna... you know, mess up?"

"Mess up how?"

"Well, uh, I kinda, um. I'm not good with this stuff but-"

"You like me?"

Keith turned red, "Yeah."

Trent sighed, "Keith you idiot, I'm asking you to come back to my place to fuck."

Keith's eyes widened, "oh."

"So?"

Keith tried to push himself off the table, but his belly was stuck out like a beachball and he could barely move. "I would but.. I can har-URP-hardly move."

Trent put his arms behind Keith's back and under his legs and lifted him. "I've got you."

========

The drive to Trent's house was short, and he spent the entire time with one hand tracing little circles on Keith's belly. He carried Keith up the stairs to the apartment and got him up on his feet once they got inside, Keith's work shirt riding way up his belly to nearly where his stomach ballooned out from under his ribs.

Trent put an arm around Keith's shoulders and rubbed his belly with the free hand. He brushed his lips close to Keith's and whispered, "can I kiss you?"

"You can do anything you want," Keith said with a slight waver in his voice.

Trent's hand rubbed the underside of Keith's belly. "Anything?"

"Anything."

His fingers slipped tightly beneath Keith's skin and he grabbed Keith's cock gently. "Maybe I don't know what I want to do with you yet." He leaned in close to Keith's ear, "maybe I want to jerk you off while I feed you even more, maybe I want to fuck your brains out. Maybe I want to fuck your brains out while I see just how much that sexy little stomach can hold."

Keith's hand slid up Trent's tight shirt as he leaned his head back. "Maybe I want you to use me however you see fit."

Trent kissed him roughly, pushing his tounge past Keith's lips. He scooped him up into his arms again and carried him to the bedroom. He set Keith on the bed and pulled off his own shirt while Keith stared. He bounced his pecs and winked at him, "I catch you staring all the time. You wanna touch?" Keith lifted himself up and grabbed Trents pec as he bounced it, while Trent reached down with both hands and rubbed his belly.

Keith slowly licked between Trent's pecs, feeling the fuzzy hair run over his tongue. His left hand drifted to Trent's bicep and his right gently rubbed his dick through his jeans. Trent flexed for him and thrust into Keith's hand. Sucking on his nipple, Keith undid Trent's pants with one hand and pulled his jeans until they dropped to his knees. He slid his hand into Trent's boxers and gave his cock a gentle tug as Trent pulled Keith's lips to one of his flexed biceps, which Keith gave a slow lick.

Trent gave Keith a gentle push backwards onto the bed and practically pounced onto his belly. He licked the sides of Keith's belly slowly as he pulled Keith's pants and boxer briefs off. He explored the tight, stretched spot of the underside of his belly with his mouth and slowly worked his way up to Keith's bellybutton which had nearly been pushed flat. Trent kissed his belly when it gave loud groans and used both hands to massage the sides.

"Oh god, please..." Keith whispered.

"What do you want?" Trent asked.

"Fuck me."

Trent pulled out the lube and a condom from the nightstand. After wrapping up he leaned in and kissed Keith deeply while he rubbed himself down with lube.

"Ready?"

"P..push in," Keith said. A moment later he gripped Trent's back as he felt Trent push inside of him. "F-fuck, fuck me."

Trent pushed the rest of the way in slowly and then pulled back. He pushed in again slowly as Keith let out a soft moan. "Tell me if you need me to stop."

Keith grinned up at him, "Trent you idiot, I came back to your place to fuck."

Trent gave a hard thrust in response and Keith gripped his back while moaning and laughing at the same time. He started slow and built up as Keith held onto him tightly, his belly pressing into Trent. It didn't take long for Keith to cum, and Trent followed just after. Trent collapsed next to Keith and kissed him gently on the lips. Keith slid his back to Trent, who put his hand on Keith's belly and rubbed slowly.

[weirdmarioenemies]

Name: Mechakoopa

Debut: Super Mario World

So a very polite anon has humbly requested we write a post about Mechakoopa! They are apparently this person's favorite, so today's their lucky day! See I don't like to brag but, I'd definitely consider myself as part of the top 100 most qualified people to talk about Mechakoopas in the world! And who am I to turn down such a request?

Now the 90s you see, were a turning point for good Mr. Bowser here. With a brand new clown-helicopter thing to pilot around you might think he's all set, but what kind of self-respecting villain would he be without filling his evil lair with a number of Evil Wind-up Toys based on himself? So he does exactly that- a whole fourteen years before Mario stole his idea, mind you!

Yes, you read that right! Despite their name, Mechakoopas are tiny mechanical versions of Big Bowser himself, not just any run of the mill Koopa, which explains their green heads and funky hair! You know how Koopa is actually Bowser's Japanese name? Yeah! They could've localized them as Mecha-Bowsers, but Mechakoopa just flows nicer doesn't it? And he is still technically a Koopa!

"Yo, somebody rang?"

No!! Not you, Mecha-Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine (2002)!! You'll get your turn eventually! Geez! Anyway. Where was I. Oh! Yes!

This is the obligatory part of the post where I'm like “Get a load of this funky guy”! Get a load of this funky guy! Instead of reinterpreting Bowser’s design very literally in toy form, the Mechakoopa is very much its own beast, with its funny beak and little funny legs. Our aforementioned anon mentioned the wind-up key, and oh, what a wind-up key it is! And of course the raisin d’eclair- the fantastic little googly eyes! Oh where would we be without those googly eyes?

Naturally though, Bowser doesn’t just use his toys to populate his spooky castle- he always has to keep a few on his person! So he chucks them at you in the game’s final boss fight, but he didn’t account for the fact that, in this game only, Mario can throw upwards! Oh no! His one weakness! Being pelted with plastic!

By the by, I’ve always thought the original Mechakoopa sprite from Super Mario World looked super funky! The hair almost looks like its on fire! And I like the goofy grin. 

The Super Mario World cartoon decided to interpret this sprite by turning him into a horrible little man. No, I don’t want this! He shouldn’t have arms!

The Mechakoopa’s next appearance in a mainline Mario platformer was in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, where they act... exactly the same as they do in Super Mario World! Cool! This basically established them as modern Mario enemies, but there isn’t much to say other than that!

Like all our posts about Common Mario Enemies, it would probably be boring if I just listed off their every appearance, so I will just bring up the ones that are worth mentioning. For example, Super Mario RPG! In this game, Bowser’s strongest special attack is Bowser Crush, which summons a giant Mechakoopa to stop on foes! According to the Player’s Guide, this Mechakoopa was a top secret weapon developed by Koopa researchers... to stomp flowers and scare butterflies! Wow! That is so so evil! These big guys would definitely live up to the name “Mecha-Bowser”! 

“Hey guys, are you talking about me?”

NO, we are NOT talking about you, Mecha Bowser (with no hyphen) from Mario Kart: Double Dash (2003)’s Bowser’s Castle course! Get the heck outta here! Gosh, some people just don’t know when they’re not wanted!

I am sure after all this you are wondering, they may be mechanical toys but can they do math? The answer is yes obviously! This is Mechakoopa from Mario Party Advance, and they’re a mathematician! They invented Mechakoopa’s Theorem, the very real mathematical theorem that we all used in school! Everyone give them a round of applause!

I’d like to bring up their appearances in the Mario & Luigi games, not because it’s particularly notable, but because of how much I like their sprite and idle animation! Look at the wind-up key spin around and the eyes go up and down! So cute! Oh, and also because in the Superstar Saga remake they replaced the Mecha-Chomp enemies (may god rest their souls)!

Super Mario Maker 2′s final update was an epic win and a #1 victory royale for Mechakoopa fans anywhere, since it not only added Mechakoopas to all four main game themes, but also two brand new variants: the Blasta Mechakoopa (in red) and the Zappa Mechakoopa (in blue)! 

As you might expect, they can Blast (missiles) and Zap (lasers) respectively! I’ve no idea why they added these random functionalities to Mechakoopas specifically, but they’re a lot of fun and some of the most unique projectiles in the game! Zappa? I barely know ‘a! 

Oh, and I almost forgot! They are in Super Smash Bros. as well! Bowser Jr.’s moveset is a treasure trove of little references to Mario gadgets, and even though Bowser no longer tosses these guys from his Clown Car, his son has taken up the job! Only in this game, Mechakoopas explode. Uh oh! They didn’t do that before! Still, I really like popping a Mechakoopa out of its Mechakoopa Compartment just to see it wander around the stage. It’s fun!

Now that’s all I have to say about good old Mechakoopas, but I’d like to give a special shoutout to this guy in particular- the Micro Mecha-Bowser, from Super Mario Galaxy! For a long time, I assumed they were just Mechakoopas with a different design... But this definitely looks like a beefed up version of the Mechakoopa, with their big goofy teeth, their pig nose and their funky cross-hair eyes! These dudes can breathe fire too, so they really are more like Bowser! And if there’s a Micro Mecha-Bowser, there’s gotta be a normal one!

“Whassup? I heard somebody call my name!”

Harumph! Nobody called you, Mecha-Bowser from Super Mario Galaxy (2007)’s Toy Time Ga- Er... hold on a second. You actually are exactly the person I was talking about after all! My mistake! Though I do wish you’d at least give us a heads up when you’re gonna show up, given you’re the size of a small planetoid!

Yeah, the Micro Mecha-Bowsers are named after this big robot from Toy Time Galaxy, Mecha-Bowser (not to be confused with Mecha-Bowser or Mecha Bowser)! Though I have to say, there isn’t much family resemblance! He’s so blue and un-turtle like! Still, this must’ve been my favorite mission in Galaxy as a kid- I’d replay it over and over again just because the idea of climbing on a giant planet-sized robot and dismantling it piece by piece was so cool! It was like Shadow of the Colossus before I knew what the heck that was!

Well that’s about the extent of the Mechakoopa family. Isn’t it fun? There’s a moral to be learned here, and it’s that, uh... little wind-up toys are very charming! Um, I suppose. Look, writing conclusions is hard! 

Mechakoopa

[cljordan-imperium]

7 and 4 for the ask thingy pitch thing

—4— What languages exist in your story's world?

Each type of being has their own language. So you have Angelic, Demontongue, Spritely, Faerievian, Nephilimian, Elven, and so on. Even some of the animals have languages, as we will see in some future chapters where they are able to communicate with one another.

Most of the core characters can speak English because they've been to Earth. Or they have another common language that they can use. However, then you have examples like poor Martenique and Casperius who do have a common language that they both speak badly, which while they are learning each other's languages will lead to some misunderstandings.

Unlike Tolkien, who I think is amazing, I did not even attempt at creating a new language. If I need a fancy sounding word, I just go and borrow one either from Latin or another actual language. I am nowhere near creative enough for that.

—7— Does your story have any fictional plants or animals?

Short answer - Yes. Longer answer - because things are set in multiple realms, there are plants and animals unique to each. The one that has been sneakpeaked are the Chinchirpas, which look like someone smushed a rabbit and chinchilla together, made it the size of softball, then gave it multiple rows of shark teeth. Even "common" animals will have something unique about them. Abriella's two Corgi puppies can shift into massive Cerebus if needed.

Plants are also unique. There were the purple mushrooms that have rendered Amaya unconscious (don't worry we're getting back to her before too long) and there are other more dangerous plants that are more like Venus Flytraps on steroids. Think Little Shop of Horrors, but less funny.

Then there are the ones that will come in to Arch's magic. Herbs from various realms that he uses to make potions and poltices for different members of the residents of Imperium. While I could have used legitimate herbs for this, these are supernatural creatures, so it would only make sense that they would need special herbs and plants for healing and other issues.