King of the Tower

First topic message reminder :

"Right this way!" the drowzee spoke with calm enthusiasm, waving for the venipede to follow him down the rickety hall and towards a room filled with cushions. The routine was all too familiar for the drowzee, and he was glad of it. He was having many customers as of late, which means he could likely actually start saving up some kind of money and not have to live off of apples found in the dungeon or begging.

"Just have a seat and we can begin. I'm going to have to hypnotize you, so don't be alarmed if you suddenly fall asleep. Some rather odd things may happen once you're asleep and dreaming, but just don't move and keep calm. I've done this plenty of times. Any questions or concerns?" he asked, after gesturing to a dark green cushion.

Lennox felt the second Venipede bashing against his exoskeleton, trying to knock him off the wall. Lennox took the hit and was knocked off the wall, flying off the wall and bouncing off the ground. He bounced off the ground a couple of times before getting enough traction to start rolling on the ground again. He blasted at the other Venipede like an angry bullet, ramming into it with a stronger Rollout than he had initially started with. He smacked into the Venipede mercilessly, pushing it along the wall faster than it could seemingly go. He pulled back and rammed it again, with more force this time. He was painfully persistant in the brutal assult.

(5, 11, 23)

The venipede was knocked off of the wall, bouncing to the floor before disappearing into a pile of ash. The tangela seemed to be enraged by the fall of its ally apparently, as its vines lashed out towards the Venipede. Morpheus attempted to slash at the vines, and managed to strike it, but failed to cut off the vines as it only continued towards the venipede. Morpheus quickly turned and tried to use Hypnosis on the Tangela, trying to get it to stop before it could touch the client.

Kat carried out 1 launched of one tower :

26

Lennox felt the vines wrapping around him, but he didn't stop rolling. In fact, he let the vines attach to him, wrapping around his body and basically tying to him. Before the Tangela could pull him off the wall, Lennox rolled down the wall and started wrapping his own vines around him. The Venipede then rolled up the wall, draging the Tangela along with him. He built up a lot of speed, then rolled back down to the ground and stopped abruptly. The Tangela went flying over Lennox and smashed his head against the ground, landing right in front of the Drowzee.

Morpheus flinched at the sight of a Tangela landing just in front of him, he prepared to use Psycho Cut on it, but it seemed that the Tangela had loosened its grip on the venipede, and released him. The drowzee kept the psycho cut on his hand, waiting for the slightest sign of movement, before waiting a full minute and relaxing as the tangela crumbled into ash like the other two venipede. He looked to Lennox, "erm, are you okay?" he asked the friend and client, concerned for their safety in a genuine way. The drowzee wished he could have brought some kind of items in, but this was the dream tower. That was impossible.

Lennox uncurled himself from his little ball and stretched his body and limbs back into their proper shape. The little bug was winded, but smiling contently. He definitely looked a lot less grumpy than he had when they had started. This was not because he had won, but because it had been so long since he had had the opportunity to go all-out in a match like that. He hadn't really encountered that many worthy adversaries on the trip here, strangely enough; more often than not the pokemon he stumbled across were just families out for a walk with their children. Lennox was feeling rather good now that he had finally gotten some decent exercise in.

"I'm doing fine," the Venipede responded, his voice sounding more relaxed and even oddly chipper now. "I haven't felt this decent in a while. Those guys get you at all?"

"No, No, i'm fine," Morpheus spoke, he felt rather weary and bruised from the fight due to the tangela's strikes, but figured he could walk it off without worrying the client.
The ground began to shake suddenly, and Morpheus was looking around, wondering what was going on. The ceiling above them suddenly opened into a wide gaping hole, before suddenly a spiral staircase suddenly seemed to drop down from above and smash into the floor, implanting it there and cracking the floor below them as if it were wood, but not shattering it.
"I guess that's our way up..." he spoke to the venipede.

Lennox hopped away from the stairs, avoiding being crushed like the hostile Venipede before him had been. He looked up at the ceiling staircase, his mood flip-flopping from decently okay to more-than-his-usual-level-of-grumpiness. Stairs were one of Lennox's worst enemies; those evil things were NOT his friends. The trail of repeated inclines weren't exactly tailor-made for little bugs, ESPECIALLY not little bugs with stocky bodies and short legs. Lennox huffed a grumpy huff and began to scuttle up the first step, using his two front legs to pull himself up and his hind legs to push himself up the step. Then he did the same for the second step. He didn't say a word in his deep concentration, but it was clear that he wasn't exactly a happy bug.

"Curse this tiny body and it's deep hate for the 'up' direction." Lennox grunted as he climbed.

Morpheus followed behind Lennox, "Erm, need any help?" he decided to offer, though he was not quite sure if the client would accept his help. The drowzee was unsure of what to do for the venipede, but if he could think of something that could help then he would happily assist him. Morpheus climbed the steps with ease, having actual feet and the steps not being so steep as to be rather difficult even for him. The drowzee looked up, it seemed like they had quite a ways to go...was the ceiling getting even higher? The drowzee squinted, wondering if the ceiling was going up and away from them.

Lennox continued to scuttle up stair after stair, hauling himself up each incline and never once stopping to check how far he had come or how much longer he had to go. Lennox had no clue how much he was ascending, or how much more he had to ascend; he was only interested in ascending until he couldn't ascend any more. This was a challenge to him, and he wasn't willing to let the staircase beat him.

"No, I'm alright," Lennox huffed as he pulled himself up another stair, "I'm not ready to admit defeat yet. I won't be beaten this quickly or easily." As the Venipede continued to climb, he began to pant and huff, but he kept climbing with the same intensity. He was going to best this staircase yet.

Morpheus followed behind, unsure of what to do other than simply climb these steps. It had been what seemed like an hour, before Morpheus finally looked up. He gasped in surprise, there WAS no ceiling! It was an endless staircase going upwards!
"Uh...Lennox is it? How are you fairing with these stairs now?" he asked, wondering if the small bug was going to make it any farther. He looked down to see how far they had climbed, and was surprised to see that the ground was only what seemed to be several stories below them. He took a step up, but the ground seemed to move up with him. He took a step down, and it moved down with him. Were they just eternally stuck here or something?

Lennox was huffing and puffing much harder now, but he was still stubbornly climbing. He was tired, weak, and aching all over, but he still hadn't stopped. He did, however, pause when his guide paused, noticing that something wasn't right. He panted heavily from exhaustion and looked to the Drowzee before asking, "What is it? Something wrong with the stairs or something, or do you have a fear of heights?" As he finshed his question, he turned back to the stairs and began his stubborn ascent once more, unaware that he was stuck in an endless cycle.

The drowzee stopped following the venipede, and it seemed that the stairs would shift to keep the venipede at the same distance he was right now without being obvious about it. The drowzee shook his head, "No, it's just that...we're not making any progress...just look down."

Morpheus pointed over the edge of the stairs, desiring to show the venipede just what was going on. Obviously climbing the stairs was not something the tower wanted them to do, so there must have been something else to this trickery. The drowzee's mind began to turn, what did they have to do? Did they just have to stubbornly keep moving onward until the tower either took pity or got bored?

Lennox stopped and looked down, staring over the edge of the staircase at the floor that was obviously going nowhere. He wondered how he had been climbing for so long, yet he was only so far up the staircase. He began to ponder over this, how obviously climbing this staircase was the opposite of the right way to beat it. He pondered and pondered over this, before arriving at a final conclusion; his brain telling him that he'd has to do something drastic.

"I'm going to jump. See if that does anything," Lennox stated, before turning around and facing the staircase's center. He got a tiny running start and then lept into the staircase's center, letting himself fall through the air towards the floor of the tower. He found himself vaguely tempted to yell "Leap of faaaaaaaith..." as he fell.

The drowzee was surprised to see the venipede jump off of the staircase, it was even more surprising, when the venipede suddenly disappeared. He blinked, and heard a thud farther up the staircase. The venipede and jumped off, only to land farther up the staircase. Morpheus had to admit, the dream tower worked in odd ways, but rarely did it outright break the laws of physics like this. He looked over the edge, swallowed his fear without expressively showing it, and jumped off, only to land next to the venipede.
"Huh..." he spoke, "That's rather odd..."

Lennox managed to land on his stubby little bug legs at the top of the staircase and looked around at where he had landed. He was much further up than he had been, but it didn't appear to be quite at the top yet. He thought for a bit on what they might need to do to progress for a short bit as he waited for his Drowzee escort to join him. Once the yellow pokemon landed next to him, Lennox looked over to him and asked, "So, what should we do now? Do we need to jump again, or do we climb? Unless climbing sends us back to where we started..."