Deadly Best {HK Tiso TF TG FtM PS MC}

Lying face-first on a rustic red couch, a girl groaned with boredom. Lydia had nothing she could do! She glared at her computer screen, which was still on; she had no internet connection, and all of her games kept on constantly crashing or lagging horribly. She flopped over, blowing her long hair out of her face and gripped her couch cushions harshly, pondering whether or not to just go to bed early and see if this all blows over tomorrow. She sighed, getting up slowly on her way to bed, before she heard a strange click noise. She looked around, before looking at her computer, which was now making a wind-like breeze noise. She then looked at her monitor to see a strange sight; Hollow Knight, one of her games, had opened itself up on its own, causing her to jump a bit. She changed her course to go to sit on her computer chair, looking around the start screen; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, and better yet, it wasn't laggy! She promptly hit the start button, failing to notice that the signature four-pronged Hallownest Seal normally on the title was replaced with a three-set, curled horned seal.

She clicked on her newest run's save file, a Steel Soul run in the Coliseum rest area bench. She had almost everything upgraded aside from her nail and the last charm notch, and was pumped to curb stomp everything in her way! Boredom had been stamped out under her foot, and she was going to fight the Coliseum to keep it that way! She got up from the bench and talked to Tiso, his nasally voice reminding her why she hated him so much. His art looked different; he seemed to look.... nervous, and was constantly shining his shield with a piece of cloth. Despite the different animations, he still had the same dialog, what with "crushing them all" and whatnot. She then talked to Zote, who also boasted about how getting captured was his "intention," and also had different, more nervous-looking art. She sat in the secret spring to the right, and when she was going to leave the rest area, she saw that Tiso and Zote's animations changed yet again; Tiso was holding his head with his free hand and shuddering violently, and simply looked.... blank. She decided to Dream Nail Tiso and Zote to see if anything else was wrong:

Tiso seems.... distressed, and Zote.... what does he mean by "freak of nature," and what will it "do again?" She was left puzzled by this, but tried to push it out of her mind to focus on the fighting. She leaped out of the rest area and placed her mark on the first trial, before super dashing into the arena. She snickered near the end of the first trial, finding it pathetically easy, and burst into laughter upon seeing Zote being hurled out of the gate to fight her. She slashed through his puny frame and sent him flying, before he... burst into white. That wasn't normal; all of the guides that she watched showed Zote falling onto his head and getting stuck on his helmet prongs, not flashing away in a blink. She collected the geo, unlocked the next trial, placed her mark on it, and super dashed yet again into the arena. This was also easy to beat, and she grinned when she picked up the pale ore for her last upgrade. She grabbed the geo, dashed back out, saved on the bench, stag-travelled to the nearest place to the Nailsmith, upgraded, and travelled back to do the second challenge twice for the journal entry at the end. She went back to the bench to save, noticing that Tiso wasn't there anymore; she then remembered that this was normal and set off for the third trial, the Trial of the Fool.

Now, this was a challenge! She had made sure not to spoil herself for this challenge, and it definitely left her surprised! Wave after wave of enemies and other ways of mixing up the combat. This was an actual challenge to her, and at one point she was almost afraid that she would break Fragile Strength! She survived, despite her swearing at the floorless segment, and stood proud at the rumbling of the God Tamer's ferocious beast. She was slightly disappointed by this boss, however, which she felt was a cakewalk compared to the rest of the trial. She heard the roaring cheers of the audience, before they were quickly silenced, and a special cutscene played.

It was a hand-drawn cutscene, like the one with Hornet at the fountain. It showcased Tiso sprinting into the scene and ringing out his signature annoying, nasally laugh. When it panned behind him, it showed her little night healing on its own, mending small cracks in its mask from previous damage. Tiso laughed yet again, which prompted him to speak inside the cutscene. He still spoke in the game's gibberish, which prompted the game to provide subtitles, which caused her to snicker at how ridiculous the situation was. Tiso was boasting about how he was going to crush the "Pale thing" that "stole his true spot," but Lydia was almost not listening. She just couldn't take him seriously, and at one point was left in hysterical laughter; how could she take him seriously with a voice like that? She could see enough through her laughter to see his angry expression and his ending line:

Wait, he knew that she was laughing? Before she could regain her composure and react, the game returned to normal, and Tiso leapt up and struck down with his shield, dealing some free damage to her knight. She then reacted quickly, dealing some free slashes before he could block. Now this was a boss fight! Tiso shielded and back-peddled, before winding up his shield arm and flinging his shield at the knight. She dodged, leaving it to boomerang back to him. He tossed it yet again, this time with no wind-up; Lydia reacted on impulse and panic slashed, flinging the attack back at Tiso and sending him flying back. The shield bounced back and she hit it again, but this time Tiso grabbed it and holstered it back on his arm. Tiso charged at high speed, leaving her to pogo off of his back. She pogoed off of him a few more times, before he attacked upwards, knocking her up before she began face-tanking his attacks.

In the end, Lydia roared in anger at what happened; it was a mutual kill! Both of them died at the same time, and on a Steel Soul run! She hissed, before both of the combatants were frozen in midair and the screen began shaking violently. Then, Dream Essence symbols flashed onto the screen, and this reminded Lydia of whenever the Dreamers interfered with the knight's quest. A dream dialog box appeared, and what it said confused her:

Lydia's confusion soon turned to fear and pain as the screen flashed white, blinding her and knocking her unconscious. When she awoke, she found herself... still in her computer seat, in her room. At least, she thought that she was in her room, though the pale, glowing white floor gave it away that this was definitely not her normal home. Even worse, a heavy maroon and orange haze hung heavy in the room, causing her to breathe heavily, and this haze tasted nasty to boot. Then, she looked harder, in an attempt to see through the unnatural fog, and saw a heart-racing sight; Dream Essence symbols, the ones used to denote the Dream World in Hollow Knight. Was she in the Dream World, and... how? She looked around frantically, spinning in her chair before looking back in front of her, at her computer screen. The screen was black, yet there was a spinning symbol in the bottom corner, as if it was loading. She looked at the symbol to see if there was anything else wrong, and the symbol was so unfamiliar to her; it looked like a one-eyed mask, like Lurien's mask, but had three sets of horns, top pointing up, middle

curling forward like ram horns, and bottom curled back.

Before long, the area loaded, and the sights seemed to leave her more and more puzzled; she wasn't playing as her normal knight, but as... Tiso. The area was the Dream World, but shiny and white, like the White Palace. She began controlling Tiso, and he seemed to have relatively normal controls, but had a conventional videogame lifebar, strangely enough. Control inputs started appearing on the screen; left and right arrows to move, "Z" to jump, "X" to attack normally, up arrow and "X" to attack up, and down arrow and "X" to attack down. Some of the controls were different, however; "C" was now mapped to Tiso blocking, and instead of dashing, Tiso could sprint with Spacebar. Tiso also had a charged attack, mapped to the same button as normal, which was him hurling his shield for a boomerang attack, but she was also prompted with "press C to ready catching it" as it came back. She caught the shield like the game told her to although with hard focus because of her harsh breathing of the haze, and then a strange practice dummy fell from the sky onto the platform Tiso was on. To the right, platforms floated up to an unknown area. The dummy seemed to be for practicing using Tiso's abilities, for... some reason.

She decided to beat up on the dummy first, just in case what was on the opposite side of those platforms had ball-mangling, noob-punishing difficulty. She faced Tiso towards the dummy, and then began sprinting towards the dummy to attack. Apparently attacking while sprinting caused Tiso to do a charging attack, which sent the dummy high into the air. She almost fell off, but a dream barrier stopped her. Almost like an innate clockwork, she jumped into the air and began striking up, knocking the dummy even higher, before she knocked it to the far side. When the dummy landed on the ground, she jumped up and attacked downwards, causing the dummy to bounce up a bit, before she struck it to the side once again. As she began getting more used to controlling Tiso, breathing was becoming easier to her, and as she began breathing in more of the haze, she seemed to be getting better and better, to the point were controlling Tiso was almost like an innate instinct. She walked back and faced the dummy, before she began holding down "X" to begin charging up her attack. When she felt that she was ready, she released the button, flinging the shield forward, and knocking the dummy around twice over, once on the way out, and once on the way back. Without even thinking, she grabbed the shield on the way back and headed forward to look at the platforms going to who-knows-where.

She looked up, yet didn't get a clear answer, either. Despite this, a voice in her head rang out with full confidence: "There is nothing that I can't take! Forward!"

She grunted in pain from her head, like some sort of migraine, before smiling gleefully and moving forward, not even caring that the voice wasn't in any sort of language and wasn't her own, nor noticing that her eyes had become a blank white color. As she scaled to the top, she noticed a room that looked eerily familiar... a copy of the Arena room, in the same monochrome colors as the rest of the world. She breathed in more of the haze, which seemed to be increasing her confidence tenfold, and she sneered; would she be going through the trials again? As she reached the top, she sprinted forward, before a giant figure crashed down from the ceiling; a large black-and-white splotched bug, clad in a white cloak and wearing a white mask... exactly like the mask on the loading screen. She shuddered slightly, but the voice told her to ignore those feelings, which she did. The large figure loomed over them with its large nail for a few moments, before fading into Dream Essence and reappearing in the audience sidelines. Afterwards, a cage was pushed out from the opposing side, containing two... what was its name, again? She didn't know, but the voice said that they looked like "the pale thing with a mouth." The voice sounded so familiar, yet...

The more she breathed in the haze, the more things seemed... familiar. That voice... was it really...?!

Before she could finish her thought, both of the enemies jumped her and were attempting to bash her with their nails. She blocked, before charging one of them into the wall. All the while, the voice in her head was barking orders at her, such as to attack up or to back peddle. These orders seemed to lead her to optimal performance, so she obeyed every word, despite them sounding like nonsense. The fight lasted quite a while, the barking of orders and the clanging of items against her shield starting to wear on her mind. In one rage-filled attack, she unleashed her charged attack, catching both enemies in it at once, hitting them on the ways out and back, before the enemies slumped over unconscious. She caught the shield, and began moving towards the opposite side of the screen, before everything froze and the screen began shaking. More... what was it... no... a voice boomed all across the room, ringing in her ears:

Yes, sh- he was! Lydia started coughing violently, and she began feeling... sleepy, and almost like she wasn't all there. Before long, the maroon haze that she had been breathing in so clearly, so easily, began filling into her body, and her head began hurting immensely. All of the haze in the room soon was filled within her body, leaving her to cough before she fell unconscious... or not.

After she had faded from the body, Tiso laughed out in his loud, proud voice with the pathetic body. He was proud! "Two versus one? Phfff!" He scoffed, as his in-game representation puffed into a stationary cloud of Dream Essence. "Against two pathetic, wormy..."

He could not finish his second remark before a searing pain overtook his new body, leaving him whimpering on the floor. He was searing hot, and this body's skin was overcome with a pins-and-needles sensation. The breasts present on the girl's body melted into the rest of the body. The hair present all receded back, before both the hair and bones began dissolving into themselves and into the body's flesh. Starting with the torso, flesh pinched in and tightened, before hardening into a firm, strong carapace. Tiso writhed and wriggled in pain, before screaming out as the gender of the body he was puppeteering was changed to his original, real body's gender, before being covered up by more carapace. His arms and legs tightened in as well, before becoming two-segmented and hard carapace-jointed limbs. The body's feet were absorbed into the rest of the body, leaving his feet as nubby stubs. The body's pinky and ring fingers on each hand merged and joined together, before the skin on the hands was hardened into a strong, segmented carapace, further strengthened from dissolved bones, hair, and nails. The cracking of created carapace joints vibrated and resounded through the body and his ears. His neck cracked and the skin creaked as it was converted into segmented carapace like the rest of the insectoid body. Tiso's head was throbbing painfully, which intensified as the carapace crept up his jaw and skull. The body's head became much rounder, and was made as segmented as the rest of the conversion. The eyes, made Tiso's blank white from his earlier control and influence, quickly became much larger in comparison to the rest of his head. The skull was dissolved as well to strengthen the carapace, yet the teeth were left unchanged. The ears and nose of the body were also left to melt into the face, the cartilage also being used to strengthen the carapace. The pins-and-needles sensation turned into a painful pulsing as the fair skin tone of the original body was flooded with a pure black tint, soon leaving his entire, carapace-converted body a shiny black exoskeleton.

The casual clothes that Lydia had been wearing tore themselves apart, before starting to rearrange themselves to new areas. Some cloth tore off and made its home around Tiso's head, repairing its tears and dying itself a light, muted cobalt color. Another piece of torn cloth began glowing a bright white, converting into a metal, before bending and contorting itself into a large, circular, six-segmented shield made of silver. The rest of the torn clothes did the same, burning and glowing, turning into a deep, muted blue metal and contorting itself into an armor set made of a torso piece and two pauldrons over his shoulders.

Tiso lie still on the floor, feeling as though half-dead, and breathing shallowly. He attempted to stand up weakly, yet almost fell unconscious, before a white cloud of Dream Essence swarmed around him. Before he knew it, he had taken the cloud's place in the game world. He quickly began falling over, almost crashing onto the ground before a large figure caught him; the figure that watched him in the fake arena.

The... it's the...!

Tiso jumped at the sudden realization, almost falling back before the figure caught him again. It was the Warper! It was the one who turned that other girl into another.... whatever his name is! Forcefully! Against her will! She was gone, and now...!

The Warper's voice was incredibly chipper, and sounded as strangely young as ever; to Tiso, all it did was fall directly into the uncanny valley. It just sounded... wrong, especially for a figure like what it had. Tiso's heart was racing; before he could speak, the Warper interrupted with its still-cheery voice:

The being said it with a hearty laugh, before scooping up one of the enemies in its free arm. So, Zote... that was the name of the bug that the Warper duplicated. Intimidated by the Warper, Tiso complied, holstering his shield on his back and lugging the other Zote in his arms; which one was the original, he couldn't tell. The Warper perked up yet again:

Tiso tilted his head quizzically, before stopping dead in his tracks; that means....-

The Warper spun around, before bowing down to eye level with Tiso:

The Warper laughed another hearty laugh, before turning around and walking back on its original course. Tiso shook and rattled, before he began following again. The Warper spoke again, never breaking a single stride: