Tatanga vs. Crash Man: Suggestions encouraged! [UPDATE 10/15]

Magikarp: Land on the Third Party, regardless of how little sense that makes.

"Fairfax, you went more than half a year without updating! Again! I don't remember anything about your amazing, byzantine storyline!"

Start from the beginning on the mirror and marvel at how the sporadic work of over two years can be consumed in, like, half an hour.

"I don't have time to look at over a hundred gifs!"

It's pronounced "gifs". And ugh, fine. Have a recap.

SpoilerShow

The Mysterious Spaceman, Tatanga, faces off against the Robot Master, Crash Man, in a turn based arena-style battle. After a failed attempt at a tea party, Crash Man attacks first with a Crash Bomber, scoring a hit. Tatanga, before delivering a punch, contacts his spaceship, the Tatanga Mk. I, which begins its long journey to the arena from the Moon Base.


Crash Man attempts to recreate a legendary Combat Maneuver: Throw Baby. He does so by drawing a baby face on one of his Standard Bombs. Because all attempts at copying Throw Baby are doomed to fail due to the arcane secrets of acquiring and understanding the power of a Baby, the Bomb Baby travels a pitiful distance and lands near Crash Man, with the propensity to explode if anyone gets too close.


Tatanga constructs a Fort while Crash Man builds a steel wall to protect the Bomb Baby,  experiencing conflicted fatherly emotions. Crash Man inflicts negligible damage to Fort Tatanga with a Crash Bomber. Tatanga’s Fort is outfitted by the Fort Errata Dispensation Authority, or FEDA. He begins upgrading the Fort through a command Terminal. Doing so, he succeeds in raising a flag, ordering the construction of a Library to be finished by the end of his next turn, setting something to ‘manual’, and accidentally summoning a Magikarp to join Team Tatanga.


Skeptical of Magikarp’s potential, Tatanga attempts to throw him at the Bomb Baby. The Tatanga Mk. I arrives at that very moment and Magikarp collides with the windshield. Crash Man hijacks the spaceship and rechristens it the S.S. Crashman, flying it into Fort Tatanga with Magikarp in tow and causing massive damage to Fort, spaceship, and fighters alike.


Tatanga recovers with a vial of Biotic Fluid, but is interrupted by a sucker punch from Crash Man. Tatanga realizes that, using the terminal, he accidentally set the Battle Mode from Automatic to Manual, ending the turn-based combat and instituting real-time action. Magikarp splashes around before being restrained by Tatanga for his uselessness.


Crash Man deploys a Standard Bomb and retreats to the other side of the Fort. Out of empathy, he offers Magikarp a space on Team Crash Man, but is unable to accept Allies until he has a Fort of his own. Tatanga drops Magikarp on the Standard Bomb, arming it to explode. Magikarp regrets having made too little progress on his Character Arc to evolve into Gyarados. Crash Man attempts to use the Terminal to evacuate Magikarp before the Standard Bomb goes off. Tatanga tosses his Stone Hammer into the blast zone as the Standard Bomb goes off, damaging the Fort and propelling the hammer to strike Crash Man and lodge itself in the Terminal. Magikarp is blasted out of the Fort and into the stratosphere.


Elsewhere, a Third Party passively watches the fight unfold on a monitor.


Tatanga retreats to the Fort’s Sublevel, only to find that switching the Battle Mode to Manual is preventing his Library from being constructed.He salvages some caution tape from the unfinished door. Crash Man vandalizes the Fort and, by writing his name on the wall, accomplishes one of the necessary steps of a Hostile Takeover, which would claim the fort for Team Crash Man. Tatanga’s attempts to break down the Library door are fruitless, as are Crash Man’s attempt to pull the Stone Hammer from the Terminal.


Magikarp continues to hurtle through the sky...

Updates coming shortly!

Magikarp: Land.

After what seems like an extremely long but not at all unprecedented period of time, Magikarp’s explosive trajectory through the sky comes to an abrupt end as he makes contact with a large stone structure. 

Third Party: Intervene.

Oh, dear. This is exactly the sort of out-of-bounds chicanery that the Third Party was afraid of. In a world where combat determines worth, there’s no telling what would happen if a combatant became involved in outside affairs. Granted, the Third Party can’t imagine how effective Magikarp would be in actually disrupting said affairs, but after what happened last time, the Third Party isn’t taking any chances.

Meticulously, methodically, and free of idiocy, the Third Party intervenes.

As Magikarp finds himself adorning a wall post-explosion for the second time in so many minutes, a Vortex materializes not too far away.

The Vortex coalesces into a Glove.

Magikarp gathers his wits just enough to take notice of his new neighbor.

Suddenly, and not very neighborly, the Glove springs forward, punching Magikarp away from the structure.

With whatever conscious sense he can grasp, Magikarp reflects despondently on his growing familiarity with flying through the air at terminal velocity.

He falls into a pit and out of sight.

Tatanga: Bust down that brick wall!



After instance upon instance of Tatanga’s rightful Library being denied him, the Mysterious Spaceman takes the situation into his own alien hands. He begins a Melville-worthy display of whaling on the bricked-up Library door, determined to get at whatever lies beyond.

The bricks seem to be registering Tatanga’s onslaught. Just a few more solid hits ought to do it...





Crash Man, use a Crash Bomber to destroy the entrance to the sub-levels of the fort.




If Crash Man’s gonna get the time he needs to figure out how to dislodge that pesky Stone Hammer from the Terminal, he’ll have to delay his adversary's return to the field of battle.

Crash Man launches his trusty Crash Bomber Combat maneuver, which finds purchase in the corner of the Sublevel door frame.

The Crash Bomber explodes. The severely damaged door fizzes out of existence.

Crash Man beams with gratitude for finally causing an explosion without any nasty clean-up afterwards. Some problems just get rid of themselves, it seems.







The door to the main level of Fort Tatanga de-syncs.

Tatanga is slowly gripped by a dawning horror as he contemplates the circumstances of this development.

>Tatanga: Take the sign saying "library", remove the sign saying "null", then put the library sign in its place, and walk through the resulting open library door.

Tatanga: Take the Library sign.

Tatanga’s getting sick of this door nonsense. Putting aside the existential dilemma of his current whereabouts in relation to the rest of his Fort, Tatanga forms a brilliant idea. Seeing as how the destination of a door results in the reading on its sign, the reverse should also be true. If Tatanga replaces the sign of the de-synced door with the one from the Library, he could bypass the convoluted Tertiary Room system entirely, jury-rig a working door, and finally access the Library he should have had ages ago.

Tatanga elects not to worry about the possibility of rendering the other door incapable of returning to the Toplevel. He assumes that the Library will contain books on how to deal with that sort of thing.







Using his alien dexterity, Tatanga grabs the door frame, positions himself to get a grip on the sign, and pulls.

Tatanga can practically smell the unmistakable musk of old books, public restrooms, and the Dewey Decimal System...








Tatanga loses his grip on the sign and falls to the platform.

The sign is torn off of the door, plummeting to the depths of the Sublevel below.

The door to the Library de-syncs.

Tatanga: Enter the null door.

With seemingly nothing left to punch or tug on, Tatanga fully focuses on his predicament. He has access to neither the Library nor the Toplevel, and no earthly idea to where either of these de-synced doors will take him. Is the Sublevel still technically part of Fort Tatanga? Is there a difference between a door marked 'null', and one with its sign completely torn off? And where the hell is his Library?

Tatanga refuses to waste any more time dwelling on stupid questions. In a world where combat determines worth, the Mysterious Spaceman concludes that there has to be some way he can get back to beating Crash Man's face in with the nearest blunt object. However idiosyncratic and inconsistent FEDA may be when it comes to the durability and stability of their Forts, there can't be a level of damage so severe that it would remove a combatant's agency in their own fight! Tatanga finds himself unable to picture a universe in which fighting wasn't always an option. The only option.

Tatanga trusts that progress of any kind, no matter how dubious or undefined, will lead him back to the field of battle. There can be no other destination.

Yet Tatanga hesitates still. He figures he ought to make entirely sure that stepping into a liminal space won't vaporize him or anything like that. It's times like these he wishes that Magikarp was still around. Tatanga ignores the fact that throwing his Ally has not proven itself an advantageous strategy even once.

However, it gives him an idea...













In lieu of an inanimate Ally within reach, Tatanga peruses his Inventory in search of an appropriately useless inanimate object to toss into the open door.

No chance of chucking any Biotic Fluid--with the Team Health how it currently stands, that stuff's too valuable to lose. Tatanga's got enough Space Rocks that he won't miss losing one, but with over half his initial stock gone and no way of accessing his home planet, let alone literally anywhere else at this point, he's wary about getting any closer to running out.

Tatanga doubts that the Spaceship Remote has any practical use at this point, given how A) its associated spacecraft has been rechristened by the enemy, and B) said spacecraft's charred remains lie scattered in several pieces an undefined distance away. He's got no clue what pushing the button now would even do.

That Caution Tape seems about equally disposable given how Tatanga certainly isn't learning Item Crafting at this rate, and he's got half a mind to chuck it into possible non-existence out of anger for its role in getting in the way of his Library.

What to do?

smash a part of a Space Rock off and turn it into a Space Slightly Smaller Rock and a Space Pebble

He's got no clue what pushing the button now would even do.

This sounds like an excellent reason to push that button. How else are you going to find out?

Tatanga: Push the button on the Spaceship Remote.

Tatanga decides that he ought to make sure the Spaceship Remote is actually useless before resigning it to the void. He pushes the button, and the wicked device starts emitting radio waves, contacting whatever remains of the transmitter in the totaled SS Crashman.

Back at the Toplevel, the chassis of the SS Crashman jolts to life, startling its current proud owner. It lifts off the floor and hovers in the air.

The SS Crashman erratically jerks around Fort Tatanga like a charred, horribly disfigured pinball. It knocks Crash Man aside onto the barracks and smashes into the Terminal, dislodging the Stone Hammer in the process.

The erstwhile spaceship careens off of the far wall of Fort Tatanga and demolishes the upper platform, knocking it to the floor, before flying haphazardly out of the Fort and out of sight.

The Battle GUI drops in to deliver the latest update on the carnage. Crash Man took 15 pixels of blunt damage from his point-blank collision with the SS Crashman. With the aftermath of the shipwreck's violent exodus, Fort Tatanga's status has been reduced to Truly Trashed.

Crash Man's spaceship-induced concussion is alleviated somewhat by the realization that, despite the loss of his rightfully stolen vehicle, the Fort's lowered status puts him one step closer to a successful Hostile Takeover! Crash Man excitedly plans on continuing his blistering progress towards home ownership by grabbing that Stone Hammer as soon as he regains motor control in his limbs.

Unaware of any tangible effect as a result of its use, Tatanga deems the Spaceship Remote appropriately worthless and chucks it through the null door.

Tatanga watches the Spaceship Remote fall into undefined darkness. Using his alien hearing, he listens for the unmistakable noise of outdated hardware smashing against the ground.

No such noise arrives.

Tatanga reflects upon his rapidly faltering motivation to boldly step through the door. He's somewhat comforted by the fact that the Spaceship Remote didn't instantly fizzle out of existence, but still somewhat tentative to brave the void himself.

Tatanga wracks his brain for anything he can do to make his descent even slightly safer. Or should he throw caution to the wind and take a leap of faith, landing wherever the fates of battle deem it fit?

Meanwhile, in what is becoming an increasingly common turn of events, Magikarp lands.

>Magikarp: look around
>Tatanga: try looking through the other desynced door now.

Crash Man: Seize the Stone Hammer.

Having recovered his robotic wits about him after his collision with a broken spaceship, Crash Man retrieves the Stone Hammer from the floor in front of the Terminal.

Crash Man basks in the glory of having successfully purloined an enemy weapon. The Stone Hammer that has caused him nothing but grief will now be pivotal in his alien enemy’s defeat!

...Assuming Tatanga actually shows up again. Don’t get him wrong, Crash Man is overjoyed at the closer-than-ever prospect of Fort ownership through a Hostile Takeover, but it kind of defeats the purpose without an enemy against which to, well, fortify oneself.

Maybe there’s something he can do to fix that.

Crash Man: Examine the Terminal.

No stranger to computers and machines, Crash Man decides to check out the Terminal’s current capabilities.

Aw, jeez. This thing’s seen much better days. Crash Man internally curses Tatanga for taking such poor care of his electronics. The Terminal’s barely readable in this severely broken state! It looks like it’s outputting some sort of error message, but the screen is far too damaged to tell what it’s saying.

What to do, indeed?

Tatanga: Deploy the Caution Tape.

Further burning through his Inventory for the sake of trepidation, Tatanga says goodbye to his dreams of Lasso-twirling and selects the Caution Tape for immediate deployment.

Tatanga affixes the Caution Tape to the edge of the door and lets it fall into the abyss, creating a makeshift ladder. At least this way, if Tatanga comes across some reality-eating parasite that lives in between dimensions or whatever, he can clamber back up into his useless Sublevel and continue weighing his options.

No more dilly-dallying, no more Inventory cleaning, and no more testing. It’s now or never!

Tatanga: Descend.

The Mysterious Spaceman grabs onto the Caution Tape and descends into parts unknown.

Elsewhere, Magikarp has splashed his way further into the underground complex.

A handful of paths branch off from a nexus of sorts, some of which sport familiar-looking decor.

Something perches on a pole directly in front of Magikarp.

>Magikarp: demand name and rank.