#garyboy

[duckapus]

Two and 1/2 Ranmas

Continuing from Irene and the Halloween Invasion, the group arrives at Tulip's place... and Ranma and Ryoga meeting goes about as smoothly as you'd expect (partly because Ryoga, in typical Ranma 1/2 Character fashion, didn't process Irene's explanation of this Ranma's whole deal beyond "Ranma's living with a girl who isn't Akane"), though thankfully Ryoga getting distracted and confused by Daffy's general existence keeps it from turning into a full-on fight and he actually listens the second time they explain the Inkweaver Thing.

Now that everybody's actually communicating they manage to figure out that Ryoga's from an actual dedicated Ranma 1/2 Server (and one that hasn't actually come to life yet, so the fact that he's all the way out here without getting messed up by going off-script is impressive), and eventually Leto's antics in said server get brought up.

This, of course, is considered a Big Deal by everyone who actually know who Leto is, so Alice checks Ryoga for the server's IP Address and they use that and another wish to head over, with Tulip, Ranma, Alice, Daffy and Lulu joining the Party.

Meanwhile, final preparations for Crypt of the Necrodancer's Activation are underway.

-------------------

The next part is less fleshed out, but it mainly consists of:

-The non-Ranma Characters getting a crash course in Nerima Bullshit.

-Ranma getting a crash course in what's been happening in this version of Nerima since the end of the Manga.

-The two Ranma's meeting and actually getting along pretty well despite all odds.

-Nerima as a whole and the Wrecking Crew dealing with there suddenly being two Ranmas and a girl who looks way too much like Ranma for her own good (because Irene and the Fairly Oddparents characters are still in their Halloween costumes so Vicky's still dressed like Ranma)

-The parents being shady in the background... which of course leads to the ending scene.

Genma, Nodoka and Soun manage to get their version of Ranma alone and bring him to Leto and her team, who get started on the whole SMG Hijacking Scheme.

Meanwhile, Ozymandias convinces Rosin that there's something Important they need to do and begins his own SMG Hijacking Scheme.

The Guardian Pods are deployed, and the two serpents try to pull them into the Servers they've prepared, while Rahzar and Garyboy are deployed to neutralize the USB Admins...and immediately realize when they see each other that something's gone wrong with the plan.

The two equal opposing forces cancel each-other out, so instead of the Pods being dragged to the serpents, it's the serpents, and the servers they're in, that are dragged to them. This results in the three servers colliding, their code weaving and tangling into an unstable mess (made worse by Nerima's code already being damaged by all the changes Leto's made). This also causes the Pods to go dormant, requiring one Avatar Candidate to make contact with both to resume the Activation, which is a bit of a problem for Leto and Ozzy because the collision caused their groups, including Ranma and Rosin, to get scattered across the warped, smushed-together landscape.

The Pods also got flung who-knows-where, and apparently when they go Dormant like this they shrink down to the size of actual normal flash drives.

So on the ground it's a mad dash to find the Pods and whoever they actually want to be Avatar, while in Adminspace the USBs are in critical condition and everybody's scrambling to keep the world from falling apart, especially when they realize who exactly is in there right now. Also the Necrodancer characters have no fucking idea what's going on. Well, most of the characters don't but them especially.

[forthedancingandthethriving]

It felt like a piece of her was.. missing.

Root had moved out of all the classes she shared with the rest of the kids, and they all learned a bit ago. Principal Guy had only shook his head when he was asked, and he was honest when he said he didn't know why. All he knew was that Root asked to be moved to different classes, on account of 'something happening'.

Lily knew, though. They all did.

Lily glances over at the desk where Root used to sit next to her in history. She twirls her pencil, not even paying attention to whatever was teacher was saying.

Her heart aches. Her entire being aches. She misses Root.

She glances down at her desk. Memories resurface.

"We're not having any more lessons for a while," Diana said suddenly, tapping sand off of her trident.

"What?!" Lily turned around, eyes wide. "Why?!" These lessons were her escape from what had happened with Root. Why was Diana stopping them?

"You're in no condition to continue this training." Diana shook her head. Her trident vanished. "What happened is weighing too heavily on your heart and mind. You can barely focus. Your mind clearly keeps replaying the confrontation you had."

Lily looked down, her heart breaking. Was she that easy to read?

"Focus on yourself for now." Diana looked down at Lily sympathetically. "You need to heal before we continue such tiring training."

The be rang, and Lily looked down at her paper. She'd written nothing. Maybe she'd ask Cody for the notes, he always liked history more than she did..

"Lily?"

Speak of the devil. The cat gently pats her shoulder as the two walk out of history class, a small frown on his face. "Are you okay? You were spaced out the entire class."

"Just.. thinking." Lily mutters. The two begin walking through the halls, heading to the cafeteria. "Cody.. does.. do you think everyone might be ready to forgive Root..?"

Cody's frown deepens. ".. that's, uh.. that's a toughie. The adults might be.. but.." He sighs. "What you really have to worry about is LC. You know how he is."

The young girl looks down, nodding her head minutely. But the thing was, she didn't understand why Lil Coding was so against it, so fired up regarding it. Maybe she'd have to ask one of her grandpas. She doubted either of her dads would tell her.

"Oh!" Cody snaps his paw pads.. somehow. "That reminds me. Bowser Jr. apparently saw a street performer in the city yesterday. He was doing magic and tricks and stuff. Junior's probably gonna round us all up to go." He smiles gently. "You feel up to go?"

Lily thinks before nodding. "Yeah, sure." She then smiles and gently nudges his shoulder. "Just promise me you won't try and snuggle up too much to LC."

While her friend's cheeks turn red, both of them laugh. "No promises."

○●○

Root tugs her hood over her head a bit more, focusing solely on the man surrounded by the citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. There was a man in a simple outfit, blue and gold, and yet he looked.. eerily like Root. His hair was the same silver, and his pupils were almost slits, like hers.

But that wasn't what mattered at the moment. What mattered was.. how well this man was doing. The flames were moving around him, almost like a snake, and there was a glow around his hands, silver and gold. He was moving smoothly and yet boldly. He knew what he was doing.

It was inspiring. Truly, truly inspiring an amazing.

Root pauses as she watches.

If she could do that. Channel all her emotions into flames and movement. Would she still be a monster? Or would she be looked upon more fairly?

She glances down, tugging her hood once more before walking off.

She felt eyes on her briefly, and there was a small hint of her that hopped it was Lily.

○●○

"Who knew you were good at dancing, boss?"

"Not another word."

Ozymandias picks up the basket that had been left behind, shaking it and its contents. It was filled with coins and other useless things, mostly just to keep him coming. It took a bit to narrow down what the universe his Offshoot was in, but they found it.

Still, the Offshoot was remarkably tricky to find. Either the Offshoot had code so badly formed that he was struggling to locate it, or it was hiding itself.

"Were you able to spot anyone that looks like me?" Ozymandias asks, looking back up from the basket. Him and Garyboy began heading back to the portal that had been opened.

"I didn't see anyone like you." Garyboy points towards him with a plunger. "But I did see someone in a cloak walking away in the middle of the performance. It looked like they were hiding who they were."

The snake virus chuckles, glancing back over his shoulder with a smirk. He knew he felt familiar code nearby. "Is that so?"

[demonickitten66-blog]

New hair

[duckapus]

Symphony of Serpents: War of the Fat Italians

(despite there being no Italians involved, fat or otherwise)

For the challenges, everybody gets split into three teams

-The Nerima Wrecking Crew (minus Kasumi because she's the host), Ryoga's Togepi, and Leto's group

-The Crypt of the NecroDancer characters (the ones that've actually gotten involved, at least) and the visiting group (including Ink Ranma)

-Rosin's Party, Ozymandias, Garyboy and the Snake Cultists

The challenges are...well, typical WotFI challenges and don't really matter much to the plot, up until the very last one where Garyboy decides to stop playing by the rules and uses one of his plungers to bite Real Ranma and take Leto out of the running. And for once, his venom actually has the effect it's supposed to have on Character Levels, much to the horror of everyone there who isn't evil. It's even enough of a shock that Kasumi partly breaks through the Security Protocol's possession, though only enough that she's essentially a sitting duck. Leto lunges after Ozzy before he can capitalize on this because even if she can't win she'll at last make sure he doesn't either.

To make matters worse, the main character dying is the final straw for the server and the world starts falling apart. Which, given Ozymandias's base programming, would still be something of a victory for him.

It ends up being Kuno of all people who rallies everyone, reminding them that if they can get Cadence to Kasumi and the Pods she'll become the Avatar and restabilize the Server, simultaneously saving the world, denying Ozymandias either version of his victory, and avenging Ranma to an extent.

The rap battle happens and they ultimately succeed, causing the snakes to retreat (Leto because that's what she always does when a scheme fails (for a master manipulator she's remarkably predictable), Ozzy because as much as he'd like to retaliate he's well aware that he's no longer invincible).

The aftermath is...rough. For all that they "won," the original Ranma's dead and isn't coming back, and even if the Server's stable now it's still three worlds haphazardly blended together and that's causing some problems for the inhabitants. Plus, with all the shit that happened to the pods 37 and 38 ended up with the same memory and programming issues that 3 and 4 did, though thankfully they don't end up hating each other.

And of course there's also Rosin and her friends having to come to terms with Ozymandias's betrayal.

[duckapus]

Idea I'm too tired to write properly:

Larryboy's driving through Bumblyburg on the trail of the Milkmoney Bandit (that one scallion mugger from the cold open of the Rumor Weed), whose been acting unusual lately. Not only is he doing more high-profile thefts than usual (he's got a very specific range, you know? it's in the name and everything), and not sticking to the shadows as well as normal, but he's been doing more thefts instead of fewer despite it almost being summer vacation (again, he's usually very particular about specifically taking milk money from school kids, so summer's his off-season). Larryboy managed to plant a tracker into the change the Bandit took in his most recent heist, and is following the signal to the warehouse district (it's a superhero city, gotta have a warehouse district).

He sneaks in, corners the Bandit with his usual theatrics... only to pause when he realizes that the Bandit looks really pale and wobbly. And then he glitches and says that his recent crimewave happened because "they" said they'd give him The Antidote if he did what they said. And when Larryboy questions this, one of Garyboy's plungers wraps him up and the virus comes out of the shadows.

As he's an eggplant of his word, he gives the Bandit a syringe containing the patch that'll purge the low-level malware in his system and tells him to skedaddle. Once the two are alone there's some hero-villain banter exchanged, they catch each-other up on what they've been doing lately (within reason. neither of them is about to reveal anything actually useful to one of their worst enemies), and eventually Larryboy manages to get loose.

The fight commences, during which it's revealed that Larry's suit has been reinforced to the point where Gary can't bite him through it. Larry's the more skilled fighter and Gary's stronger and has his Hydra powers, which makes them pretty evenly matched, at least until they've been fighting for a while and we're reminded that Code-Level entities don't get tired as fast as Character-Level entities (at east on average), so Gary gets the upper hand... metaphorically speaking.

Thankfully, he's not here to finish the job this time. Instead, he's here to show off a new trick he learned. He shoots a plunger (on a stick instead of a cord. that is something the super-suction ears can do even if it's only happened once in the Fib from Outer Space as a slapstick thing) at the Larrymobile, causing it to transform. Obviously it switches to Garyboy's color scheme, but it also gets a bit bigger and changes its signature smooth cucumber-shape into something more angular with segmented armor plating.

And, of course, once it's fully become the Garymobile Garryboy gains the ability to control it remotely. He takes it for a spin, knocking Larryboy around in the process, before portaling out. Communications come back online (because of course Garyboy was jamming his signal on top of everything else) and when Alfred asks if Larry's alright all he can think to say is that he needs a new car.

[duckapus]

Okay, at this point I have to admit I have no idea what to do with A Snake in Horseland. I have a few scattered ideas but nothing coherent, and with how long it's taking I kind of just want to list out the ideas and move on.

-the Syndicate gets dealt with first because they're relatively easier, not trying to hide, and aren't relevant to the Ozymandias and Root plotline. Crocker's a joke since he doesn't have any powers whatsoever, Vlad gets taken out by Luigi because he's a ghost, Vaati gets into a fight with the Wonderbolts and a bunch of the flight-capable characters before ultimately falling to Fluttershy's therapy-fu, Gohma fights the Hologram Trio and uses the leftover memories from Byte to mess with their heads a little, and I have no idea what to do with Lokoko besides the fact that any MLP or SMG characters will probably have some commentary on her and Frida's dynamic. Ultimately they end up retreating back to the MRU universes while the Anchors stay behind to help the Crew (and find Timmy because the kids have been having their Airship Adventure during all that)

-The Kids' find Ozymandias and Garyboy first, and Elanore managed to beef up the ship's weapons enough that they can throw Ozzy around even if they still can't actually hurt him, so between that and the fact that Gary's not invincible they're able to hold their own until the adults show up.

-Lil Coding actually listened when Hex yelled at him and is helping.

-The first real Big Moment in the fight is Ozzy making the mistake of taunting Mira and Antivirus with how close Root's code is to being fully reintegrating with his, resulting in them fusing through the Power of Rage into ANNIHILATION, and thanks to having AV's strength and Mira's speed combined they can hit hard enough that it makes Ozzy actually feel pain, even if it's technically not doing damage.

-Another way to make him feel pain is Toad managing to latch onto his head and sing at the top of his lungs, because no matter how invulnerable you are if you're capable of hearing you're able to experience the agony of Toad Song.

-There's also Pinkie Pie and Mario managing to annoy him enough with their antics at one point that they lure him into biting his own tail, which does the first actual damage out of everything they're throwing at him (which is a lot), and also knocks loose a few scales (these ones don't end up as Offshoots btw. they're just basic objects and will probably grow back), which Link gathers up, uses an item duplication glitch on, and starts fusing to his arrows. So now he's the biggest threat of the group since he's actually able to do damage.

-Twilight, magical genius that she is, manages to reverse-engineer the Fusion command just from observing Annihilation being formed, work out how to replicate its effects as a spell, and actually successfully use said spell with Rainbow Dash to become who I'm calling Lightspeed Aurora, in ten seconds flat.

-Bob finally figuring out how Changeling Shapeshifting works results in him divebombing Garyboy as the Bob-omb Battlefield Chain Chomp...which unfortunately results in Garyboy biting the inside of his mouth. Fortunately, instead of, you know, dying, he gets glitched out so badly that it changes him back into his normal character model (complete with being 3D again) and reapplied the False Positive glitch, which gives him an idea...

-Fast forward a couple scenes and Ozzy's got everyone on the ropes (of course he does, they can only disorient him and do chip damage), when he's suddenly hit by a massive ball of water. They all turn to see where it came from and see Lily back in her normal form (though still 2D unlike Bob) as tall as she was as Sonata and glowing with Meme Energy, with Bob in his sunglasses and a modified version of his gold necklace (the skultula charm is replaced by a lowercase 'i') and Pinkie with matching sunglasses and a silver Pi symbol necklace standing next to her...doing as close an equivalent to holding hands as a guy with swords for arms and a pony are able. Yes, 3 and 4 do grump a little that even those two seem to be better than them at being SMGs.

-Unstoppable Force (Lily is huge and fucking pissed) meets Immovable Object (Ozymandias is still indestructible), and the Magic of Friendship intervenes because of course it does they're in Equestria. There's a lot of rainbow glowy stuff, said rainbow glowy stuff somehow lets Lily's not-quite-a-Storm-Trident-Replica-anymore stab a gateway into Ozymandias's code, find Root, have a brief heart-to-heart and pull her out.

-Once she's out of Ozymandias Root is in her Maneuver form; an eastern dragon that's almost as big as Ozzy's current Equestrian dragon form and about half the size of his true form. It's already been described by Efficiency in a few of their branching AUs so I'm not going into that here. She manages to deal a massive blow on Ozzy's chest, he discovers that whatever that mix of Meme Energy and Friendship Magic did made it so he can't absorb her at all anymore, and he grabs Garyboy and barely manages to tear open a portal and escape.

-He didn't actually set a specific destination so the Admins can't track him like AV did when he left SM64, and even if they could nobody's in any shape to chase and fight him, so they decide to worry about the two of them later. In the meantime, the Anchors have to get home, everybody has to recover from All That, and somebody has to explain to Equestria and its allies what the hell has been happening for the last day and a half or so.

-No, Bob and Pinkie don't get to keep being SMGi and SMGpi full-time. It is noted that they were actually pretty good at it though. Also Bob might have wireframe scars now (he did get hit by Garyboy's venom after all), but he's always completely covered up so we'll never know.

-Wherever it is that Ozzy and Gary ended up, they find out that the injury on his chest left a wireframe scar...and that that specific part of him is no longer invulnerable.

[duckapus]

Finally actually starting A Snake in Horseland

So after he realizes that Silver Sulfur is actually Ozymandias Toad of course runs to the castle to warn everyone. Antivirus, Mira and Amy are already there because they (AV and Mira, not Amy (obviously)) detected Root's code signature randomly disappear. The Crew puts two and two together and teleports to the place where Toad saw him, and they see him and Garyboy going through a portal. Mira tries to rush them, but Gary shoots one of his fanged Super Suction Ears at her which forces her to duck and slide to dodge it, slowing her down enough for them to escape and close the portal behind them (the plunger gets cut off in the process but Garyboy isn't particularly fussed about it. He's a hydra and a code being, it'll grow back). There's a moment of stunned silence until...

"And nothing of value was lost!"

(...yeah Lil Coding isn't going to be particularly likeable for a good chunk of this)

After Vee smacks him upside the head so hard he ragdolls to the other end of the alley they're in, Antivirus reassures everyone that he can reopen the portal since it was closed so recently, though since he doesn't recognize the server on the other side he can't send them to exactly the same location within that universe that the villains went.

------

Meanwhile, in the Grid's Fairly Oddparents universe, the Anchors and the twins (plus Cosmo, Wanda, Harmony and Mina, since they're package deals with their respective Anchors) are storming the Crocker Cave following a lead from Jimmy Neutron that the extended Syndicate are planning something with an upgraded version of Calamitus's (blatant copy of Jimmy's) interdimensional portal gate that can potentially bypass the Grid's firewalls. They arrive just in time to see Crocker, Plasmius, Vaati, Lokoko and Admin Gohma travel through the portal, with Plasmius noticing them and destroying the controls with an ectoblast so they can't use it to follow them (they're not stranded btw, Gohma has access to the portal command and can bypass the twins no problem. That's what the gate upgrades were based on in the first place).

Fortunately, they have magic on their side! Magic that is apparently also able to bypass firewalls because Fairly Oddparents Fairies Are O.P. (when they're not being hampered by Da Ruelz at least). So Timmy wishes for everybody in the room except the twins (because they have to stay behind since they're still supposed to be keeping the Grid's servers secure) to go to the same server the Syndicate did.

Unfortunately for both groups, Timmy's wish and the Crew going through Antiviruses portal just so happen to occur simultaneously, and the combination of Admin Code, Fairy Magic, and Equestrian Magic (because if you'll remember, the MLP:FiM universe changes anyone who enters it into an MLP-based species unless it can't figure out what to turn them into) causes both groups to get scattered to several different landing points across Equestria. So now they not only have to find Ozzy, Gary and the Syndicate team, but also each-other.

While dealing with being in unfamiliar bodies.

And dealing with Lil Coding's shitty attitude if they happen to be in the same group as him.

And being on a time crunch because the code entities can feel Root's signal repeatedly briefly come back online, each time weaker than the last and never long enough for them to pinpoint an exact location.

Fun! :)

[duckapus]

For those wondering, the reason Worm's weakened form looks so much like Glitch is because after his defeat he absorbed the chunk of Glitch's code that he took from her (which you might recall is why she died and fused with Red Doomguy to create Antivirus) so he could survive his injuries. Chip, Bandwidth, Dave and Antivirus will not be happy when they find out.