-Equus, Mango L. Refreshments juice bar, Jaded La Perm-
“So that’s what happened Mango.” I said with a flat look on my face.
“What a horrible waste of linguini.” Mango shook his head sadly.
“I know, and it wasn’t even my fault… at least this time!” I was fairly angry at the fact.
“So… did you want it to be your fault?” There was a long pause as Mango looked at me knowingly.
“Maybe…” I answered shyly with my ears drooping and Mango burst out laughing and Wary Berry just sighed audibly while face hoofing.
“Well if you could do something with a nice Alfredo sauce with Penne pasta…” Mango started to suggest and my right ear lifted in attention.
-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar Plains, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-
“This is Ocellus, Pom has told me to keep pressing the walls as fast as we feasibly can, regardless of what that would mean for those already inside of them. We will be following along with that plan and hoping the away group can survive long enough for our support to make it through. To that end we know they have gotten the care packages.” I took a deep breath, sighed and considered what to tell everyone. “Our allies are still fighting in there and goodness knows how Pom is going to survive the crushing force of an entire city coming down on her until we can get through the walls, but let’s try to keep fighting alongside them okay? If anyone has any ideas now would be a good time to hear them or start thinking of something, because we will want to quickly break through them. Also be prepare for air assault I see incoming flying enemies. Cid, Welch, can you get our other tower turrets up and running before the incoming enemy aerial units hit us?”
“Not likely lass, but I can work on it!” Cid stated from engineering, sounding fairly busy with keeping Castle Alexander running.
“Paws deep in production of our Skein Flyers and Magitek Armors here, plus whatever the Zealots are cooking up in manufacturing.” Responded Welch who sounded even busier than Cid was.
-Midgar City, Embattled Street, Metal Hound 002, Pom-
Shanty was slowly losing to Lu Bu and her water was barely slowing him down or even touching him, we needed The Arsenal down and fast.
We couldn’t exactly go to help Shanty immediately yet with it threatening the majority of our friends, but I can still tell she was fighting to the best of her abilities. We were running out of time here and Dolly was well aware of that considering she was trying to calm me down while I kept her on task.
To that end we were flying straight into the six rotary cannons of The Arsenal’s left arm firing on us as we swerved left and right through the volume of fire, its right arm was charging up.
The armor on Metal Hound 002 wasn’t likely to be anywhere near as sturdy as that thing is, because we could already feel it wearing heavily on the machine we were piloting.
We fired back with our two small machine cannons, for all the good that was doing.
The Arsenal had projectile volume, armor and raw firepower literal and figurative on us. At most we had mobility and smaller size, the smaller size was relative and wasn’t as useful, at least the direction changing beams had been taken care of by Snake or else I wouldn’t want to do an absurd direct assault like we currently were.
We rolled, juked and continued to fire back as we closed in on it at full speed, Metal Hound 2 was already taking damage at a pretty quick pace. Can’t be good for the pack on the back of this thing that allowed for flight, but we hadn’t been grounded yet.
Once we closed in, I exhaled. I hoped to bridge a connection with the Magitek Armor, Dolly’s piloting and my Dancing Flames… I succeeded.
Metal Hound 002 accelerated past the head of The Arsenal in blur, as we pushed the Flying Magitek Armor well beyond its normal capabilities.
“What the heck?!” Merak really shouldn’t be so surprised, he had to know I had magical abilities right?
Dancing Flame had always been a technique I could do with minimal to no magic, doing it with more magic just meant I could impart it onto other things like Dolly and the Magitek Armor. The cost was entirely on me simply using a lot of magic to give us a very short term advantage in bursts of movement and action, if I overdraw more of my wool was going to start turning gold again my front legs had already been consumed and my right rear leg was looking iffy. I just had to continue to be careful about what I was sacrificing and keep it heavily suppressed, which wasn’t easy with everything we were doing.
I imagine Merak was surprised when the Flying Magitek Armor sped up to an absurd degree and Dolly slashed off the two rightmost guns on top of the can shaped torso with the right claw as we swerved around it to the left.
We then proceeded to turn around fire missiles into the opening left behind by the destroyed beam emitter widening the damage there further to match the damage portion Shanty opened up on top of the thing earlier.
We proceed to ram into the machine claws first and started to slash into its armor with our claws as we landed on top of the base of its tank body. We were still in flight mode, but at least Dolly had a good grasp of how to put us in a good position, piloting this thing was still quite beyond me. Probably should have asked Welch if she could design it so Dolly could pilot it solo, too late for that right now.
The Arsenal’s armor was starting to give in to the rapid swipes and we had to duck back as the arms on the cylinder swung about with the right one charged and then quickly fly to back off when the machine prepared to let off a pulse like burst and I recognized the movements for it.
The Arsenal wasn’t the swiftest reaction at short range, I think it was meant for dealing with things before they could get nearly this close and the close range defenses were mostly anti-infantry being pulses, energy shocks and bursts of flames. I’m still surprised that no one has died to the six rotating machine cannons on its left arm, but everyone took cover in the nearby buildings when it aimed in their direction. They had been some injuries, but thankfully no deaths.
Dolly really knew how to pilot this thing as we avoided by hit by a point blank blast of energy from the right cannon and then had to fly up to the avoid the same blast as Merak tried to redirect it into us with portals and lost sight of us slipping down another street in the air and doubling back by swinging around the block.
After ten portals of dodging the blast we decided it was safe to get back to the fight and when we flew back into view down the street we saw that the others were already laying into two of the wheels, they were trying to disable The Arsenals movements which would make it easier for us to deal with if it became entirely stationary.
Canard, Peppercat and Dormarch were laying into one wheel in close up range as the tank turned towards them. While Snake, Sami and Krosserdog were blasting another wheel and its body with ranged attacks and explosives.
We fire off more missiles and managed to stop the right arm from charging up, that damage from that Divine Judgement beam really messed up its ability to charge shots and I think we just about finally disabled that ability of The Arsenal to fire charged shots. Its left arm was built to be sturdy and take a lot of punishment, because it was still rapid firing projectiles everywhere until it had to cycle ammunition.
Sami quickly leapt to the defense of everyone with her shield creating an energy barrier and continued to fire grenades into the machine. Her barrier blocked the hundreds of projectiles pouring into it, as she stood tall in her Hi-Commandramon form protecting our melee fighters.
We came in for a landing and entered walk mode to continue hosing the machine with explosives, I idly noticed Dormarch off to the side was doing something with a fire hydrant.
“Bro we’re kind of in the middle of a battle here, is a fire hydrant really important at the moment!” Dolly called out, relying on the fact that Merak couldn’t speak dog or at the very least animal.
Dormarch had his paws wrapped around the hydrant and with a harsh yank tilting the structure he sent water spray out past The Arsenal in a wide manner and into the flames behind it where Shanty was still fighting and weakening rapidly.
At least Dormarch had some foresight to set up our next course of action in fighting against Lu Bu. Also what little bits of water that got through the raging napalm inferno would help our little pirate goat keep going for a little longer.
The Arsenal turned and fired on Dormarch who quickly used Search Hunter to reappear behind Sami’s defenses.
The Arsenal tried to charge a shot as it swept its left arm for us, I had Dolly leapt us to the right and focused on the right arm as it was charging, something exploded and the right arm cannon on The Arsenal went limp.
However in turn the canopy on Metal Hound 002 was penetrated and I felt something impacted with my right shoulder. I let out a bleat in pain and quickly ejected the projectile from my body and sewed the wound shut with my wool.
“Pom?!” Dolly asked worriedly.
“I’ve got it, keep using me.” As we started to walk left while continuing to fire on The Arsenal. We were quickly losing in this exchange as several more shots got through the armored canopy of Metal Hound 002.
“Slap shot!” Canard announced, but I didn’t see a digital energy puck, but his hockey stick was glowing as he brought it back and he swung it forward with an ample amount of force… into Sami’s projected energy barrier? What would that…
The large energy barrier launched forth and exploded The Arsenal into falling backwards from the massive impact.
I blinked owlishly at the sight of the smoking machine as it slowly tried to lift itself back up with its damage right arm and mostly stable left one. A golden grenade from Snake went off and damaged the left arms shoulder, while announcing itself with the ever present ‘hallelujah’ chorus it made.
Dolly still hadn’t let off on shooting at it, we had to be sure it was gone before we stopped shooting it, she even fired our next four shoulder missiles into The Arsenal’s left arm damaging the barrels on a few of the rotary cannons.
As the rotary cannons spun up to continue shooting, Dormarch appeared to The Arsenal’s left and let off a Wild Howl. This caused the metallic gun arm to become slightly tinged blue and seemed to spin and lock up randomly, it seemed to be having massive trouble firing any shots.
“Lightning Ball Special.” Peppercat hopped forward with a ball of energy between her claws held at her side and with a double palm thrust forward she sent it into one of the two machine guns on the head.
The ball of energy exploded wrecking the left most machine gun, the on the top of the right side of tin cans body from our perspective, leaving it with one gun. Said gun was still firing a limited amount of shots on us reduced to a single stream of projectiles.
“So you think you’ve got this?” Merak taunted, The Arsenal fully righted itself and the can shaped bodies torso opened and we could all feel the massive amount of energy building up in the air, the wool along my body started becoming slightly fuzzy with the static energy build up.
“How is that more powerful than the Moby Dick’s laser, I can’t block a direct hit from that kind of energy it’s building up!” Sami announced as the torso started to build up a massive amount of energy.
The arms on The Arsenal popped open and it still managed to spray fire from the left, as easily as it could from the right and cut off our friends from entering the buildings.
“Dolly.” I said and we entered flight mode and flew back a bit before switching into walk mode as we landed, we had to draw the next attack away from our friends or tank it with Metal Hound 002.
“For a good cause.” Dolly muttered as she moved us forward. “Go ahead Pom, taunt him. You must have a good read on Ferret’s character by now.”
“Wow, so brave sounding for someone who’s sitting up in a tower and did not come 0down here to face us himself.” I stated trying to draw ire and the next attack onto myself.
“After having faced the Azure Striker in combat and lost with all the advantages of an enclosed space, a place full of water which was absolutely guaranteed to be his weakness and having my portals in said enclosed space. The guy not only beat me once, but twice, I’m a freaking genius and I’m definitely not letting that happen again, not to a scrawny ewe and her shepherds!” Merak stated as the energy from the can shaped torso continued to coalesce brightly. “You better believe I’m smarter than to face the lot of you without plenty of machinery, minions and firepower between me and you!”
“So not only are you a worse wimp than I am, but you’re even more of a coward too. I believe you’re even more afraid of us than we could ever be of you! We’ve successfully been through two realms, how will you be any different?” That got him aiming the torso in my direction and an idea occurred to me, if it was as powerful as Sami thought it was… Dolly… maneuver us in such a way that… “Do you think I want to be here facing someone who says they are smart, but can’t actually live up to it even with all the advantages you could ever need? Apparently your genius amounted to a hill of sawdust, because what kind of legacy did you leave behind with all those smarts you’re oh so proud of? Nothing, that’s what! Some genius you were in life, you were given a second chance and still failed to amount to anything and I bet this third one is going to end up just the same way by the time we reach you!”
Inhaled taking as much as my lungs could suffer, knowing that we were definitely his primary target as Sami moved off to the side.
“We’ll see about that, Diffusion Beam fire!” I exhaled and the world slowed down.
-Outside the wall around the main entrance into Midgar City-
A small section of the wall turned red, blue, then white… and what followed was a powerful beam erupted through it tearing out a PLANT that had been within the material of the wall and sparking a territory destruction that disrupted the EPs spawning in to continue harassing Castle Alexander.
The beam didn’t reach far enough to hurt anyone on Castle Alexander’s side, but it did melt a few EPs and APs by proximity.
The hole in the wall wasn’t big enough for more than maybe a few infantry to get through, but it was too high off the ground, what it was, was a point for Castle Alexander to start tearing the wall open as there was now a pathway into the walls proper.
All Castle Alexander had to do was reach the walls and send some EPs and people to deal with the PLANTs inside the walls of Midgar City, but that would take some time to stop the nastier EPs that the PLANTs in there produced.
-Castle Alexander, Smolder-
“What the Tartarus was that?!” I shouted as I tore into an Assassin Jelly with my claws, Castle Alexander was crawling with Assassin type EPs, made sense though… they specialized in sneaking into enemy strongholds. Aside from the zealots, I was one of the last lines of defense.
“Maybe that was part of Pom’s plan? She’s obviously busy at the very least.” Ocellus looked to be grinning somewhat. “We have an opening to start accessing Midgar City with Castle Alexand and get into the thick material of the walls itself to deal with the PLANTs in there!”
We were still on approach and we were pressuring the plains fiercely… well alright Pom, what else do you got? Earn my respect, because you’re making a good showing of it as a Guard of Huoshan regardless of my feelings about being beaten up by you.
Why is swallowing my pride so hard?
-Embattled Street, Metal Hound 002, Pom-
We didn’t get out of that unscathed, but it was mostly the Metal Hound 002 that took the damage. Just being in proximity of the beam damaged the machine as it was now crouched on the ground. Looking to the left on the fuzzy screen projected along the canopy I could see that while Sami couldn’t handle a direct shot, she could handle being within proximity of that ludicrously powerful beam and the massive amount of raw power in it.
Sami had protected everyone else successfully, but she look spent. Everyone weren’t looking too bad though.
“Why won’t you die!” Merak stated rabidly, as the torso of the machine started building up for another beam like that last one. Must be a desperation weapon… a very destructive one, I don’t even think Merak realized what he just did by firing it at Midgar City’s walls. Dolly turned the upper torso enough to get a look at the hole that attack had made, before we turned back forward.
“Because I’ve got too many people counting on me to simply just give up now...” I whined back as Metal Hound started to stand up under Dolly’s frantic urging.
The blaring warnings around Metal Hound 002 about extreme heat and energy died out as Dolly entered us into flight mode and the spinning up the back mounted propellers blew almost all of the heat damaging the armor away as it shakily rose into the air.
The flight system apparently doubled as a cooling system and we were blasting all the heat out just to get us back in working order.
We took to the air and Dolly tried to fire the weapon, right machine cannon was working, left machine cannon and shoulder missiles needed a few seconds to cool as it had been closer to the beam.
Two missiles loosed from the right shoulder and struck the charging machine as did a single stream of machine cannon fire, we absolutely could not let that thing fire that again and we slowed down the charge enough to let us know that we had to attack it as much as possible!
Canard and the others were of the same mind as they barely survived with Sami’s protective barrier and immediately charged and started to attack the torso in concert.
Apparently while charging up The Arsenal had no anti-infantry defenses… why would it need them if it fires a beam that will kill almost anything unprotected within the given area of the direction it was firing in?
While aiming our right arm cannon, I had Dolly angle us so I could take another look down the street behind us, to see that EPs and some APs were still fighting. There was a notable lack of Skein Flyers in the air around us.
We were quickly running out support to run interference and given the ever increasing number of EPs, they would soon be able to hit us and we didn’t have much time before we needed to pivot.
Personally the Metal Hound was down to half its firepower, even if the heat wore off could we even still use the left arm machine cannon or shoulder missiles from that side? Didn’t matter, we had to stop The Arsenal here and now no matter what!
Since there was no anti-infantry defense… Dolly lunged us forward and landed us on the left side of the tank body where we slapped the still viable left claw into the charging torso. Soon we were unloading every shot we could into the core of the machine with the right arm between swinging the left arm.
The Arsenal weakly pulsed, trying to throw everyone off, Peppercat and Canard went flying, but that didn’t stop Sami, Snake or Krosserdog from using their attacks on the core of the machine and rapidly weakening the can shaped torso’s ability to charge.
It also couldn’t push us off of it as Metal Hound 002 was too heavy to be affected by the pulse.
“Dolly, don’t stop firing, but pop the canopy!” If we were closed enough for it to work…
“Roger.” Dolly kept laying into the machine and the canopy pulled back.
“RrrrrRRRRrrrrrRR… yip!” The entire torso of The Arsenal cracked violently and it soon lost its charge entirely as shots from the right machine cannon of Metal Hound 002 continued pouring into its core.
When sparks of electricity started arcing around the machine, my eyes widened as the shots from Metal Hound 002 Flying Magitek Armor bored a hole out the back of The Arsenal’s torso.
“Dolly, canopy up, canopy up, get us out of here… everyone it’s going to blow!” That got our group moving for safety as Dolly hopped us backwards and off as the following build up light and the consequent explosion took us for a ride.
…
…
I dazedly shook my head and found myself hanging from Metal Hound 002’s strap as I came too, must have black out for a minute or two. I heard Dolly groaning and looked to see her laying on the slightly damaged canopy.
I think we landed face down after getting caught in the explosion.
“Agghhh…. nhhh… ow… did we… did we get it?” A battered Dolly sat up and shook her head, then dazedly looked up at me with a slightly wagging tail. The Dalmatian got the worse of the explosion, having been banged around the inside of the cockpit, whereas being strapped in and being covered in protective magical wool mitigated anything that could have happened to me. Well anything short of being pierced entirely through or absolutely crushed beyond my wools capability to handle. “Ugh, my body feels wiped, I am now quite thankful I wear reinforced protective gear.”
Dormarch confirmed that we got it a second later through our bonds, but now we had Lu Bu to deal with and Metal Hound 002 definitely needed repairs after dealing with The Arsenal. He was urging us to get the Magitek Armor standing, since he knew we were alive and Dolly was somewhat hurt.
“Heal beam?” I asked as I told Dormarch to have the others give us a minute to get ourselves collected and upright.
“Heal… beam….” Dolly responded with a nod from below me as she struggled to get up and try to climb her way to me, that wasn’t happening after a few tries.
So I needed to at least get us standing upright or use the heal beam myself. The heal beam would magically fix some of the damage the machine had taken as well and I didn’t need Dolly’s help to activate it.
I set the target for us and the watched as green sparkles swirled around Dolly, me and the whole machine… fixing most of the damage but at an egregious cost of magical energy, likely proportionate to the damage we’d all taken. The hole in my right shoulder mended, but I noted most of the energy went to Dolly’s body and barely any actually sunk into Metal Hound 002.
Once she got enough strength in her legs she hopped up and wrapped paws around my neck and swung herself back up into her position as pilot.
Slowly Metal Hound 002 pressed its right claw against the ground and we got standing after a quick push up, I looked at the damage diagram Dolly couldn’t make heads or tails of as it crossed the screen. I read the diagnostics of what we were working with after that.
“Left machine cannon salvaged with the heal beam though may jam until further heal beam or repairs can be made, right machine cannon operable… left shoulder missiles gone entirely… right shoulder missiles fully functional… left claw, also gone… right claw heavily stressed. Legs working order… flight pack working order.” I gave an idea of what this meant to Dolly and she whine about how her Metal Hound 002 was already in need of massive repairs. Dolly always the one for cool stuff… or what she things is cool at least. “Mobility slightly impaired in both walk and flight modes… the heal beam couldn’t fully fix the damage of the Flying Magitek Armor… oh speaking of which our beam system is still fully operational… apparently that will only go down if the torso is destroyed… and we’re inside of said torso so makes sense if the pilots are magical in any way. Lots of overall armor damage, possible metal fatigue…”
“Huh, I thought that said mental fatigue… could have sworn a robot had that once in some cartoon show my younger siblings liked. Fuzz bites once a year or something like that…” Just because we have a heal beam Dolly, doesn’t necessarily mean it will deal with anything beyond the physical health of a target and apparently doesn’t regenerate missing limbs. So yeah, we would have to be careful about that after just taking the brunt of an explosion. Heal beam most certainly did not work on mental stability or fatigue. “Well my head is certainly feeling magical Pom, at least you can still clearly read and aren’t dizzy.”
Dolly being dizzy and piloting heavy machinery did cause me some worry, but she was quite reassuring me she could do so… as long as we weren’t flying any time soon or shooting at anything, until she gets her head in better order.
The magic use was fairly draining just trying to get us back up and running and we’re still missing most of the left side functionality… also stripped a lot of the grey wolf paint patterns off... I kind of liked that actually… sure I have my complaints about having to be in a Magitek Armor again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like the aesthetics Welch put into personalizing this thing.
Dolly mentally kicked me and I got focused on where we were, since she was using my senses to currently pilot this thing at the moment. We were blown entirely back towards the main gate of Midgar slightly outside the city limits. Apparently we were getting a lot of AP support now and they were coming from… the wall itself? Huh, Merak must have hit more than just the wall with that diffusion beam thing.
It seemed that Canard was rallying every AP and person around us, until we could get moving again and once we were up and looking around we got some cheers.
The Flying Magitek Armors that air dropped Metal Hound 002 for us were all likely part of the smoking wrecks on the ground, what little number of Skein Flyers we had were in a rough aerial battle against a lot of Moon Cell Watchers above us along with a new helicopter type of EP with high powered machine guns that weren’t quite machine cannons.
Was our Magitek Armor the only one left?! Are you kidding me! No seriously… how bad were all the EPs pummeling us that we were this low on reinforcements just after we got them?!
I didn’t see too many Brutes, so the Flying Magitek Armors must have done a lot of damage and Brutes seemed like an elite type that was slow to mass produce.
“Pom, Dolly are you alright in there?” Canard called out looking up at us.
“We’ve been better…” I said as the machine slowly raised its right arm cannon and started blowing Moon Cell Watcher’s harassing the ground bound APs around us. We’d eventually have to test the left machine cannon. “We have to keep the momentum, we need to help Shanty and we don’t have time!”
“Apparently we took a section of territory that was in a wall thanks to your dangerous plan… also there’s a hole in the wall so hopefully Castle Alexander will be able to pry that open further until it can get through.” Canard informed, which was nice to confirm that we were indeed holding at least three territories now, no matter how small. “Now we just need to start taking territory and holding our foothold. Those Brutes have been havoc to deal with and there are more coming in, we need more Magitek Armor support and you’re it Pom.”
“Great…” I stated sardonically, we had to fight a fire demon, save Shanty and face even more Brutes with our missile output completely halved.
“Yeah, it is that bad.” Thankfully Canard agreed with my assessment of the situation. “And it can only get worse…”
An explosion of territory happened in the distance within the city.
“That wasn’t one of ours going up…” I stated as Dolly and I continued to work on blowing a flying EP out of the air.
“New enemy scanned, sharing data now. EP type, Gunship, weakness the propellers on top. Knock those out and it can’t do much of anything unless one of its guns accidentally gets stuck aiming upwards.” Intoned Sami who was in the middle of pumping her grenade launcher.
“Probably Jeanne and Shine trying to make some trouble.” Krosserdog stated as he continued to blow Moon Cell Watchers out of the air after multiple direct hits.
“We’re going for Shanty, where are those Gazimon and what are they currently doing?” Not much of a foothold, small territories in an enormous circular city with and endless wave of EPs threatening to swallow us. “I heard they were here to help secure the foothold we’re getting.”
“The Gazimon are definitely working on it, I’m with you on rescuing Shanty mom!” Dormarch teleported up to the left shoulder Metal Hound 002 and we started stalking forward along the ground to go rescue Shanty. I really doubted many others would last very long just being near Lu Bu and I don’t know how long we could keep Metal Hound 002 intact in the middle of all of this.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get in contact with them and we’ll shore up the foothold while Jeanne and Shine are out causing trouble, now get in there and rescue Shanty!” Canard promised as we moved back towards the street where Shanty was currently in a losing battle with Lu Bu.
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” We’re going in again… and hoped we had a way to deal with the inferno as we approached where the hydrant had managed to clear a path to where Shanty was still attacking Lu Bu, a Lu Bu who didn’t look very injured.
Yeah, we had our work cut out for us here as a barely bubbled Shanty was being loomed over by the giant flaming demon.
“Get away from her!” I stated Dolly got us charging forward and firing projectiles that basically did minimal damage and we stopped just short of getting backhanded out of the fight by a massive muscular arm.
Dormarch got in with Search Hunter, while we had Lu Bu distracted, and grabbed Shanty with his tentacles. The fairly injured Shanty had been running short on water already and let Dormarch grab her and run her by us towards the broken hydrant still spewing water that cleared the path.
Lu Bu glared down at us as he stood up to full height and I swallowed some spit, before narrowing my eyes at him along with Dolly on my head.