Iterum: A Finis Work

i have no idea

i dared a user to ask out ht, she did not want too, SO I DID IT

Stalinnnnnnnnnnn

Chapter 7: Battle of the Shopping District 

The King, Madeleine, and the Shopkeeper dashed quickly, past shops and buildings of all shapes and sizes. Wide courtyards gave way to narrow alleyways, which led into more wide courtyards which led into more narrow alleyways. It was a complete maze. 

The destruction being spread was so wide, however, that it didn’t take long to find the root of the problem. 

Stalin strode about, cutting people and knocking over buildings with swings of his Saw. Behind him, the Robo-Knights slowly moved about, blasting things apart with their lasers. The few people around fled for their lives. None of them were successful. 

The communist was just in the process of crushing a helpless victim’s skull with his boot when he looked up and saw three lone people staring him down. 

“Ah! What do we have here?” Stalin mused. “An orphan, a capitalist, and a very special someone.” 

The Octoling loaded her ink gun. The staredown continued. 

“I know you’re probably not going to accept this, but please. Just hand over the King, and everything will be fine.” 

“You’re right. We’re not going to accept this,” Madeleine shot back. 

“Do you want to know something?” Stalin stroked his mustache. His eyelids drooped, as though he was deep in thought. 

“We allow your little resistance to exist.” The man smirked. He began to pace grandly about. “The Empire allows it to continue. Rebellion will always exist, and so we allow it to persist in the way that we want it to. Small, weak, and easily containable.”

“Now, then. I don’t have to destroy everything that you’ve built up. In fact, I don’t want to, either. That would take effort. So. Just let the King come with us, and we can keep the status quo. Deal?” 

“No,” three voices chorused back at him. 

Stalin sighed. “It was worth a shot. I hope you’ve all got backup vessels prepared. Let’s do this.” 

OOO

The Robo-Knights turned out to not be incompetent minions. Several laser beams and grenades flew through the air, and these didn’t look like they were going to miss. 

Madeleine expertly threw hats at each of the explosive devices, knocking them wildly off course. The King’s largest coin was more than enough to hold up to the lasers being shot at him. 

But now Stalin himself was coming in, grabbing his hammer and sickle and jumping into a gigantic attack. 

The King dove to the side. The Shopkeeper splatter ink upon the Robo-Knights, making them markedly incapable of getting out or doing much of anything. They creaked and groaned and fired attacks randomly, but not much seemed to be working. 

Jumping out of his dive, the King used his momentum to swing his hammer down at Stalin. Stalin returned it with a blow of his own, and the force of the two golden hammers colliding sent the both of them flying backwards several meters. 

In an extremely unfortunate happenstance, the Robo-Knights began to break free of their goop. The Octoling began to desperately fire more ink, trying to keep them at bay. 

The King hopped to his feet quickly, somewhat bruised but still healthy. Stalin got up as well, hurling his sickle at the King before even getting off his knees. 

A hat deflected the sickle off-course by a few inches. The King stepped to the side, and the thing flew by him. 

Stalin growled in frustration, pulled out his Saw, and emptied it of literally all of its blades. Hats and coins would not do a thing against razor-sharp metal heated several thousand degrees. 

The King ducked, jumped, dove, and dodged his way through the forest of projectiles, each coming within an inch of his body before he managed to move it out of the way. Without his armor, one of them even grazing him most certainly would have done some damage, but without his armor, none of them even had a chance. 

The Robo-Knights, in the meantime, were now hopelessly stuck and slowly dissolving. It seemed like whatever was in that ink was a perfect counter to the nearly indestructible material their armor was made out of. One by one, each of them began to fail and stop working, remaining trapped under heaps of the corrosive liquid. 

But Stalin was not content to go down easy. The blades he fired boomeranged back around, moving straight towards the King once again. 

The King continued his routine, dancing and jumping and weaving and performing all sorts of acrobatics. What a strange fighting style this was, all this moving around. He wasn’t getting tired - exhaustion was a concern for beings without good vessels - but it certainly did require a great amount of concentration and effort. He had always thought it simpler to simply tank the enemy attacks. 

The King’s philosophical thought process was interrupted by Stalin wildly swinging the Saw at him. The former Stalin swung his Saw slowly, but this guy was somehow swinging it around as easily as though it were a toy. 

The King tried to bring out his hammer, while also instinctively trying to dodge. He failed on both counts, getting cut deeply in the chest and being thrown backwards violently. 

The poor man hit the floor. His vision swam in and out, spots clouding his vision. He couldn’t move. He could scarcely breathe, was barely able to stay alive at all. He slumped his way into unconsciousness, the world leaving him. 

“Ha! You like that?” Stalin gloated. He unslung a standard army-issue automatic rifle from somewhere. Where did he get that? Why was he using it? “Get knocked out in one shot! Get ready to dOOOmPHA!” 

The Octoling Shopkeeper has shot a blast of ink directly into Stalin’s mouth. Stalin reacted as though this were acid, which it might as well have been. He clawed at his mouth, trying desperately to get the liquid out. 

Madeleine took this opportunity to throw an explosive hat at Stalin. Despite the man being in immense pain, he was still capable of stepping to the side and dodging it. 

“Ha!” Stalin laughed again. He immediately screamed in pain following this laugh - perhaps his throat had sustained injuries. 

“What a cheap trick, ganging up on me. Did you honestly think that would work?” 

Madeleine pointed behind him. 

“A second cheap trick! You truly fight with no honor. Did you really think I’d fall for that?”

The explosive hat bounced off the wall and ricocheted directly into Stalin, going off with a BOOM. 

Stalin was flung through the air, crashing into the ground unceremoniously. For all the strength and powers this guy had, he had nothing on the original Stalin’s durability. A single explosion would have tickled, not injured. 

A dark energy surrounded him - a clear sign of the Emperor’s power. The energy gathered, forming into the shape of the man. His voice boomed. 

“Don’t think that you can stand against me. You will die. All of you enemies of the Empire - you will die.” 

The energy gathered around the fallen form of Stalin, more and more and more, until finally, it teleported him away across space and time. 

“dOOOmPHA!” 

I dont remember Celeste existing in the prequels 

Not Celeste. I spelled her name differently, just because I thought someone might bring that up. 

Madeleine moemnt 

yes