"Double, double toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble."
- William Shakespeare, 1606
"Now, go. Destroy the Autobot Matrix."
- Transformers: The Movie, 1986
The lid of the Crystallization Cauldron was open. Towers of smoke rose from the cataclysmic witch's brew inside. The Cauldron had already absorbed virtually every Phozon in existence, the fundamental source of all life on the planet. All that was left was to add the final ingredient of Armageddon.
"Go, Leventhan! Grant me vengeance and show this world its demise!"
King Valentine beckoned ominously toward the Cauldron. The infant lizard fluttered toward the machine's glowing hatch on tiny leather wings. Combined with the Cauldron's Phozons, Leventhan would be surely be reborn as the dragon of prophecy and join the three other great beasts in annihilating the world. He would make the fields collapse and the mountains crumble, destroying any part of the land that wasn't already sinking into the ocean.
But Leventhan never entered the Cauldron. A Psypher chain suddenly wrapped around his throat, and in the next instant his neck snapped.
The undead Valentine gasped and peered over his shoulder. Behind him was Velvet with the Graveryl looped over her arms, arriving just in time to prevent the death knell of the world.
"Your madness ends here, grandfather!" She said defiantly. "Onyx and Gallon have failed. Ingway has been put out of his misery. We can still save the world from the brink!"
Valentine scurried like a greedy insect to where the baby dragon had fallen. He lifted the creature's limp, broken corpse in his arms before wailing in despair. He let Leventhan drop back to the ground as his bony hands curled into fists.
"Enough of this meddling!" He screamed. "Cauldron, eliminate this bastard granddaughter of mine!"
The ground was suddenly hit by another tremor, but this felt more localized than the continent-wide quakes that had already reduced most of the planet to a shattered wasteland. The nozzles on the sides of the Cauldron quivered like a nest of enormous serpents, and the entire diabolical contraption slowly rose up, up, straight out of the ground. As it lifted itself from its crater, it uttered a deafening metallic groan like a demon crawling up from the deepest bowels of the Underworld. Standing on bowed legs, it towered over Velvet like a massive bronze castle, staring down at her with a single armored eye shaped like a blazing sun. The tiny sorceress was only a hundredth its size at best.
And then it started to walk.
Velvet hesitated in shock. The Cauldron's iron tendrils shot up from the ground directly underneath her feet, but she dodged the attack with a nimble backflip. Gathering her courage, she avoided the machine's continuous ground attacks and ran underneath its legs. She grappled the Graveryl to the sturdiest pipe she could see on the machine's base and hoisted herself upward, starting her slow and treacherous climb to the Cauldron's main oculus.
The Cauldron had been built with countless self-defense capabilities, and Velvet met a new hazard with every inch she climbed. She was nearly incinerated when one of the machine's hidden vents opened in front of her and released a blast of sweltering steam. She moved to a safer position on the Cauldron's hull, but not before the steam grazed past her and burned away the right side of her skirt.
Climbing higher, she was attacked by a series of flailing hydraulic arms. They scratched at her legs, tearing through her stockings and trying to throw her off of her foothold. She kicked some of the appendages away, summoned a magic tornado to dismantle the rest, and resumed her climb. Higher and higher she went, overcoming peril after peril, until she reached the Cauldron's highest tier and stood just in front of its massive eye.
A bloodcurdling assortment of automated weapons unfolded around the eye. Velvet avoided a swift beheading from a buzzsaw, but the whirling blade still managed to slice through her red hood so only her black veil remained and her long blonde hair hung over her shoulders. She twisted her chain around the saw's pistons and ripped the weapon away from the Cauldron.
The Cauldron attacked next with a mechanical sword that glowed like it had just left a blacksmith's forge. It lunged straight for Velvet's heart, but she evaded to the edge of the platform without a moment to spare. The tip of the blade still reached far enough to catch the gold fringe of Velvet's blouse, tearing away a portion of the sequined fabric and baring her left breast. This didn't hinder her attacks, however. She hadn't time to worry about modesty.
Velvet conjured a torrent of fireballs that melted the bladed appendage. She raised the Graveryl and got ready to attack the Cauldron's eye directly, but the orb suddenly closed and the Cauldron seemed to become dormant on its feet. She was perplexed for a moment as the entire structure began vibrating with a low mechanical hum. The noise steadily became louder and louder, until Velvet realized what was about to happen. The Cauldron was charging its own deadlier version of a Phozon Burst.
Velvet leapt from the edge of the platform, using the Graveryl as a rope to rappel to the ground. She didn't escape the blast radius in time.
The eye released its Phozon Burst. Velvet avoided the brunt of the explosive attack so she wasn't vaporized instantly, but she could still feel the smelting heat brushing against her back. The sheer force of the blast broke her Psypher chain to pieces and sent her hurtling to the ground. There she remained in a heap, nearly motionless and groaning quietly in pain.
The Cauldron walked forward, getting so close to Velvet that it could easily crush under any one of spider-like feet. If King Valentine still had a mouth, he would have been licking his lips.
More appendages emerged from the Cauldron's top and extended down toward Velvet. Iron shackles locked around her wrists, raising her arms over her head and lifting her up into the air. She was left hanging on display in front of the Cauldron's eye, where the only thing saving her from total embarrassment was a few strands of her long hair covering the left part of her chest.
King Valentine started to consider something.
The Cauldron raised another one of its bronze arms, brandishing a massive power drill. The screaming device was three inches away from running Velvet through her stomach when Valentine came to a cruel epiphany
"Cauldron, wait!" The ghoulish monarch shouted. "Heed your master!"
He pointed at Velvet's helpless dangling form with his skeletal index finger.
"This is perfect! Nevermind Leventhan. Turn HER into my instrument of destruction!"
Under the king's authority, the Cauldron's eye changed colors and loomed closer to Velvet. A red light gleamed over her body, studying her measurements and chemical compositions. The Cauldron adjusted its internal clockwork, dropped the sleeping princess into its open brim, and sealed the lid after her. The massive automaton situated itself back to the ground and diverted its full energy into its bellows.
Velvet woke up in a warm place. She was floating on hot air, slowly hovering downward through the Cauldron's complex network of pipes. When she reached the Cauldron's center, her eyes grew wide with terror.
Virtually every Phozon on the planet had been whipped into a single massive ball. The Cauldron's hydraulic forces were pushing her toward the unearthly sight, while the sphere was instinctively reaching at her with tendrils of violet lightning. She tried desperately to swim away from the Phozons and prevent the doom of the entire world, but the sphere acted as if it had a will of its own and it was anxious to make itself whole.
Velvet let out half of a scream before she was consumed by the massive energy ball and sank into its nucleus. At first, exposure to the dense Phozons was more pleasant than she expected. She could feel her strength returning with each Phozon-enriched breath she took. The minor scratches and burns that covered her skin were healed instantly. The only thing that wasn't reversed was the damage to her clothing.
It would take a few minutes before she realized Cauldron's magic was slowly unraveling the natural forces that held her body together.
Under the influence of the Phozons, Velvet's mind drifted to a better place. Soon she was resting safely in the arms of Cornelius, who had never been inflicted with the Pookah curse. She forgot about the wars between Valentine, Ragnanival, and Ringford. She couldn't even remember Armageddon being triggered. She was living in a different time. A time where the world had always been at peace, and no one would object to two lovers from different kingdoms settling down and raising a family.
Velvet was pulled back into reality when she felt her body begin to mysterious change. Her heart was racing. Her bust grew slightly heavier. A small bead of milk trickled down her bare breast.
Time froze for a brief second. Then Velvet's cells began to rapidly deteriorate from the inside out.
Her lungs burned like they were catching fire. She grabbed her throat and gasped as she smothered under a toxic overabundance of Phozons.
The magic sphere exploded under intense pressure, instantly disintegrating Velvet's body into its most basic components and expanding to the walls of the Cauldron. The Cauldron's gears and turbines stirred the matter into a swirling vortex of primordial stars. The trillions of twinkling life particles gravitated inward. Instead of forming another massive sphere, they were slowly reconstituted into a much smaller hourglass shape.
The outside of the Cauldron was swathed in thick gray clouds. As the steam-powered monstrosity cooked its Velvet soup, King Valentine rambled feverishly to himself.
"I should be thanking you for being such a lustful fool, Odin. The same seed you used to corrupt my precious Ariel has been planted as my seed of destruction. The offspring of both of our cursed bloodlines will bring an end to this world!"
The Cauldron's constant pumping and churning was the only thing loud enough to drown out Valentine's maniacal laughter.
The horrible transformation lasted about as long as it takes to speedrun Sonic 3 & Knuckles.
The top of the Cauldron violently erupted, expelling the world's Phozons in a swarm of glowing purple butterflies. The tiny creatures flew downward and converged into a single collective entity.
Velvet opened her violet crystal-textured eyes. A pair of enormous luminescent wings extended from her back, marking her as the queen mother of the smaller insects, but they dissolved into vapor and allowed her take a more human appearance once she was standing on solid ground. The wings were far too large and unwieldy when Velvet didn't need their support, not unlike the Sturm Boosters on the Gundam GP04.
Slowly and gracefully, she approached King Valentine. Excess Phozons floated off of her body and dissipated into the air each time she exhaled. Lush plant life sprouted out of her footsteps in the barren sand.
Velvet's dress had been mended with a more regal appearance. All of the red was exchanged for purple, the color of Phozons. Her blouse and her stockings were no longer torn. Her skirt reached down to her ankles. It was partially transparent around her legs and seemed to be crafted from the same weightless magic material as her wings. Her hood was still missing, but her veil glittered with fresh pearls and her long hair glowed with a new golden luster. Her eyeshadow was made from crushed black diamonds. There was going to be a more elaborate description here, but the author got distracted playing Gunstar Heroes 3D.
Velvet had been reborn as a wondrous and terrifying embodiment of Mother Nature. She had power to shape the world and destroy it as she wished. It was like Madoka's final form, except she was hot. She was everything the old king could have desired in his quest for revenge.
"My… my Velvet! You've become beautiful! You're finally something I can be proud of! Ariel, forgive me for ever doubting you!"
Valentine threw himself to Velvet's radiating feet in adoration.
What he was too foolish or too crazed to realize is that Velvet was a merciful world-goddess rather than a wrathful one. She was more concerned with healing her child, the planet Erion, rather than putting it out of its war-torn misery.
Closing his imaginary eyes and smiling with invisible lips, Valentine waited for his glorious destiny.
Velvet complied by silently summoning her new, more organic Graveryl. Thick thorn-covered vines grew out of her hands. Each end was decorated with large glowing Phozon roses in place of Psypher crystals. She looped the vines over her wrists and held them in her hands like her previous weapon.
The vines quickly lashed around the king's frail, decomposing body.
"Farewell, grandfather," Velvet said in a low and airy voice.
Twirling elegantly on her toes, Velvet pulled the thorns together and instantly reduced Valentine to a pile of bone fragments. His remains dissolved into Phozons and were magnetically absorbed by Velvet. The experience points were meaningless now, as Valentine was but a low-ranking monster by himself and the Cauldron had grinded its Velvet beans up to Level 99+.
Velvet turned to the Cauldron next. She did that Dr. Manhattan thing where she just kind of waved her hand and made it completely implode out of existence, because that's a thing supreme Phozon-beings can do.
She closed her eyes and concentrated her magic. Her majestic wings appeared again, and soon she was surrounded in an immense pillar of violet light that reached so far into the sky that could be seen from every corner of Erion. The light split apart at its apex and plumed outward. Phozons rained back down across the land, restoring the world's life force.
And that is the story of how Velvet defeated Metal Gear Sahelanthropus and prevented George Kamitani's awfully written apocalypse ending.