In today's post, Issun and I race a piece of paper, discover electricity (or rather, discover someone else's discovery of electricity), and drag down Evil Rao from the sky by her (his?) tails. Now, then. On with the show!
I ended my last post with us having just stepped through the door of the castle on Oni Island. Here's one of the first things we saw in there. You know, other than the Save Mirror and the Demon Merchant who inexplicably didn't raise the alarm when he saw us (and was happy to buy all our worthless junk).
Sorry for the blurriness. I'd say it has something to do with electricity, but this is feudal Japan, and they don't even seem to have gunpowder, much less anything powered by electricity. Well, I suppose the fireworks might have some sort of gunpowder in them, if I learned anything from the Wheel of Time series...
Of course it's a contraption. I'm sure we'll find out exactly what it's for just as soon as the plot says we can.
After a little exploring, we found a door blocked by a Demon Lock. So, with a little more exploring, we found a key for said Demon Lock and unlocked the door. And here's what we found!
Do I want to know what that purple thing is?
It...talks? Very politely?
I'm here to kick some demon asses! Starting with yours!
I'd make a joke about kicking ass and chewing bubblegum, but I feel that's been overused.
Scrap of paper? Is that what it is? I...okay then.
Yeah. I mean, clearly it has a name.
...
How is a piece of paper evil, exactly? I mean, aside from the purple aura.
Okay then...
Sorry for the blurriness. Uh...suspicious people, you say? What makes you think we're suspicious?
Just forget what I said earlier about kicking ass. We're...uh...*glances at nearby sign* here to use the play area!
"Full-Throttle?" Where did you get that from?
Issun is in a hurry for some reason. Settle down, little bug!
If Issun insists, I guess.
Racer? Who said anything about racing?
How about you race yourself, hotshot? We don't have time for this!
The exit gate? Well...okay then.
So we won the race to the exit gate, easily enough. But this is what we found in the next room.
That, uh...doesn't look promising.
Uh oh...
Why do you ask? Are you going to skewer us? Should we run away now?
I...oh. Why do we have to do this, again?
I'll try as hard as I can, but I don't like the look of those needles.
Well, as it turns out, every time you fall into the needles, the platforms rearrange themselves to make it a little easier to get across. I, uh, fell a few times.
So...by this point, it was really easy to just run across the bridge and beat Tobi. For obvious reasons, I can't really take pictures of the actual races and race Tobi at the same time, so I'm just going to skip from one race to the next.
Anyway, after making our way through a few more puzzles, we ran into Tobi again.
You'd be winded too if you couldn't just float over all the obstacles.
Oh, I won't.
Labyrinth of Torment? That's what it's called? But the sign said the area was supposed to be used for fun...
So we won another race that involved jumping over a lot of saws, and then another one that involved running in between a bunch of wheels with more saws on them.
Why? You really thought I was that terrible? I mean, my name is Full-Throttle Ammy, after all...
Yeah!
So Tobi decided to change things up a bit and raced me through the "Chamber of Delay," which was a room where I had to defeat three monsters before I could go through the gate. Fun stuff, but I beat that, too.
After winning that particular race, I found myself in an obstacle course room. Well, it wasn't really so much an obstacle course as it was a series of paths that put you in and out of the way of several nasty-looking lasers, like so.
It looks horrible, but it actually wasn't that bad.
Well, that describes it pretty well.
So we pressed on, and ran into Tobi again.
So...they're all dead, then? I'd feel bad, but they were demons, so...yay?
What are you going to do, set yourself on fire if you don't win?
As the name suggests, it was basically a hallway with spikes that slowly sprouted from the walls to stab you, so I guess he was taking a risk. But I still won.
And then we made our way onto a portion of the roof, but not the actual top of the structure. Because that would have been too easy.
Fortunately, all we had to do was grab that Exorcising Arrow Key up there, and then we were back in business.
And then we found ourselves on another part of the roof, where somebody thought it would be cool to position this statue so anyone standing near it would find themselves staring at the butt.
That's one fierce-looking tiger.
Haha! Issun agrees with me.
If it could actually do that, that would be one badass tiger statue.
Issun commented that the tiger had a bow, but no arrows (apparently he shoots it with his tail). Well, i know how to fix that.
*scribble scribble scribble*
Oh...I guess I wasn't expecting the arrow to be a bolt of lightning.
That thing looks scary!
It looks like a rocket! Where's it going?
There go the clouds!
Stars? Oh, I know where this is going...
A constellation? Color me surprised!
I hope this is one of the last times I have to do this. They keep getting sneakier with the places to put the dots...oh, wait, that's not something I was going to talk about just yet.
Wh...what is that? It looks like a dancing blob twirling a snake around.
Oh, it's a tiger. ROARRRRRR!
That thing looks like it means business.
Gekigami? That's a bit of a mouthful.
How did the evil forces seal you away if you could shoot arrows made of lightning?
You're welcome.
So Gekigami gave me the power of Thunderstorm, which allowed me to electrocute things in the name of the goddess Amaterasu, which is TOTALLY AWESOME.
Twelfth? I think there are only 13, right?
See? Told you.
Cue the sad music...
Yeah, and? Why are you so sad about that?
Yeah...aren't you the one who was in such a huge hurry?
When we made our way back into the building, we had to solve a simple puzzle, which involved using...this.
Well, as long as we're careful about picking it up...
Ooh...so that's what those little yellow things on the walls were for. Nifty.
Little platforms in the air? Hmm, cool.
So we made our way all the way back to the starting room with the weird gizmo, and used the electrified key on it. This made a bunch of contraptions with gears start to operate...
That's a lot of gears, and it's not even all of them!
And then the big gate opened, allowing us access to the inner sanctum!
The statue's prominently placed metal sword was just calling out to be electrified by that bare wire or whatever it was hanging down there, so...
I didn't get a picture of it, but the statue basically exploded when I drew electricity onto it. Oops. But that was a good thing, because it revealed a hidden passageway under the statue.
And then I found this hallway!
Which led to another hallway...
Hmm. Another one of those metal sword things. So I drew lightning onto it and...
Look at all those gears!
Seriously, look at all this stuff. There's another one of those electricity gizmos in the lower right-hand corner, but we don't have a key for it yet. I guess if the Dark Lord fails at taking over the world, he could just make himself a fortune making electrically-powered stuff and starting Nippon's industrial revolution. Although I wonder which one of his unfortunate minions had to play Ben-Franklin-flying-a-kite-in-a-rainstorm in this scenario?
Once we found the electrical key and activated the other gizmo, we made our way to the next area of the castle...which looked like somebody put a lot of thought into the interior design.
See? Look how shiny those floors are. It's all so...nice.
Well, except for the laser machine, but we'll ignore that.
In that particular room, we had to defeat some monsters, then grab an electrical key and traverse a bunch of electricity platforms to get to another key way up in the air. This spider was in our way.
I just want to make the observation here that I haven't been shrunk in this scene. Which means the spider is actual-size. Ugh.
So we grabbed the other key and made our way to the next area...where we met Tobi again!
No, we're just optical illusions. But who said you were smart? You're a sheet of paper with demonic designs on it.
Oh, it is?
Yeah, whatever. Stop talking so we can get this done.
After we finished Tobi's latest challenge, we had to make our way through a few more puzzles. This one was...interesting.
Interesting way to make us climb up a wall...but we got past it. Woohoo!
And here we are making our way up to the next level. There were eerie storm clouds outside...
See? Ominous.
And then we met another one of those Blockhead guys.
Shut up, idiot. Show me your weak spots so I can beat you!
What brethren? I've killed, like, two demons since I came in here. Well, I guess they still count.
White Demon of Death, you say? That has a nice ring to it.
So then we got down to the business of defeating Blockhead. He had five weak points this time, and since I'm terrible at remembering things like this, it took me a lot of tries before I finally broke down and took a picture of the weak spots so I could finally get past him.
Taste my power and die helpless, you stone moron!
And then we met Tobi again for what would turn out to be the final time.
Indeed you aren't, paper man.
Yes? You're finally addressing me the way you should have been all along?
I hope so, because this dungeon is taking forever.
This race was actually really easy, because all I had to do was use a Cherry Bomb to blow a hole in the wall behind him, and behind that was a blossom I could use my vines on and pull myself over really fast.
Whatever.
He probably has to go back to the first floor to keep anyone else from sneaking in.
Ooh. That's harsh.
Hope it was worth it!
So, after a long speech about how he chose how to live his own life, and no one could take his enjoyment of said life away from him, he fluttered to the floor as a lifeless piece of paper...
...and then turned into a flower. Maybe he wasn't such an evil being after all.
Issun was upset about Tobi's death for some reason. The sad music even played.
And then...we made our way to the very top of the structure, but I didn't take pictures of us on our way there, for some reason. Oh well.
Yeah. It's so...quiet. And peaceful. You know, except for the stone fish with the lava flowing out of their mouths.
Why are you still referring to him as a her? People keep referring to him as the Dark Lord.
Well, anyway, here's a picture of the platform where the Final Showdown (tm) took place.
Scary, eh? I'm not actually sure if I got a picture of the fish statues, but trust me, they were there.
Oh, never mind. There they are.
I'm sure she (he?) will show up whenever it's most convenient.
But it was taking forever for anything to happen, so I let out a howl just to help set the mood. Well...that made the moon come out, and it revealed a constellation, of all things.
How unexpected. Well, I guess I'll fill in the stars...
What is that? Are those tails?
Those are definitely tails.
So, were you just, like, hanging out in the sky watching this whole time? Why were you in the sky, anyway? And I see your name is Ninetails. That's not because you have nine tails, is it?
Yami? That's a new one. Do go on!
You're the lord of Ryoshima Coast, but you couldn't come up with a better name for yourself than Ninetails?
Issun wondered who Yami was, so Ninetails helpfully explained it a bit.
That doesn't really tell us anything.
I guess we're doing this!
Yeah, okay. Watch me kick your ass in two minutes.
I remember this fight being somewhat hard when I first did it, but this time it was easy. I just whacked him with my sword a few times until he whipped out his own sword and pointed it at the sky. I never did figure out if he was powering up an attack or what. I also couldn't take too long to draw something with the Celestial Brush or Ninetails would use one of his tails to draw things on the canvas, which was usually a bad idea.
Anyway, right about that time some storm clouds would show up, complete with lightning, so I drew the lightning over to his metal sword and BAM! It made him split apart into nine little demonic-looking people, who I then Power Slashed over and over until eventually they all died.
I didn't get any pictures of that, so you'll have to take my word for it. But when I'd killed all of the little people, Ninetails reverted into just a really big orange fox.
He's missing an eye. I didn't notice that before. Oh well.
This phase of the fight was a little harder because the fox was so nimble and swift. All I could really do was hit him a few times and wait for him to try to charge me, because he'd stop and pant for a few seconds if I avoided his attack. Eventually he would turn gray and I could Power Slash him. But finally, I finished him off!
Just die, you sadistic mongrel.
And I got a cool sword! Woo!
Woohoo!
That black cloud of whatever coming up from Ninetails's corpse looks, uh, really freaky with those eyes.
It had scary eyes?
Oh, right. He was just a fox. Take that, fox!
Yeah, I'm sure all two demons that were left after I cleaned the castle out were sooooo upset.
You mean I won't have to look at it at Ryoshima Coast anymore? That's a relief.
...Died a heroic death?
...Oh. Well, that's...anticlimactic.
And then the Narrator started talking about Ninetails's spirit floating up into the sky and joining with the spirits of the other bosses I've defeated, but this post is getting really long, so I'll just skip to this part.
The north, eh? Bet I'll be going there next.
Issun was all sad because he'd learned almost all of the brush powers, but we don't care about that.
Of course not, but at least he's dead!
Don't mind if I do!
Woohoo! We're on top of the worrrrrld!
And with that, I've reached my stopping point for today. Tune in next time for a taunting from Waka and a trip to a cold, desolate land! Until next time, heroes!
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