Chapter 21: The Chaos Vortex
With Palutena's soul dragged away by the nefarious Chaos Kin, and the goddess of light herself converted into an emerald statue, tensions were most certainly high between Pit, Viridi and Riku as the two heroes quickly healed themselves up at Viridi's domain and readied themselves to go out into the Chaos Vortex. Thankfully, Dark Pit has reappeared after an oddly long absence ready to assist, though Viridi remarked that he had gone on ahead of everyone else.
After Pit was equipped with a palm weapon with Viridi's face on it "for good luck nothing more" the goddess of nature insisted, the young angel set out for the mission by running straight at the magic door and ramming it open while proclaiming "I'm coming for you Lady Palutena!" Viridi has to be quick to activate the power of flight before Pit falls onto the platform above Palutena's Temple. Pit and Riku head off towards the large gash to the Chaos Vortex opened up by the Lightning Chariot, and it wasn't very long before the two of them were inside the chaotic realm.
The sky was orange, complete with a light that imitated the brightness of a sunset. There was no such thing as land below the flight path of the two heroes, and there was tons of debris spread around the air that was either taken from or based on various locations. Pit could even recognize a copy of one of the temples in Skyworld nearby, though his attention was more drawn towards the very realistic, pale blue eyes glaring at them from far within the realm.
"This is insane!" Pit exclaims. "Well duh, it is called the 'Chaos Vortex'." Viridi replies sarcastically. As Pit tries to keep himself from going crazy from all the sights in this realm, he was immediately greeted by a swarm of twitching eyes that appears in front of him out of nowhere, and both he and Virdi exclaims in a tone of utter fright "AAAAAH!" Both Pit and Riku pause for a moment as the eyes vanish, and once the awkward silence comes to an end Viridi remarks "…Well, can't say I was expecting that…"
Pit places one hand on his beating chest and remarks "And we just started in this realm." The young angel then turns to look at Riku, who seemed to be sweating a bit despite the two of them not even coming across any foes. "I didn't think you'd be frightened by this place." Pit remarks in a tone of surprise, only for Riku to quickly say "I'm not afraid of this place Pit…"
"But you're sweating." Pit remarks, followed by Riku turning his head and telling him with a firm expression "This realm…Something about it is venomous to my body." 'You can't be serious. This is the worst time for you to be getting poisoned." Pit says in a concerned tone, and the teenage Overlord tells him as he goes back to looking in front of him "It's not like that…The realm is slowly draining my energy away."
"We haven't even come across the Chaos Kin yet. Viridi, can't you shield Riku from the negative side-effects of being here?" Pit inquires, and the goddess of nature replies "I've never even heard of someone getting poisoned by the Chaos Vortex. Of course, no one's ever really gone inside of this place without being a soul before now. Just be thankful you aren't affected, Pit." "But Riku-" Before Pit can finish showing concern for his ally, he is blinded by a flash of light coming from Riku.
The teenage Overlord had switched to his Light Form, and he lets out a sigh of relief before saying "Don't worry about me…Changing forms seems to have weakened the effect of this realm on me." "Which means it's still affecting you…" Pit says in a tone of concern as the two heroes start to run across phantom black arms that extend out from nowhere to try and block their path. Pit has to jerk back to avoid running into the hand.
"It'll be a while before we'll have to worry about my condition again. Just stay focused, the realm is going to try and distract us with whatever illusions it can possibly muster." Riku remarks as he swerves around the many hands that appear from nowhere, but Pit ends up running right through one and remarking "These feel real to me!" "That's just part of the illusion. You can't be hurt if you don't believe in the pain." Riku says.
After passing the phantom hands, a swirl of darkness warps the atmosphere of the Chaos Vortex, blanketing everything in black while somehow inverting the colors of Pit and Riku's bodies. "O…K…Maybe the Chaos Vortex's batteries are dead?" Pit remarks to try and keep spirits up with his humor, but Viridi makes a mistake of assuming he's being an idiot and tells him "This place doesn't run on batteries, dingle brain! Anyway, it doesn't matter. You two are going the right way…I think."
"What do you mean, you think?" Pit says, followed by Viridi saying to him "Don't worry about it, we'll be fine." Pit then focuses on ahead and starts to notice some enemies appearing that look like copies of Underworld Troops and Centurions, only with their colors inverted. "What the…?" He says, and Viridi remarks "The Chaos Kin's very good at copying things it sees while in it's realm, but don't worry, it won't be making a copy of any of you anytime soon."
"Because we're too hard to copy?" Riku inquires, and Viridi replies with "Something like that." "Speaking of copies, what happened to Pittoo? I thought we would've run into him by now." Pit inquires with a bit of concern, followed by the goddess of nature stating "Beats me. The Chaos Vortex is like an ever-changing maze. For all we know Dark Pit got lost, especially since he went in here before you two."
"Well, Pittoo has always been reckless…Come to think about it, where was he for the last three years?" Pit inquires as a door of light appears to take the two heroes back to what can be considered the "regular" Chaos Vortex. Pit and Riku then find themselves covered in a black substance while Viridi says "Now that you mention it, I never actually saw Dark Pit even once after you got trapped in the Ring of Chaos."
"Well that's weird, and pretty concerning…Hope he was alright." Pit says, and then he goes on to notice that he was covered in black and exclaimed "Awww man! Now my only tunic is ruined!" But thankfully, the choice to clean himself of this black filth came rather quickly in the form of a hot springs waterfall nearby. "Awww yeah! A hot sprin-gargleplffffftt!" Pit was so happy to see the hot springs that he ends up keeping his mouth open long enough to swallow some of the holy water.
He was cleaned of the black filth alongside Riku, but nearly choked on the water in the process while Viridi remarked in a mocking tone "Hey, you've got your color back." "And all it cost me was some water up my nose…" Pit says in a rather annoyed tone as he hacks the rest of the water out of his mouth. "Sorry that happened, Pit." Riku says, and Pit comments afterwards after a sigh "I guess I was relying too much on hot springs lately…"
After some giant Monoeyes try to block the vision of Pit and Riku to no avail, Viridi remarks "We've almost found the Chaos Kin. But be careful, it might try and trick you with some copies of itself." Soon after that, one of those Chaos Kin copies appears, which Pit destroys with a single charged shot from the Viridi Palm. "Go figure. This is going to get annoying pretty fast." Pit remarks as even more copies of the Chaos Kin start to buzz through the air.
Pit and Riku take down the Chaos Kin clones and then fly towards a swarm of broken rocks, where one nuisance is replaced with another one in the form of Pit clones made entirely out of pitch black darkness. "Are you serious? I thought you said the Chaos Kin couldn't make copies of me?" Pit says in a tone of disbelieving annoyance towards Viridi as he avoids attacks from his shadows. "They aren't copies. They are shadows." Viridi explains.
"Or maybe they are Dark Pit's shadows, since he is in the realm with us." Riku assumes, and Pit says in a puzzled tone "A shadow of a shadow?" "Then that would make these Dark Dark Pits." Viridi says in a humored tone, and Pit groans and says "You just had to use that joke, didn't you?"
"I would never have an opportunity like that again." Viridi says, proud of herself for her rather bad joke. This was followed by Pit saying "Besides, you can't compare these shadows to either me or Pittoo. They aren't handsome at all." "…You know Pit, you really do open yourself to Viridi insulting you quite often." Riku says in a rather dry tone before Viridi says "He's right you know."
"Like she wouldn't do it anyways." Pit mumbles to himself as he gets rid of the last of his shadow selves. And when those shadows were defeated, one glance to the left revealed the creature they have been searching the last few minutes for, the real Chaos Kin. "THAT Chaos Kin's the real deal! Take him down!" Viridi says to confirm the heroes' suspicions, and Pit and Riku charge at the Chaos Kin as the creature flees between two islands that have buildings acting as a rather eerie set of teeth.
"Where do you think YOU'RE going?!" Pit exclaims out of sheer rage as he tries to shoot at the rather nimble Chaos Kin, who swerves around between the buildings to get out of the way of Pit. As the two heroes head into an icy tunnel, Riku draws out his katana and proclaims "Keep firing on the Chaos Kin, Pit, I'll get in close and cut that monster down!" His anger was a little less than Pit's own, but you wouldn't believe that with how quickly he flew at the Chaos Kin and performed a wide swing of his blade that covered a large space and broke through the roof of the tunnel.
But the Chaos Kin avoids the attack with a quick sprint forward, which makes Riku glare at the creature in rage and quickly pursue after it, leaving a streak of light behind him. "Time to speed up, Pit!" Viridi exclaims, and the speed Pit flies at is doubled so he can keep up with Riku and the Chaos Kin. Passing the icy tunnel as it collapses, Pit comes across a series of eyes in the middle of the air and a singular eye that acts as a warp space to a different part of the Chaos Vortex.
"My face feels like it's going to blow off!" Pit exclaims due to the high speeds he was flying, followed by Viridi saying "Put on your big-boy pants and stay on the Chaos Kin!' Pit tried to keep up his aim on the Chaos Kin as Riku continued to chase after the monster, moving around and using his sword to slice up the floating islands in this bright sky replica as he tries to attack the Chaos Kin.
"Stay still damn it!" Riku exclaims in anger as he takes his sword in both hands and infuses it with tons of light energy, swinging it out to send a gash of light as large as an island after the Chaos Kin. This attack destroys a swarm of Exo-Tanks flying through the sky, but fails to touch the Chaos Kin as it quickly flies off to an inverted eye in order to escape the heroes. "Get back here!" Riku exclaims before he speeds off after it, and Pit says "I think Riku has almost as much of a grudge against the Chaos Kin as I do" as he heads for the eye that the Chaos Kin went through.
"He's never been so angry before though…" Viridi remarks in a tone of surprise while Pit uses her specially designed palm to fire at the Chaos Kin, being a little more successful in striking the creature due to Riku putting it within firing range with his rapid and furious attacks. "The closest Riku ever got to being angry before this was when you set off that first Reset Bomb." Pit says as he tries to navigate through a dark realm filled with collapsing rock spires and copies of Underworld troops.
"I don't feel sorry for the Chaos Kin being on the opposite side of his wrath after all the trouble he's caused, but it's still a scary thought to imagine Riku turning that anger against us…" Viridi says, and Pit remarks as he gets a successful charged shot on the Chaos Kin while Riku managed to finally hit the monster directly with his blade "Yeah, it's times like this that I'm glad to have him on OUR side instead of the opposite."
"Oh, by the way Pit, you should know that your flight time is about to run out." Viridi changes subjects quickly after Pit was done talking, and with a determined expression Pit exclaimed "I don't care about that! If Riku's being damaged by this realm even in his current state, then I have to keep pressing on against the Chaos Kin just in case he needs to be called back." "Even if your wings burn up?" Viridi inquires, and Pit exclaims "Lady Palutena needs her soul back! She's not going to lose it to this foul creature!"
"You know Pit, your loyalty to Palutena is either commendable…Or really foolish." Viridi remarks in a rather disbelieving tone as Pit and Riku push on through yet another eye back into the real Chaos Vortex, and the young angel exclaims "Now's not the time for that Viridi! Just keep me flying!" The Chaos Kin, now in a panicked state as it continues to be pursued by it's two angry foes, ends up being less careful with it's flight as it rams right through bits and pieces of the temples that it had copied inside of here.
With Riku rapidly firing waves of light from his sword and Pit using the Viridi Palm's charged shots, it doesn't take long for the Chaos Kin to become weakened enough that it ends up not paying attention and rams right into the side of a large chunk of rock, which throws it up in a dizzied state and gives the two heroes a chance to put an end to the monster. Pit fires another charged shot, pulling back on his hand to give it the maximum amount of force, followed by Riku putting a lot of light energy into his blade and appearing above the Chaos Kin the moment Pit's attack connects, where a downward swing cleaves the air of this realm with a large scar of light and sends the Chaos Kin hurtling towards a lone island down below.
It wasn't killed yet, as evidenced by the creature flapping it's wings moments later, but it was weakened enough that all it would take at that point is a few more attacks to finish it off. In fact, Pit was saying merrily as Viridi had him descend towards the island "And now it's time to get Lady Palutena's spirit back!" Only for him to be completely surprised alongside Riku as they land on the island and find that the Chaos Kin had somehow completely vanished from sight.
"What? How? We were just looking at it!" Pit exclaims in sheer disbelief as he moves his head around in search of the Chaos Kin. "It must have turned invisible and scurried off to heal up a bit. That damn bug is more resilient than I thought." Riku laments in anger as he keeps his sword drawn, which puzzled Pit before he looked on ahead and saw some Monoeyes and a couple Aurum drones ahead of him.
"Oh great, the Chaos Kin is tossing out more illusions?" Pit says, and doesn't seem at all worried as the monsters fire at him. "Yeah yeah, I'm getting used to your tricks by now, Chaos Kin!" Pit boasts with a confident pumping of his fist, and as Riku flies forth to go attack the monsters Pit is hit by the projectiles and takes damage from each and every one of them. He's pushed back a couple inches, and he remarks in a tone of surprise afterwards "Wait, now they are real?!"
Before more projectiles can hit him, Pit runs to the left and starts firing at the enemies in conjunction with Riku's sword slashes, all the while having Viridi say to him "Seems like the Chaos Kin is whipping up some enemies to wear you and Riku down while it recovers. But it's going to use up even more of it's energy in the process." "Seems rather redundant to drain it's own energy while it's trying to heal itself up." Riku remarks afterwards.
"You're the one who assumed it was healing. Like you said, the Chaos Kin is really resilient. You think I would've let it stay alive if it wasn't?" Viridi remarks, and Pit says to her afterwards "I bet you didn't even try to destroy it with a Reset Bomb!" "I-I…Well, you see…ummmm…" Viridi was left at a completely utter loss for words after Pit pointed out the flaw in her earlier statement, but she quickly fired back up after a few moments to exclaim "Shut up! I didn't think it would work at the time!"
"It's not a natural creature! You said the Reset Bombs only work on unnatural things!" Pit exclaims, and Viridi tells him angrily "Well what'd you expect me to drop a Reset Bomb on where it would actually hurt the Chaos Kin?! If I let it out of the Lunar Sanctum, then it would've escaped into the Chaos Vortex before the explosion could kill it!" "Would both of you just stop arguing about that?! We need to take down these enemies and lure the Chaos Kin back out so we can destroy it!" Riku stops tolerating the bickering between Viridi and Pit and demands they regain their focus, and both of them quickly stutter out an apology before Pit focused back on the battle.
"How many enemies do you think the Chaos Kin will throw at us?!" Pit inquires as he and Riku take down the first wave. "Beats me, but you're on the second wave. I'll keep track for you, so keep on your toes!" The second wave had an Orne in the center of the island protected by the Aurum drones known as Rezdas. "He can create Ornes?!" Pit exclaims in a tone of surprise, and Riku says "This isn't a problem Pit…"
With a draw of his sword behind his back and charging of his blade, Riku swings his sword out and fires a wave of light that cuts through the Rezdas and strikes the Orne, the purifying light taking it down instantly. This dealt with the second wave, but Riku ended up slouching forward a bit while trying to catch his breath afterwards, showing that the realm was starting to negatively affect him again.
"Riku, stop using up so much energy! You're going to end up overtaxing your body!" Viridi advises bluntly, and Riku grits his teeth for a moment before stating "I'm doing fine Viridi! Just worry about Pit's condition!" The third wave comes in after that, consisting of the basic Aurum drones and some Forces of Nature foes that have been miniaturized to be roughly tall enough to reach the top of Pit's feet.
The Aurum drones teleport randomly around the edge of the arena while firing projectiles every third teleportation, leading Pit to comment as he fires at the drones "These guys are doing their best Game and Watch impersonations." "Well look at Mr. Game Aficionado here. You should probably know that the place is crawling with copies of my Cacaws." Pit looks over his shoulder and notices the tiny Cacaws coming at him, doing their strange dance that is meant to confuse those they touch.
"Ugh, I remember these guys. Why did you make them so annoying?" Pit says as he turns around and tries to shoot down at them with regular heart-shaped shots, but they were so small that it was hard to do so. This Riku cleaned up the Cacaws by running at them and dragging his sword along the ground before Pit could get confused, all the while remarking "We never even encountered Cacaws before, Pit."
"Of course we did Riku." Pit says as he goes back to firing at the remaining Aurum drones. "Back in Chapter 11, when we were going through the Reset Bomb Forest. Don't tell me you forgot about them?" "I'm not in the mood for your weird comments about 'chapters' or 'loading screens' right now Pit." Riku bluntly replies after the angel has taken down the remainder of troops in this particular wave.
"Fourth wave incoming! Also, Pit's right you know, you did fight Cacaws. You must be having some memory issues Riku." Viridi comments, and after an annoyed growl Riku says "Forget about that then!" The two heroes then deal with some Belunkas that drop Armins onto the battlefield, followed by a swarm of Shootflies and a couple of thieving Plutons, who try to get their greedy hands on Riku and Pit's weapons, earning them some punches and cuts for their efforts. The Shootflies are then shot down, even though the presence of projectile fire causes them to awaken and screech annoyingly for a few seconds.
Finally comes the sixth wave, where Riku finds himself panting more and more as the Chaos Kin summons some other Forces of Nature soldiers onto the battlefield. "Hey wait a second! Those are Boom Stompers and Bumpety Bombs! The Chaos Kin is tarnishing the images of my troops!" Viridi exclaims in exasperated anger, followed by Pit telling her as he fires at the fake troops "You know, you could've chosen better names for them than that…"
"She's got the mind and body of a child, are you really that surprised Pit?" Riku remarks to take a shot at Viridi, who bluntly replies to him "Hey, I'm allowed to name my children whatever I want. If we're going to talk about better names, how about you come up with a better name than 'Light Form' for your current state, huh?" "…I don't recall ever calling this state 'Light Form'." Riku says, legitimately forgetting an instance where he done what he was accused of.
"Now you two are bickering about something unimportant!" Pit remarks as he takes down the last of the current wave of enemies, and Riku says "I wasn't really arguing Pit, just bringing up a valid point." "Besides, haven't you noticed that the bickering is actually keeping you two energized during this battle?" Viridi comments right after, and Pit blinks a couple times and says "Huh, now that you mention it, I haven't really felt tired so far."
"Good, cause the seventh wave is approaching fast!" Viridi exclaims to swiftly change the focus back towards the battle, where a Shildeen appears to protect a single Underworld harpy, and said shield was guarded by Monoliths and Aurum Quoils. "I'll take down the shield again!" Riku exclaims as he draws his sword back and prepares to slash, only for Viridi to say to him before he can "Oh no you don't! Let Pit handle the shield, you can back him up by dealing with the Quoils before they can make him dizzy."
As Pit walks back and forth to shoot between the rotating Monoliths, while Riku takes Viridi's advice and cuts down the Quoils without wasting power via firing a wave of energy at the shield. "See? It's all working out." Viridi says proudly to the heroes, with Riku begrudgingly admitting "…I guess I was using up an excessive amount of energy." "Glad to see you change your mind. Now you're on to the eighth wave!" Viridi exclaims the moment Pit finished off the harpy behind the shield.
"I thought you said the Chaos Kin would eventually run out of energy?!" Pit exclaims in surprise towards the number mentioned, and Viridi says "You're definitely wearing it down. Just keep going!" The next wave consisted of an Orne and a swarm of Komaytoes, and as the two heroes work to take down the Komaytos Pit's curiosity gets the better of him as he ends up saying "Now that I think about it, don't Komaytos look a lot like little Metroids?"
"No! Shhh! Stop right there!" Viridi exclaims rather suddenly, followed by a puzzled Pit saying "All I said was that Komaytos look like little Metr-" "Lah lah lah lah! I can't HEAR you!" Viridi responds rather prominently, and before Pit can question this any further the goddess of nature exclaims "This world and that world have NOTHING to do with each other! So don't go around spreading rumors!"
"You know, I usually don't acknowledge these comments any further than brushing them off as strange, but you do realize I've been to the Metroid world already, right Viridi? I mean, Pit also did briefly mention Samus and I discussed Kirby-" "NINTH WAVE APPROACHING!" Viridi screams at the top of her lungs before Riku can finish his sentence, and it was true at that point that the Metro-Errr, Komaytos had been finished off. Pit was starting to feel a little fatigue at this point, which didn't help when the next wave started off with an Underworld tank.
"…Any chance of you sending down a Drink of the Gods, Viridi?" Pit asks as he tries to catch his breath. Before Viridi can respond to his request, the tank turns around and sets it's sights on Pit by summoning forth a pillar shaped reticule around his body. Ready to fire, Pit was only saved when a certain black angel dove down from the sky and delivered a resounding kick right to the front of the tank's armor, which was strong enough to push the tank right off the edge of the platform and to it's demise.
Dark Pit then lands on the ground in front of Pit after the recoil of the kick, holding his Dark Pit Staff in his right hand while remarking somewhat smugly "Looks like you could use a little help." Pit lets out a sigh of relief, but then quickly says "We were handling this just fine on our own. Glad to see you decided to stop being lost though." "Save the comments for later, we have to reclaim Palutena's soul from the Chaos Kin." Dark Pit responds in his usually serious tone before he takes his weapon and starts firing at the bulky enemies being summoned by the Chaos Kin.
"Why do you suddenly care about helping us out anyways?" Pit inquires, and after firing upon one major enemy Dark Pit lets Riku take over the fight for a bit as he glances over his right shoulder and explains "While you were a ring? I was less than nothing. Unconscious. Un-MYSELF. We're connected. No you, no me. Two sides of the same coin." Pit's eyes widen in surprise as the implications of Dark Pit's words are understood by him, and he says while waving his arms out "That's crazy! So that's why you have to help me save Palutena!"
With Pit running up beside Dark Pit, the two point their weapons at the horde of enemies and exclaim together "OK then. Let's take these foes down!" The two angels then run at their foes without hesitation, the ensuing onslaught of projectiles from both their weapons and the enemies projectiles filling the sky and causing Riku to stare on with a merry smile on his face from the edge of the platform. "Heheh, those two are an unstoppable combination." Riku remarks to Viridi.
"Yep. Even the Chaos Kin's resistance looks like nothing now that those two are working together!" Viridi exclaims happily, and Dark Pit says "Is it really that surprising?" Riku then starts panting, this time accompanied by a warm sweat across all parts of his body. He was definitely starting to lose a lot of his stamina from a combination of the battle and the realm's effects on him, and thus decided to slow down and let the two Pits handle the enemies for the moment. After all, he needed to save his energy for the Chaos Kin.
As Pit and Dark Pit take down the enemies quickly, the white angel remarks "So the Chaos Kin is copying Aurum enemies that are copies of the Forces of Nature. That's really weird." "And not very original." Dark Pit remarks afterwards, and it was at this point that Pit decided to switch topics to something a little more pressing since he had the time to do so "So Pittoo, where were you during the Aurum invasion?"
"Destroying Aurum drones, what else? Also, can you seriously stop calling me Pittoo?" Dark Pit expresses his annoyance at the nickname throughout his entire response, and Pit says to him afterwards "But it doesn't feel right to call you Dark Pit. After all, you're not evil, just aggressive." "Well fine, I get that, but you can't tell me that you couldn't have come up with a better nickname than 'Pittoo'." Dark Pit says.
"Hmmm…Pittwin? Pit the 2nd? Blapi?" Pit's suggestions for a new name just cause Dark Pit to remark rather dryly "…You really can't come up with a better one." "Guess not. I'm not the goodest when it comes to words." Pit says while chuckling briefly to himself at the end, and while those two had a conversation with themselves they were destroying enemies with absolute ease. They don't even seem to realize that they had already made it to the twelfth wave of enemies once they were done until Viridi exclaims "Good going you two! We're almost to the end, I can feel it!" "You say that, but the Chaos Kin keeps sending out enemies!" Dark Pit exclaims as he and Pit work to take down a couple copies of the Forces of Nature beetles that jump around the center of the arena.
"Well when you get the ability to sense the Chaos Kin's energy levels, then you'll be allow to have a smart mouth, Dark Pit!" Viridi responds, and this causes Riku to quickly call her out by saying "You told me that the Chaos Kin being from another dimension meant that it's energy couldn't be detected!" "No, I said that it meant YOU couldn't detect it's energy. I never said I couldn't. Look, just don't question these things and get back to the battle!" Viridi bluntly replies.
After Pit and Dark Pit defeat the beetles, Viridi exclaims "You're at the thirteenth wave. I'm sure this is it!" The two angels stand back-to-back, with Dark Pit proclaiming "Then it's time!" "For what?" Pit says in confusion before his dark self replies "Our pre-boss battle rallying cry!" "Oh, right. Ok…Ahem…"
After Pit clears his throat out, he swings his right arm out and proclaims, alternating between himself and Dark Pit "Filth of the land, hear our words!" "And see our actions!" "I am Pit, servant of the goddess of light!" "And I am Dark Pit, servant to no other but myself!" "Together we will rain death upon you!" As they say that last part of the first verse in unison, they walk around in a circle and use their weapons to destroy the Skuttlers riding on Monolith platforms.
"So, anyone who wants to die, step right up!" "And anyone who doesn't want to die, too bad!" Dark Pit and Pit then turn themselves towards an Aurum saucer that appeared just at that moment, throwing their strongest charged shot out to destroy the saucer completely. With that enemy defeated, the two angels give each other a clap and proclaim triumphantly "Aw, yeah!"
"Nice speech. Did you spend all night making it? Or is that just your twin-telepathy taking effect?" Viridi remarks sarcastically, and Riku says in a complimenting tone "Well it's pretty good for just being made up on the spot." But now that the last wave of enemies had been dealt with, it was finally time for the Chaos Kin to reveal himself. The insect burst out from the ground in the center of the island, and Dark Pit exclaimed "You've finally shown yourself!" "It's game over, Chaos Kin!" Pit says as he aims his weapon at the Chaos Kin.
The Chaos Kin tries to escape the island, but Viridi quickly summons a barrier around the island to trap it inside. As it rebounds and lands on the ground, looking around in a panic, Pit exclaims "Thanks Viridi, you're always thinking!" But before Pit and Dark Pit attack the Chaos Kin, Riku steps past the two angels, brushing Pit aside with an extension of his left arm outward before he holds his right hand up and says coldly "Let me handle this."
Riku then flips his arm around and clenches his hand into a fist while glaring bitterly at the Chaos Kin. Before the creature can even budge, tiny chains of light erupt from the ground and wrap themselves around the Chaos Kin's legs. "You AREN'T getting away this time you monster!" Riku exclaims in a bitter rage before his expression becomes eerily stoic and he approaches the squirming Chaos Kin.
Lifting one hand towards the sky, Riku rips open a gash of light above the Chaos Kin, pouring his energy towards the rift while proclaiming towards the Chaos Kin with all of his rage "How DARE you exist, monster! Your existence is a plague on reality! You dared to rob Palutena of her soul, you plunged the planet in chaos for three years, trapping myself and Pit inside of a ring and robbing Dark Pit of his free will in the process! Now here you stand, trapped and on the verge of death, just like you should've been long before this point. With your annihilation, I will amend for not taking care of you the moment you broke free from the Lunar Sanctum! Now die, CHAOS KIN!"
Using the gash as the entry point, Riku summons forth a rain of light needles that bombards the Chaos Kin mercilessly, all the while Riku uses all of his energy to power the attack, failing to realize that by letting himself be absorbed by his anger greatly weakened the strength of his Light Form, and in turn the power of his attack. Because he couldn't recognize this, Riku was greatly confused when the Chaos Kin was not dying from his attack, despite the painful screech it unleashes as the needles hit it's skin.
"Die damn it! Just DIE!" Riku's attitude was the complete opposite of what Pit had come to expect, but he didn't feel any bit of pity for the Chaos Kin so he didn't bother to stop Riku. When the teenage Overlord's onslaught was proving ineffectual despite the high intensity of his attack, he sealed the gash up and immediately drew his katana out. But now he was madly sweating from using a ridiculous amount of energy, but he refused to let himself collapse as he ignited his blade with holy light and ran right at the still chained Chaos Kin.
"RAAAAAAH!" Riku leaped into the air and prepared to bring his blade down upon the Chaos Kin with his remaining rage guiding him. But as if fate just loved to cruelly play with his expectations, the teenage Overlord finds himself dropped out of his Light Form, his eyelids forcibly beginning to shut from a lack of energy inside of his body, much to his disdain. "No…way…" Riku remarks in a weakened tone before he collapses onto the ground face first, with the Chaos Kin being broken out of the chains a moment later.
But before the insect can quickly go to grab Riku's soul, Pit and Dark Pit leap into action and run at the bug, with Pit throwing a punch into the Chaos Kin's face as it leaps at Riku's body. "Viridi, get Riku out of here! We'll handle things from here!" Pit exclaims quickly, with the goddess of nature summoning a pillar of light around Riku's body as he lifts his head up slowly and says in a very strained tone "No…Pit…I still need to help…"
But he couldn't finish his sentence before Viridi takes him out of there, and as Pit and Dark Pit fire their attacks off at the weakened Chaos Kin Viridi states "I'm getting Riku right to the hot springs. He looks absolutely terrible." This is followed by Pit stating "He pushed himself too far this time. But I can understand why he's angry at the Chaos Kin…" Pit then turns around to keep his aim on the scurrying Chaos Kin, but Dark Pit was there to kick the monster into the air via a direct hit to the face.
"Devouring souls is gruesome, but devouring one from a goddess is just going too far!" Dark Pit exclaims as he and Pit raise their weapons up and cross their charged shots through the Chaos Kin. The piercing element of the Dark Pit Staff does significant damage to the creature, and the purifying aspect of the Viridi Palm does enough damage to finish the Chaos Kin off. "And that's why you're history, Chaos Kin!" Pit exclaims as the body of the Chaos Kin falls to the ground, where it is unable to contain it's own energies and promptly explodes in a chaotic burst of darkness that leaves it's body parts charred on the ground in the form of an empty husk.
Released from the Chaos Kin's remains is Palutena's soul, which flies over to her emerald covered form that Viridi had called in just moments ago. The moment the soul touches the statue, Palutena returns to her original state in a flash of green light, and immediately she lets out a gasp of air in relief. Pit turns to look at Palutena, and watches as she gives him her familiar bright smile for the time in what was three years for her and says happily "Pit…"
Pit kneels down and says to her "I'm so relieved that you're ok…" And it looked as though the two were to hug in celebration of their reunion. Meanwhile, Dark Pit glances at the charred corpse of the Chaos Kin and whispers "Well, guess this isn't a bad way for this to end…" He then turns away from the corpse and actually cracks a genuine smile of happiness as he prepares to walk off. But the Chaos Kin had one last trick up it's persistent sleeve, and that was to take the form of a tendril of darkness and fly straight at Dark Pit, wrapping itself around his body tightly and dragging him straight off the edge of the island.
As Dark Pit struggles to pull himself free, Pit notices this event and proclaims in a worried tone "Oh no…Pittoo!" Without hesitation, Pit runs and leaps off the edge of the island, diving at Dark Pit while proclaiming "Viridi! I need to fly!" But as Viridi reminds him "You already used the power of flight! Don't you remember? If I enable it again now, your wings will catch fire!" Pit tries to reach for Dark Pit, failing to have the proper speed necessary to do so, which leads to him explaining to Viridi desperately "The Chaos Kin is going to destroy Pittot! Can't you see what's at stake her? I don't care if my wings catch fire!"
"No way! Just forget about it! I'm pulling you out!" Viridi bluntly said, hiding her concern behind her choice of words. "No! Stop! If we don't help him right now, we won't have another chance! I'm begging you, Viridi! Let me fly! Now!" Dark Pit's pitiful state combined with Pit's determination forces Viridi to change her mind and activate the power of flight, which causes Pit's body to be wrapped up in a shell of flames as he speeds up towards Dark Pit, all the while the dark angel struggles to say "Help…me…"
Fighting against the friction of the air to head for Dark Pit, Pit ends up taking ten seconds to finally get within arms reach, but he was unnaturally quiet by the time he grabbed hold of him and threw the Chaos Kin off with his other arm. Viridi then wrapped both angels in a pillar of light and proclaimed "Ok! I'm pulling you out now!"
The next few seconds were a blur for Dark Pit, as he finds himself lying on his stomach in a part of the Chaos Vortex meant to copy Palutena's temple. Dark Pit's body was burnt up quite a bit, but his immediate concern was the condition of the real Pit. "How's Pit?" He weakly asks, and hesitantly Viridi had to tell him "Pit…Pit's in bad shape." As the vision returns to Dark Pit's eyes, he sees Pit lying face first on the ground. His body was charred much like his own, but the real damage was shown in the form of his wings…
Gone were the white feathers that spread proudly beside him as he flew through the air with Palutena or Viridi's assistance. Instead, all that remained of Pit's wings were scorched feathers and bloody bones. "He can't fly. He's barely breathing…" Viridi explains, and this realization of Pit's condition causes Dark Pit to only rise halfway up off the ground before he leans one hand on his kneecap and looks away, feeling nothing but melancholy for what had happened to Pit in his attempt to save his life.
Palutena then walks into the area, approaching Pit much to Viridi's confusion "Palutena? What are you doing?" Palutena doesn't respond to her as she slowly kneels down, picking Pit's body off of the ground and lay it in the palm of her hands while looking at his closed eyelids and tired expression with a reminiscing look in her own eyes. As Palutena remembers all that Pit had done for her along with the fact that for all that trouble, Pit has not once gotten to fly by himself, Palutena ends up shedding a few tears as she murmurs out "Oh, Pit…"
As Palutena looks towards the sky, Dark Pit got to his feet and contemplated all that had happened. The Chaos Kin may have been defeated and Palutena's soul was back to where it belonged, but Riku and Pit were entirely out of commission, and Pit was on the verge of death. Even worse, Hades was still out there, and there was no doubt that he would take advantage of this situation to attack the humans once more. Dark Pit knew what he had to do at that point…He would find a way to save Pit, no matter what it cost him…
Next Time: …