Winds Blown Differently

Skife hadn't looked up yet, being engrossed in his thoughts, but when he did... "What the hell is that thing!?"

The swordsman snickered as he heard the yell of surprise from inside the house. "Aheh-ha, sounds like somebody else woke up."

The scholar looked upon the building with a look of surprise, which turned to a smug grin. "Good, haven't had a good dungeon crawl in ages..." He began to walk towards the building, specifically to where Rexial and Riku were meeting up.

"Yo, I was thinking of asking you to come along, Skife. Having a magic-user might make this a bit easier." Rexial grinned. "Still, Blake should be here in a minute or two... ah, if he's late, we'll go in without him."

"I would have gone in anyway, looks like a good place to dungeon-delve. I've also got potions and the like, just in case I run out of MP or something..."

"It looks pretty simple. We explore the tower, find out the problem, and be back before breakfast. Sound about right?"

"I'm down with that plan."

He tapped his foot impatiently. "...What's taking Blake so long?"

"I don't know, haven't seen him."

"If he takes any longer, we're going in without him."

Blake walked down... And so did Julie.
"We're here. Just needed to convince Julie to come with us."

"Then, in we go!"

With a yell, Rexial kicked the gate open, charging inside. What awaited was a giant spiral staircase, leading up to a ceiling... "Either the room at the end is huge, or that's not all there is to this place."

The staircase wasn't set against the wall: it was free-standing, in defiance of both gravity and safety laws. It would be too easy to fall off...

He sighed. "Well, it's not like we can just fly up there, or even jump that high reliably. Let's be careful going up." The swordsman began to walk up the steps, not moving at a high speed, but remaining cautious instead.

His discretion was rewarded when a Heartless jumped at him from up ahead, giving him time to cut it down without falling. "It's not very bright in here, so of course Heartless could be hiding in the corners..."

Skife followed Rexial, blades drawn, eyes darting around the steps for any enemies.

[Press X to attack with your weapon. You will automatically target an enemy as you do so, but you can press L+R to Lock On to a specific target.]

Rexial grimaced. "Dammit, Info Bar, this isn't a tutorial level! We already know how to fight, don't tell us useless crap!"

[You had a Sync Rate tutorial, so you get basic control tutorials as well.]

"Go to hell!"

[Your mother.]

"Daaaaaaah!"

Enraged, he charged ahead and got kicked off by a Large Body, hitting the floor and having to start up the stairs again. "...Er, ah, maybe somebody with a stronger physical constitution should go first. I nominate Riku to take point, or Blake."

Skife swayed backwards to avoid a fist from the Large Body, and then flipped over it, digging one of his blades into its back as he landed behind it.

Blake took lead. He saw a couple of Soldiers, and they tried to rush him, emphasis on rush, since Blake took them out. Albeit there was a lot of resistance, the katana he was wielding had a small dark attribute to it. It was like ripping through frozen meat.

Julie, on the other hand, was busy ripping through Shadows. Her claymore hand mod gained through a couple hours of intense coding and debugging back during the struggle with Red Purgatory came in handy, no pun intended.

Riku didn't bother with any of the smaller Heartless. Barely worth the time. He instead decided to make note of each person's fighting style, an unusual habit he'd developed. He could tell none of them would have trouble with anything they were faced with here, but Skife's style in particular seemed reckless, as if he didn't care if his head was crushed. Then again, people like that were almost always the most dangerous ones.

"Bah, screw it!" Rexial muttered, leaping from where he was to the steps above him, catching the ledge and swinging up. He repeated the process several times, quickly closing in on the ceiling. "What a nuisance."

Riku allowed himself a quick smirk. "That's how you're going up?" he said. "C'mon, you gotta have something more than that!" He jumped at the nearest wall and kicked off it, somehow propelling himself upward, then kicked again to the opposite wall, kicking up off of that, and quickly caught up to Rexial, passing him just as fast. As Riku came closer and closer to being turned to jelly by the ceiling, he threw his hand forward and launched a Dark Firaga at it.

<This being Nebula's plot point, I'll let him decide whether that works or not.>

<I'm picturing the ceiling being solid, thick stone, so... I'm going with no, logically. I'm totally winging it, though, so don't feel too restricted. This is just a little warm-up, and it hardly counts as a mini-arc, unless I extend it beyond just exploring the tower somehow.>

Rexial watched Riku attempt to blast through the ceiling, cringing at what he assumed to be an inevitably painful crunch, unable to see the result. "Riku, are you okay? Ack!" Whirling about, he cut down a Wyvern Heartless that had dive-bombed at him. "Sons of...!"

Riku kicked again, off the ceiling this time, out of the cloud of smoke and latching onto the back of a Wyvern of his own. "Perfectly fine!" he replied, steering the Heartless like he'd done it a thousand times before. His sword flashed each time he passed a Heartless, invariably followed by an explosion of darkness, occasionally accompanied by a heart floating off into the distance.

Skife watched Riku and Rexial ride the Wyverns, the sight distracting him as another Large Body took a swing. The swing just barely missed his head, and knocked him off-balance. "Whoa!" He flails around slightly, just about to fall off, before blasting himself upwards towards an empty part of the stairs with an Aeroga spell.

At the top of the tower, Blake noticed Riku and the others fighting rather strong Heartless. A Neoshadow blindsided him, and he swiftly recovered, sweeping his blade in retaliation.

Rexial looked down at Blake, who was the furthest behind, facepalming at himself. "Ah, right, Blake's abilities aren't as suited to this kinda situation as us... Welp, you know what they say about friends in need!"

Aiming carefully, he dropped to the steps just opposite Blake, then threw his sword into the step next to him. "Use that to springboard up! Sorry, I forgot you can't jump as high as me normally..."

<I get the feeling that the idea of teamwork is going to be even more present here than in TITAL... and that one had some pretty badass teamwork.>

<Mm. Our little Firestorm comes to mind.>

"So," Riku said, cutting down the Heartless as they came, "How exactly do we get up? I don't see a door!"