Rottentest WT

Image edited from Madou Monogatari I (video game, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, 1996)

Denier of Decay

Earth/Vital Type

Original Media: The Chaos Zone
(first appeared in 2022)

Rottentest WT

Story

Rottentest is one of the four “Seekers of Strength” written into existence by Mega Beedrill, and her body – a fungal mass whose primary form resembles an undead human – is meant to represent power over earth, and symbolize Mega Beedrill’s plans for an undying rule over the world.

Rottentest isn’t just aware of how horrifying her appearance can come across as, she revels in it. With a natural hoarseness to her voice, she puts on the performance of a monster from the darkest depths of the earth, ready to watch all around her decay over time…or by her own whim.

If this makes you think Rottentest is a vile mess of mold and mud who only lives for death…you’d be wrong. Rottentest hesitates to cut with the theatrics no matter how clear someone makes it they aren’t scared, and in doing so she can become something of a tryhard. At the same time, she isn’t ready to go as far as she may pretend; she may love starting scuffles or chasing people away, but mix of flesh and root she is, she still has a heart, and the last thing she’d want would be for another’s heart to be haunted by her own terror…or worse, stopped by it.

Abilities

Growth Shot

Rottentest creates a fungal growth on her hand, then breaks it off and throws it straight ahead.

Vital/Earth Type

Image is edited from Madou Monogatari I (video game, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, 1996).

Thallus Web

Rottentest surrounds herself with a cobweb-like network of mycelium, stunning any opponents caught in it. Stunned opponents will be further attacked by a flurry of physical strikes, ending with a slam attack.

Vital/Grapple Type

Image is edited from Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (video game, 2000).

Heal Pulse

The user focuses and emits a healing pulse, restoring a target’s health by up to 50% their full health. The “target” can be either an opponent or an ally.

Mind Type

Image is from Pokémon Black Version or Pokémon White Version (video games, 2010).

Rottentest also has the ability to shrink into a small mass of fungi and fly short distances, unraveling back into her full body when she reaches her destination.

Voice

General Description

Teenager/Young Adult; voice is perpetually hoarse or gravely; usually quite dramatic and aggressive, but is capable of being deadpan when irritated, or sounding nervous

Behind the Scenes

All of the Seekers of Strength were loosely inspired by an idea from an earlier plotline written by MMRPG user ch4s3man, where certain characters were fused together to create new beings; Rottentest was the most directly inspired by this, as while she isn’t literally two existing characters fused into one, her design is meant to combine aspects of two characters from different versions of Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 (a three-part video game first released in full for the MSX in 1990): Wight (who appears in the full MSX version, as well as the 1993 Sega Game Gear and 1996 Sega Genesis/Mega Drive version, the latter two being ports of the first part only) and Test Body (who only appears in the full PC-98 version from 1991).

Noticing how one of Wight’s methods of attacking in Madou Monogatari was to throw a piece of her flesh, and Test Body being attached to a wall in a way that reminded me of fungi, I was heavily inspired by the “Mold” from the Resident Evil series, a sort of fungus-based zombie virus. I was also inspired by the obscure character Hektan from Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (video game, 1993), a character with teleportation powers who melted into a liquid upon defeat; these ideas combined to form the idea of Rottentest having a zombie-like, amorphous fungal body.

While Rottentest’s theatrical attitude was a part of her character from the start, it was actually how I improvised the debut of Terumi that gave me the idea of giving her a more empathic side; with how much Terumi had been through, between Mitsumo and the early parts of the Seekers of Strength plotline, I didn’t want to have Rottentest intentionally take part in making her life difficult; I decided on the explanation that the smaller minions encountered near Terumi’s debut were not acting by Rottentest’s command, and that Rottentest herself would have been mortified by the idea of hurting someone like that.

Brash Buster