Just a Generic CYOA

If that doesn't work let's look at the floor plan of this dumb place. Also watch out for traps.

Before doing anything productive, you walk over to Entrepetron and give him a thumbs-up and a firm pat on the back for his earlier witticism. He takes 1 damage. Then you heard back to the elevator and try to turn the floor marker upside-down, thereby changing it from 6 to 9. Fortunately, the marker seems to be attached to the wall through some kind of weird magic magnetism, so turning it over it fairly easy.

You briefly consider trying to climb the elevator shaft, but Leo could fly back up here at any moment. Not to mention that you don’t have the materials you need for such a venture. You could paint some, but then you’d get everyone up that tiny shaft while avoiding attacks from Leo that could come at any point. Not only that, but you don’t even know if the door would be open when you get up there... No, that plan probably wouldn’t work out too well.

Instead, you dash over to the floor map and take immediate notice of another solution: the stairwell. That’s the undoubtedly the fastest way to reach the throne room with the least chance of running into Leo or his demon arcades. So you quickly memorize the floorplans using your photographic memory that you’ve totally had this entire time and then run towards the hallway, telling everyone to follow you.

Suddenly, you hear a clang coming from the elevator, followed by a demonic, low-pitch growl vageuly resembling an “Oof!”

“That’d be Leo trying to cram his way through the elevator floor...” Jeff remarks, “Let’s get moving!”

With that, everyone runs into the hallway, with you in the lead, trying to lead your group to the nearest stairwell. Right after you turn the third corner, you hear Leo’s faint voice from behind you, “Alright, where are tho- Wait, floor 9? But this is floor 6, isn’t it? Hmm...”

Seeing that your childish ploy has served to distract the demon lord for at least a few seconds, you continue on your way.

As about a minute of careful navigation, you turn a corner to another hallway, much like the others. However, this one has a grey door on the left side with a neon sign above it, depicting a staircase.

“Ah, this is it!” Entrepetron shouts, “Come on!”

Everyone follows him towards the stairwell door, but then they notice someone come from around the corner at the other end of the hallway. They immediately recognize him: it’s Leo. He glowers in rage and ignites his tie, forming his sawblade weapon, then charges down the hallway towards you. However, your group does not slow down. You have to reach that staircase.

What will you do now?

Steve Johnson (65/65) Entrepetron (70/70) Jeff (50/50) DoomBOTy (30/30) Amythist (60/60)
{{[[Demon Overlord, Leo]]}} HP: (9,978/10,000)

If that doesn't work paint the stairwell closer to you and get to it QUICKLEH.

If we weren't being chased by a literal Demon Overlord I'd say "let's go down and try to find treasure!".
But we are, so...
Go up.

Knowing that Leo is still hot on your trail, you lead the way up the stairs. Everyone hurries up, step by step, trying to go as fast as possible but being careful not to trip and hurt themselves. Obviously, Jeff can simply fly up the stairs, but he remains hovering next to the group to make sure they’re safe.

The group makes it to the 7th floor landing and starts heading to the 8th when Leo suddenly floats up beside the railing, holding his sawblade and staring at your group with mild annoyance. You realize a little too late that the opening which the stairs spiral around effectively provides an easy flight path from the bottom floor to the top.

Leo exclaims, “Wow, guys, great plan! ‘Wheeeee, let’s try to beat the literal demon overlord up twenty flights of stairs!’ Seeing such tactical genius on display is quite humbling.”

Your group continues rushing up the stairs, trying to ignore Leo, who slowly floats up the column beside them.

Leo acts like he’s deep in thought. “Why, I don’t think I could ever compare with you guys, but I’m gonna try to execute my own clever strategy. It’s called: ‘Hit your enemies in the face while they try to run up the stairs!’”

The sawblade of blue flame flares up intensely as he swings it straight at your group.

What will you do now?

Steve Johnson (65/65) Entrepetron (70/70) Jeff (50/50) DoomBOTy (30/30) Amythist (60/60)
{{[[Demon Overlord, Leo]]}} HP: (9,978/10,000)

Entrepetron shouts, “Duck!”

You, Entrepetron, and Amythist immediately duck. Considering that all of you are standing on a staircase, this ends up very awkward and somewhat painful. However, the saw passes right over everyone’s heads, only lightly singeing your hair. Once it’s safe, you scramble up the last few stairs to the next platform and keep running.

Jeff, meanwhile, simply flies over the saw, carrying DoomBOTy with him. This strategy proves to be a lot less uncomfortable, not that anyone else could have employed it.

Afterwards, the group dashes up the next flight of steps, expecting Leo to swing his saw at them again any minute. Instead, he simply flies in place, looking contemplatively at your group. Eventually, he snaps his claw-like finger and says, “Oh, I got another idea. Check this out.”

He raises his hands, forming a large ball of blue flame between them. Then he shouts, “Abracadbra, or whatever,” and shoots it. Amythist quickly puts up a psychic shield to defend everyone, but the fireball doesn’t hit it. In fact, it wasn’t flying at your group at all. Instead, it lands at the top of the flight of stairs you were running up, forming a wall of blue fire at the top, too large to get around and too volatile to go through.

With your group stopped in its tracks, Leo grins mischievously and charges another fireball.

What will you do now?

Steve Johnson (65/65) Entrepetron (70/70) Jeff (50/50) DoomBOTy (30/30) Amythist (60/60)
{{[[Demon Overlord, Leo]]}} HP: (9,978/10,000)

Everyone: Jump on Leo and ride up past the fireball, preferably punching him a little along the way to annoy him long enough to break the fireball spell.

Let the landing be destroyed, but paint a big trampoline attached to the walls a few dozen feet down for you all to bounce back up with.
Then when you get back to Leo's spot slap him downwards with your sword and... somehow get into the door.

Point out that the number for these goons wasn't called, so they have to wait.
Then run past as they try to wrap their heads around this devious conundrum.

Destroy the cushions. Leo has been a pain in the butt and he definitely deserves to experience that pain as well.

After that try redirecting the superweapon at the building so when it activates it destroys here instead.

With the assurance that you can get out of the way first of course.

You first look back up at the large stained glass window and try to discern what the red X’s are painted with. Unfortunately, you can’t quite tell. Maybe it’s some weird demon pigment or something.

You then take a brief stroll around the throne room. You stop in front of the glowing throne itself, admiring its luxurious velvet pillows. Unfortunately for the pillows, Entrepetron charges toward the throne with an electric saber held high, and before long the pillows are reduced to nothing more than charred shreds on the floor. Entrepetron laughs in amusement at the uncomfortable back pain in Leo’s future.

Ignoring him, you walk over to the center of the room to take a closer look at the control panel. Unfortunately, you can’t quite figure out how to work the controls. In fact, it might not even have controls. It might just automatically eradicate the entire surface of the planet without needing specific prompting, for all you know.

Suddenly, you hear the shattering of glass behind you. Turning toward the sound, you see Leo soaring into the room from the other side of the large stained glass window, leaving a gaping hole where Jared’s face used to be. He stops above his throne and hovers there, shouting, “Ha! I bet you thought that stupid trick with the door would hold me out forever!”

Jeff glances over at the door, which is still being slammed against loudly from the other side. “Well, perhaps not you, but at least it’s still keepin’ those guys out...”

“Those guys aren’t the ones you should be worried about!” Leo shouts, “Because now, you’ve got nowhere to run, and I’ve got all the time I need to finish you off!”

He then raises his hand, charging a ball of blue flame, and then dashes straight at your group. You raise your sword to attempt a counter-attack, when suddenly you hear a voice shout, “STOP!”

Surprisingly, Leo stops in mid-air, his flaming fist hovering just in front of Entrepetron’s outstretched arms.

“You have about four seconds before I kill you,” Leo snaps.

Entrepetron calmly rests his hand on the control panel and simply says, “We win.”

Despite the fact that four seconds had already passed, Leo doesn’t attempt to murder the robot. He instead stares at him with a confused expression on his face. “...What?”

“We beat you!” Entrepetron says, grinning smugly. “You said that if we could make it to the throne room before you, you’d answer our questions. Well, we made it here before you, so it looks like you have a little explainin’ to do... Unless you’re going to go back on your word?”

Leo stops and takes a desperate look around the room, as if hoping to see some excuse to skip straight to the murdering. Then his face twists in rage once again, and he quickly whips out his chainsaw blade and swings it straight down.

The blade slams loudly on the floor, leaving a charred patch of ash behind. Leo turns to your group and shouts, “Fine! You’ve won yourself at least two minutes. So go ahead, ask away while you still can!”

As if she was already prepared for this scenario, Amythist immediately asks, “Who wrote the journal entries we found?”

“Excellent question! I did!” Leo shouts, “Hell, I literally signed them with my own name, so I’m impressed it took you this long to figure it out.”

“But... why?” Jeff asks, “Why would you go to all that trouble?”

“Like I said before, I wanted the keys to activate the weapon in this tower, but my underlings were too stupid to get them. But you know what they could do, even with their limited intelligence? Leave a few slips of paper by the front doors of the places where the keys were hidden. And once that was taken care of, all I needed was for someone to find them and, feeling all noble and valiant, set out to find the keys and bring them right back to me, finally completing their misguided quest to save Ectoscape. Next question!”

“Wait, hold on,” Entrepetron interrupts, “So all that stuff we heard about there being ‘a chosen one’... You just made all that up?”

“Well, yes, essentially,” Leo replies, looking bored. “I didn’t particularly care who the ‘chosen one’ was. I had assumed it would be some random robot from Robopolis, so I was surprised when I heard rumors of some human going around and collecting the keys. But as long as they were getting the job done, it hardly made a difference to me.”

Suddenly, Leo turns to you, his expression changing to a disturbing grin. “So for that, I thank you, Steve Johnson. You arose from your humble beginnings as a generic human in order to graciously assist in the destruction of all of humankind! I bet your boss’ll get a kick out of that... assuming you can track him down where you’ll be going, that is.”

Ignoring Leo’s words, you slowly pull out your sword and raise it in front of you.

“Uh oh, looks like I got someone a little displeased with me!” Leo says, laughing. “I truly love to see people’s reactions when they first find out I’ve used them! Man, I haven’t been this proud of myself since the business with that robotic professor!”

An unnerving silence passes through your group before Jeff snaps,“So, you did it, then? You let that disease loose?!”

“Well, of course I did! Who else would it have been?” Leo replies, “What, you thought this was the first time I’d attempted a genocide? Of course not!”

Leo reclines in mid-air, lazily beating his wings to keep himself just above the ground, and stretches his arm into the air wistfully. “Ah, I still remember it like it was yesterday... All the screams and tears as the Ectoscapians slowly wasted away... Admittedly, I’m somewhat disappointed that this ‘ultimate weapon’ does its job so quickly... I was hoping to savor the moment a little. Ah well!”

You begin stepping purposefully toward Leo, charging electricity on your blade.

“Hmm? What’s this?” Leo says, looking at you skeptically. “You haven’t totally given up yet? There’s really no point in continuing to fight. I doubt you could prevent me from activating this weapon, and there’s certainly no way to save all those Ectoscapians now. Not even I can turn back time; they’re staying dead!”

You continue marching towards Leo, the electricity on your sword growing more powerful and chaotic.

“Uhh, hold on...” Amythist says, “Perhaps we should think through this rationally.”

“Yeah, listen to the one with the medical degree!” Leo says, slowly floating away from you, with an emotion bordering on fear in his eyes. “There’s no reason to make this more difficult than it needs to be!”

You give Leo one last glare and then point your sword at him, knocking him out of the sky with a powerful bolt of electricity. He slams into his glowing crystal chair, and a loud crack echoes through the room. Entrepetron winces at the unfortunate sounding noise as Leo slumps over on his throne, strange trails of dark smoke curling off of him. For a moment, you consider the possibility that your attack may have incapacitated Leo, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem you’ll be that lucky. His eyes snap open as he looks up at you, rage burning in his eyes. He releases a guttural, unintelligible cry as he raises his sawblade and launches himself from the podium, soaring through the air straight towards you.

What will you do now?

Steve Johnson (57/65) Entrepetron (62/70) Jeff (42/50) DoomBOTy (22/30) Amythist (52/60)

{{[[Demon Overlord, Leo]]}} HP: (9,945/10,000)

Realize the pigment is actually the blood of an ancient beast, unforetold to humanity since hundreds of thousands of years ago when it was thought to have been eradicated from the physical plane.

Yet rumors still fly that it was still out there. It seems those rumors were true, seeing that these guys have used its blood to draw those Xs.

This beast had the ability to capture anything, regardless of its size. True to that extent, its power was so vast the only thing it was unable to capture itself.

ANYTHING else was fair game for it.

And on top of that, things, objects, creatures, people, captured by this beast hadn't the pleasure of wasting away and eventually being reborn anew.

The beast was able to maintain the things captured by it, keep them alive for any amount of time.

But not without purpose, of course.

The beast could release the captured things to fight on its behalf at any time as it so wished.

Even if the beast was vanquished, the released things would continue to fight in its stead.

But any things still inside the beast would perish gruesomely along with their captor... such is the way this beast behaved.

Any time the best fell, it would rise again, rising with moss-colored wings to act anew.

Or at least that's how the legends told...

Due to its incredible ability, it was gifted a crown. Somehow the crown became part of its body, as if the laws of nature agreed that the beast was made to be regaled.

The beast had one name, a name that struck fear into all who came face-to-face with it, however so briefly.

The beast's name was...

Belunka.

That blood should be sufficient as a material to summon any kind of ancient something-or-other to help us fight Leo.