Ken was feeling good about his strategy.
One platinum egg, one gold egg, and two silver eggs. It was only twenty minutes into the competition, and he'd already surpassed Sansan and Yonda's initial score.
Of course, Ken figured that they'd found a few more eggs then, but still, at the speed, he was gaining points, there was no way he wasn't going to win.
BUM DADUM!
He heard his Omnitrix come back online and smirked. "Alright! Time to look for the next egg!"
Ken quickly selected Wildmutt and slammed down on the Omnitrix, and in a flash of green, he was once again in his dog-like form.
"Rahhhhhh!" Ken roared, before grabbing the basket with his mouth and smelling the basket. Getting a whiff of the Platinum egg.
Once he got the scent down, Ken quickly picked up a trail and started running.
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The trail lead Ken to a large lake with a river flowing into it, and then, the trail went cold.
Ken went to the edge of the lake and looked down inside it. They must have hidden it in this lake. No biggie. Wildmutt can swim…but. If it's as well hidden as the last egg, probably best to wait until I can use Ripjaws. Dying during an Easter egg hunt would be ultra lame.
With that in mind, Ken turned around and went to go search for some gold and silver eggs.
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Nara was quickly realizing there was a problem with her Ditto strategy.
Sure she could look in many different locations at once, but she only had one basket.
Nara had realized this, while she was carrying a bronze and silver egg, back to her main self.
"I should have stuck to using XLR8," Nara said to herself as she ran through the forest.
What would happen next would only enforce that idea.
Suddenly, Sansan came out of the woods, rushed towards Nara, taking her by surprise, and snatching the eggs from her, before putting them in her own basket.
"Hey!" Nara shouted in outrage.
"Sworry not sworry!" Sansan said as she slithered away.
"Ugh!" Nara groaned in frustration, looking down at her now empty hands.
"Hey, Nara. I think I'm done here." She heard Kota say over her earpiece.
"Oh, alright. Give me 16 minutes, I'll be there." Nara told him.
"What am I supposed to do for 16 minutes?" Kota asked impatiently.
"I don't know, look around the lake area. Maybe there's some stuff around there." Nara told him.
"Fine." Kota sighed.
Nara sighed as well, not feeling great about this situation. "Hopefully Ken is struggling as much as I am."
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"And that's golden egg number 3," Ken remarked, as he placed the egg into his basket.
He'd just found the egg buried underground, hidden under a rock.
"I have never appreciated Wildmutt more than I have now." Ken smiled to himself. "How long has it been? Ehhhh. Should be long enough. Better go back to the lake and get ready."
With that decided, Ken started running back towards the lake, following his tracks once again.
By the time he got back, his quirk was ready to use once again, and his Omnitrix went from red to green.
"Alright, time for Ripjaws!" Ken shouted, as he selected the form on his Omnitrix, and slammed down.
In a flash of green, he was Ripjaws.
He wasted no time, jumping into the water immediately, keeping his basket on the edge of the lake.
Ken quickly descended down towards the lake bed. This egg would be a lot harder to find than the last one, mainly because he couldn't use Wildmutt to track the egg's location.
Still, Ken assumed that the egg would have to be somewhere at the bottom of the lake, so he swiftly reached the lake bed, and started searching.
It didn't take him long, to find a person-sized hole on the lake bed.
This must be where they put the egg. Ken thought as he swam down the hole.
The hole went down, deeper and deeper taking him very deep down.
Eventually, as Ken swam down, he fell out of the water, and into a large cave.
The cave was pretty circular, it was half-flooded, with water going up to Ken's chest, and it was lit by torches that were put up on the cave walls.
In other words, it looked like a boss arena.
And the boss, a Nuckelavee, standing in the center of the arena, with a platinum egg tied around its neck.
"Ah, man." Ken groaned as he realized what he'd have to do.
"RAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The Nuckelavee roared, as it shot out its stretchy arm at Ken, punching him and sending him flying into a cave rock.
"OAF!" Ken groaned in pain, as he pulled himself up. "Oh, this is gonna suck. OH!"
Ken ducked as, the monster tried to punch him again, before diving into the water, transforming his legs into a tail, and swimming towards it.
The Nuckelavee charged toward him and Ken swam out of the way of its charge, causing it to crash into a wall.
Ken then swam back towards it and bit at its hind legs.
"RAHHHHHH!" It roared in pain, as the horse half of its body, bucked and jumped around to try and shake Ken off, but Ken kept his jaw clamped down on the leg, before grabbing onto the upper part of its eggs with his claws.
Ken climbed up the Nuckelavee with his claws and jaw, as the monster kept running around the arena, trying to shake Ken off.
After a couple of minutes, Ken managed to make his way onto the back of the Nuckelavee's horse.
The Nuckelavee spun its upper half backward, facing Ken.
As the Nuckelavee raised its arms to attack Ken, Ken leaped forward and grabbed the egg that was around his neck, snatching it with his mouth.
Gatcha. Ken thought as he landed in the water and immediately started swimming away from the Nuckelavee. Now I just need to get out of here!
Ken started swimming towards the waterfall that lead to the small cavern that got him here.
However, the Nuckelavee was in pursuit, charging toward him.
With the monster on his tail, Ken had one option, and he lept at the waterfall, jumping high into the air, and using his claws to stick himself to the wall.
With Ken stuck to the wall above, the Nuckelavee ran right into the wall, shaking the whole cavern.
Woah Ken clung to the wall a bit tighter, as the cavern shook. I need to get out of here.
Ken crawled up the wall and made it into the small cavern, where he proceeded to swim up through it, towards the lake.
After a bit more frantic swimming, Ken made it out of the hole, and into the lake.
Whew. I made it. Ken thought.
BRRR.
Uh oh. Ken thought as he saw his Omnitrix start to flash red.
BRRRRR.
Ken started swimming upwards, towards the surface.
BRRRRR! BRRRR! BRRRRR!
SPLASH!
Ken made it to the surface of the lake, just as he transformed into his human form.
"Mmmm!? Pah!" Ken spat out the platinum egg, that was still in his mouth. "Ugh, that tastes worse than the basket!"
After trying to spit the taste out of his mouth, he grabbed the egg and started swimming back towards land.
A few minutes of swimming later, Ken reached the side of the lake and crawled onto land.
"Ohhhhhh." Ken groaned, as he crawled to his basket, and put the egg inside.
"I think…I'm gonna lie down." Ken said, as he rolled over and laid down on the dirt.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Kyosei felt very mixed about this, Mobile Shell technique.
On one hand, he felt very…free. All his life he'd have to be stuck inside someone else. Either doing exclusively what they wanted or fighting them for control.
But now he could move however he wanted, without limitation. There was no delay, no resistance.
Of course, he wasn't truly free. This was once Fu's body, but since Fu was no longer in it, it didn't regenerate, and in fact, this rotting corpse gave him much less nutrition, meaning he'd have to eat more of it. So he could only be separated from Fu like this for a few hours.
And that brought him to the downsides of this technique.
The organs tasted horrible. Fu's organs already didn't taste that great, but at least they were an endless food source that Kyosei could eat without hurting anyone. This was just bad in every conceivable way.
And Kyosei just…didn't like being separated from Fu.
Fu was smart. He lead him, taught him, and in return Kyosei helped him with whatever he wanted to do physically.
They were a good pair.
But now that they were separated, Kyosei felt…a bit lost.
Fu was decisive, he knew what to do, and if he didn't he knew the best way to find out.
But Kyosei was a baby. A very smart baby, but still a baby. And one that had never really made decisions before.
He was still just following Fu's orders right now, go around the forest, and find eggs. And he'd been doing that without issue for a while now. He'd found about 16 white eggs, and even a silver egg that he'd noticed floating in a pond. But he kept wondering what he was supposed to do if he had to make a choice. What if one of the others tried to steal one of his eggs? Was he supposed to chase them? Let them go? He knew he couldn't attack them, but what counted as an attack?
The concept of being free, while exciting in a way, was also very, very scary to Kyosei. But he wondered if it should be.
As Kyosei grabbed his 17'th white egg, with a tendril, he looked down at his hand. Or, rather Fu's hand. He wondered if, years later, when he knew more and was smarter, would he prefer to be separate from Fu? Or would he rather stay inside him, and let him call the shots.
Before he could contemplate that for much longer, he heard Fu speak to him using the earpiece.
"Kyosei, hour's up. Head back to the backyard." Fu ordered.
Kyosei let out a noise in response, to let him know that he'd heard him, before immediately heading back to that area.
This would be a question that an older, smarter Kyosei would answer.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ken was quickly on his way to his third platinum egg.
Problem was, it was in the sky somewhere.
Ken had followed the trail of the third egg, however, once he reached a large clearing, he smelled that the egg had been taken into the sky.
Meaning once again, he couldn't use Wildmutt to track its exact location.
But this was even worse than the lake because the sky was a significantly larger space to search.
And so began, what became Ken's most frustrating search yet.
He'd turn into Stinkfly, take to the skies, look around, and come back down before his transformation wore off.
This took up a whole hour of his time before eventually, he found something.
Another huge hoard of ravagers. But this was a much bigger hoard than the one in the cave. There were so many of them, all flying so closely together, that it just looked like a big black ball in the sky.
If Ken had to guess, he'd probably guess that the egg was somewhere in that black mass of claws and teeth.
Most likely, somewhere in the center.
Not wanting to waste time and risk having to retreat, Ken opened fire, shooting out goop from his four tentacle-like eye stalks, rapid-fire.
The goop started hitting the Ravagers, each shot encompassing their tiny bodies, keeping them from flying and making them fall to the ground.
Ken took out a couple dozen Ravagers this way, before they charged at him, screeching and giving off a truly awful noise.
Seeing them get closer, Ken flew away from them, while continuing to fire at them,
Fortunately, they weren't faster than him, so Ken could outmaneuver them pretty easily.
As Ken quickly whittled away at their numbers, he noticed a metallic gleam coming from the center of the hoard.
The egg.
Seeing a glimpse of his prize, Ken focused his fire on that area, taking out a few dozen more Ravagers, before he saw it.
He finally hit the Ravager with the egg, and he saw it fall out of the cloud of other Grimm.
Ken flew down towards that Ravager, with the swarm following.
"Gatcha!" Ken said as he caught the Grimm and the egg.
With his prize in hand, Ken flew away from the swarm at full speed.
After a couple minutes, Ken finally lost the swarm, and breathed a sigh of relief, as he landed on the ground.
"Reee! Reeee!" The Ravager in his hand cried as it struggled.
"Alright, that's enough out of you," Ken said, before he bit the head off of the Ravager, killing it, and causing it to fade away. Leaving only the egg…and the goop.
In response, Ken popped the egg into his mouth, and swished it around for a few seconds, before spitting it back up, goop free.
"Gonna have to wash that," Ken said, as he plopped it into the basket. "I better win after all this. Wonder, how Otoko's doing?"
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Otoko was slightly disappointed with his egg count. Very slightly.
All together, Otoko had collected 15 white eggs, 2 bronze eggs, and one silver egg. Considering the contest would be coming to an end soon, that wasn't a very impressive number.
Still, Otoko didn't really care about winning. This was more of a fun exercise for him.
Most of his disappointment came from not wanting to weigh Ken down.
But there really wasn't much he could do. He'd just try his best and hope that was enough.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Do you think we'll win?" Kioku asked her partner, as they collected their fifth golden egg.
"I'd like to hope so," Shiruku said, watching a spider come up to her.
Their strategy was simple, Shiruku was to commune with the spiders in the forest, and they would tell her where the eggs were.
They'd found quite a few eggs this way, but not as many as you'd think.
"I'm honestly feeling a bit popped out." Kioku admitted. "All this walking is a bit much for me."
"Well then let's take a break," Shiruku suggested.
"What!? Shouldn't we not waste any time?" Kioku asked.
"This whole event is for fun. If you're exhausted, then you're not having fun." Shiruku pointed out, before taking a seat on the ground. "Now come, let's gaze at the clouds."
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
With time running out, Ken was frantically running towards the location of the last platinum egg, as Wildmutt.
It wasn't hard to find once Ken started getting even relatively close to it. Because the last egg was located at the top, of an absolutely massive ice mountain. Courtesy of Todoroki.
How did I not notice this before? Ken wondered to himself, as he stared up at the mountain that looked like a giant ice spear, piercing the sky. Welp, better start climbing, not much time left.
Ken approached the base of the mountain, dug his claws into the ice, and started climbing up the mountain, as quick as he could.
It took him seven whole minutes of climbing, to see the top. And there, at the very tip of the mountain, was the platinum egg.
Ken grinned, as he quickly approached the top, moving closer and closer to the top.
And as he reached the summit-
SMASH!
Kiba burst out of the mountain, causing the summit to explode, as she grabbed the egg.
"RAHHHHHHH!" Ken screamed in fear, as Kiba bursting out of the mountain, caused him to go flying away from the mountain, and now he was falling towards the ground.
And to make things worse.
BRRRRR! BRRRRR! BRRRRR! BRRRR!
In a flash of red, Ken turned back into his normal form and was now plummeting miles towards the ground.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Ken screamed as he fell towards the ground, seemingly to his death.
Only to be snapped up, by a Grimm Griffin, that had been standing by. To save anyone who fell off.
"Ohhh." Ken gave a massive sigh of relief. He'd be disappointed he lost the egg if he wasn't too glad about not dying.
"Alright, everyone!" Mina announced using drones. "Time is up! Everyone comes back, let's count the eggs!"
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After about half an hour, all the kids finally made it back to the backyard, and they all dumped their eggs in their team's basket.
"You got three platinum eggs!?" Nara shouted in shock, looking at Ken and Otoko's basket.
"Heheh." Ken laughed, taking the moment to gloat. "Yep. Wildmutt's nose has never been more useful. Let me find all four of them. And I would have gotten the last one if Kiba hadn't come out of nowhere and swiped it! Almost killing me in the process."
Kiba rolled her eyes. "As if Caretaker would challenge us to climb a mountain and not have something in place to save us, should we fall? And I didn't even know you were there in the first place."
"Alright everyone, time to count the eggs!" Mina said.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
After a small counting period, it was time to announce the results.
"Alrighty then! Time to announce the results!" Mina shouted.
All the participants were lined up in front of her, looking at her with anticipation.
"And the winners are…Ken and Otoko!" Mina announced.
"YES!" Ken shouted at the top of his lungs, feelings of relief, joy, and exuberance filled him in massive quantities making him feel lighter than air. "We did it! It worked! My plan worked! Hahaha! Yes!"
Almost everyone else was not feeling that same, with feelings of disappointment going all around.
"Curses." Kiba pouted before looking to Eri. "My apologies little sister, it appears I did lead us to victory."
"It's ok." Eri managed a slight smile, grabbing Kiba's hands to try and comfort her. "We did our best, and you looked really cool climbing that mountain."
"I'm sorry I slowed you down." Kioku apologized to her partner. "You might have won if it wasn't for me."
"Nonsense. I wouldn't have a victory if it meant hurting you." Shiruku told her, rubbing her head. "And besides Ken had three platinum eggs, I doubt we would have won."
"Ugh, sorry my plans didn't really work out," Nara said to Kota, who look mildly annoyed.
"Hey it's fine, I didn't really think we were gonna win anyway. Not after he got three platinum eggs." Kota remarked.
Meanwhile, Yonda was petting a saddened Sansan. Don't be upset sister. Ken had a great advantage, and good strategy, not much could have been done. We tried out best, and that's what matters. I'm sure we can beat him in the next competition.
Kyosei felt a profound sense of disappointment, and he felt Fu reassure him mentally.
Kei on the other hand seemed unaffected and was giving Ken a round of appulse. "Good work Ken and Otoko! Congratulations!"
Shoji came over, and gave them both a trophy, awarding them for their victory.
Ken held his trophy up proudly, while Otoko just went the flow.
"Don't worry kids! We still have way more stuff to do!" Mina told them. "After a short break, we'll be moving on to the next competition! Plus Ultra!"
Just want to explain two things.
1A didn't reveal the number of points everyone had because they didn't want the kids with lower scores to feel bad. So they just announced the winners.
And more events are happening that aren't being shown. Because not only would that take forever, they wouldn't all be the most eventful.
Anyway, that's all for now. Please review, and have a nice day.