“Oh god damn it!” Thomas didn’t know how the Puffle had exactly gotten into the room, but it was trying to hug him and he saw what happened to all those scientists when the Puffles got a hold of them. Not to mention every Human they got a hold of. There was also the chaos these things were causing, most of it was to be considered supernatural disasters by the scale of the explosions they were surviving alone. He leapt back and started firing on the one that was already lunging at him with what was to him a rather happy demented squeaking noise, his shots only made the purple fluff ball get knocked onto its back. His pistol was not nearly damaging enough to put the thing down, he didn’t even think he injured it as it was already getting back up. He fired several more shots into it to keep it knocked down.
The command center was compromised, there was not much left for Commander Itterstin to do. He wasn’t about to leave one of the most disastrous species to be encountered by humankind alone in a room like this, who knows what it would do! It’s not a matter of what it could do, it was a matter of how much damage it would cause. Heck, taking this planet would have been a seriously bad idea considering Puffles were native to this world and they’d kill millions of Humans if they tried to settle on this world.
So it was no surprise that Thomas quickly went to the nearest computer in the command center and started typing up the base destruct code as quickly as he could. Really, at this point nobody was escaping this base alive and almost all the defense drones were taken out when the ice tunnels collapse thanks to all the big explosions on the surface. Knowing this, he would certainly take as many of these ridiculously fluffy kill monsters with him as he could. He fired at the green eyed Puffle a few more times to keep it away from him, he had to contact the forming base on Applin Three.
“This is Thomas Itterstin of Applin Five base we have trouble and I’m about to… no…” Pausing to really look at the screen before him Thomas was horrified when he saw their Applin Three base was obviously decimated. The first sign of that was a man with a missing arm on the screen, that wasn’t all he was missing as he had holes in his others limbs and was whimpering. Around him were three armored unicorns leveling their weapons at the man and there was a pony that gave him a seriously angry look.
“Expecting maybe the cavalry? I’m Admiral Trap Bar of the EDF, we will be having some words with humanity and Tempest Technologies. There’s no hiding what you’ve done now. Give yourselves up, let go of the hostages in your facility and everyone in your base will be taken alive if possible.” Trap Bar was rather mad, he had heard there was trouble in the Applon System and that the ‘supposed’ black ops team he was keeping some loose tabs on was there and had done an orbital drop with a mechanical monstrosity.
There was also the pirate attacks on the supply depot which was in pony held space, so the EDF was sent in to protect the interests of Equus and every intelligent species that lived on that planet. It lead to him doing an investigation that uncovered a massive Human conspiracy going on, as his forces had caught the facility on Applin Three with their pants down. There wasn’t any time to delete any information from their systems.
“We already know you’re behind the pirate attacks in this system and we have a good idea that at least one government faction is involved in this, even if it is circumstantial evidence at best. At least we can nail Tempest Technologies on weapons trading and stealing planets for humanity.”Mr. Bar took a sip from a bottle of alcohol with a mean look in his eyes. He really needed that drink too, because the horrors going on in Applin Three’s Tempest Technologies facility were really quite bad.
“Oh screw you, you won’t find anything by the time you get here!” Thomas immediately set up the self-destruct and hit the button, he barely avoided the flying tackle from the purple fluff ball still trying to hug the life out of him. “I might even have a chance to escape if I hurry, so suck on that you little four legged abominations.”
“Warning, self-destruct initiated, all personnel have ten minutes to evacuate.” The mechanical voice sounded throughout the base. “Warning, self-destruct initiated, all personnel…”
Trap Bar watched grimly as the Human managed to dodge Puffle’s attempts against to hug him. Thomas even managed to kick it against the wall and actually got a pained sound from the dumb creature. He stopped to unseal the door to the room and dodged the Puffle again, leading the Puffle to go tumbling through the doorway. He wasn’t worried, he was pretty sure their facility was experiencing problems from the readouts he was getting from Applin Three’s facility and Lady Belle was probably already on the scene and would likely take care of the countdown.
-
“Rover is thinking this is being very bad situation.” Aside from a broken wrist he had been shot several times, but nothing that hurt too badly. The announcement that the base would self-destruct was quite ominous and given how it was setting off alarms all over the facility, it would have Humans running to evacuate so they’d at least be left unhindered right? Well that is assuming that all the Humans don’t start rioting against themselves and doing completely insane things.
“I can tell that that is a complete understatement.” Applejack was continuing to be the only one of the group to prove herself in being able to avoid any serious injury. Not saying she wasn’t injured, but she had plenty of reasons to avoid being hit and one of them was that she didn’t have Rarity’s breach gel to close off a wound like Rover and Mare-Do-Well. Applejack ducked down and a shot had graze her spotless hat, which had her looking back in the direction where Mare-Do-Well was tangling with that crazy Perja lady. The armor on the mysterious mare, at least she was mysterious to Applejack, was being torn apart by the fight with that impossibly agile Human. “Whoa nelly, that was a close one. It’s bad enough that I’m out of ammo, I can’t really contribute much more aside from physically and I certainly don’t feel like tangling with that there crazy Human back there.”
“We’re not about to ask you to try and take a biofeedback psychic in a contest of strength, Mare-Do-Well is doing alright in that respect… mostly.” The sound of crunching metal caused the remote controlled mechanical fox turned back around to the action going on behind them, Viral’s optical sensors zoomed in on the action and Greta grimaced a bit. “We need to hurry, the fact that the entire base is now on a timer is not pleasant when there are so few paths to the surface. So shutting down the self-destruct is quite necessary to our survival. Also we need to make better armor next time.”
Greta’s grimace reflected in Viral’s posture as the robots tail whipped in a very upset manner. It was practically a warzone and Saffron was putting up one hell of a struggle against an opponent that could think, react and fight well above her normal ability to handle. The armor was barely making a difference and was slowly being torn from Saffron’s form, the fact that she was still holding her own was amazing and it was likely experience as a vigilante that she hadn’t been grievously injured yet. They were at least just about outside the command center, which was the bright side to all of this as there would be some time to hack the computer as the self-destruct probably put all the systems under heavy lockdown. It’s what Greta would do if she built a self-destruct system into a hidden base.
Rover stopped and both Applejack and Viral turned to him, aside from Saffron he was the one still holding viable weapons. He took out his pistol and aimed it as the door to the Command Center actually opened before they arrived. Thomas Itterstin had forgotten they were coming so he could be excused for ignoring them in the face of kicking the Puffle while it was down from its tumble through the doorway. The pained sound of the Puffle didn’t matter to rover, what did matter was that he had an open shot on the guy that he could probably call dumber then him. At least the Diamond Dog had better situational awareness and could hear if there were others around, he shot the Human through his left shoulder sending him spiraling to the floor with a chunk of metal in him and then fired another shot into his knee crippling him before charging forward with Applejack and Viral following him.
They went passed the screaming Human into the room, when Viral ran past the Human the robots tail slapped into his skull dazing him and they ignored the Puffle getting up to go cuddle him to death. They came face to face with a smiling Trap Bar, who was already assuming the situation would be soon dealt with.
-
“No, not like this!” Thomas screamed before the Puffle pounced and started to snuggle him, he was slowly being suffocated and nobody was going to help him. He weakly struggled and was soon not moving anymore, the Puffle got bored and decided to go find another thing like this guy and leave this one to his sleep. She would hug them too for Puffles had to spread the happiness to these strangely angry and dark creatures! They all needed smiles and hugs!
-
It didn’t take long for Greta, through the use of Viral, to assess the situation going down in the laboratory massive frozen storage room and that was a secondary issue to the current one. The situation didn’t look too good in there and she immediately decided to start concentrating on stopping the countdown as Gilda was obviously on the scene.
The system was, as Greta surmised, in a rather thorough lockdown. Even if she could currently open communications with Opal, there wouldn’t be much that the cute cat could do to assist them as the lockdown would prevent her from accessing the systems unless she could physically get herself into the Centaur-pede and connect to Viral. Given this was impossible, Opal wasn’t going to be very helpful to call and they didn’t know if she was already busy with something else, their lives ending in a fiery explosion that can be seen from orbit was far more imminent.
When it rained, it poured hard as the data Greta was pouring over was going to take a while to parse through. She only have about eight minutes to do it before the situation really got heated. Idly she heard Applejack and Rover addressing the pony on the screen, whatever they were discussing wasn’t nearly as important as focusing on the self-destruct. The systems the Humans had here were actually really good, even Viral’s backdoor access wasn’t useful here thanks to the lockdown and she had to hack her way through a lot of stuff before she could disable the self-destruct.
If Greta didn’t do this carefully she could possibly accelerate the countdown, so there was a whole ton of pressure on her and she performed well in such an environment. If she could jack a Javelin, then she could hack the Humans haven.
-
Her armor was practically falling off of her and another rent was torn into it, there were a large amount of holes in it and she had lost the jump and strength enhancing systems. Her hoof blasters were barely functioning at all now, the inbuilt blades on her front hooves were destroyed, the shocks wings had been ripped off and the armor on the front half of her armored helmet was almost completely gone, at least her EVA suits helmet was still connected to the rest of the armor. Oddly the skate system was still functioning almost perfectly, but that only helped her so much in maneuvering out of the way of Perja’s strikes and moving in to ram her.
Perja Rensada was clearly a madwoman, as she didn’t even seem to care about the sudden activation of the self-destruct system and was entirely focused on killing the pony that was quickly running out of armor. That was the intent Perja was giving off when she created a jagged five inch long hold in the side of Saffron’s armor, she really didn’t need to prove how dangerous she was after she had decimated a walker with her bare hands.
Surprisingly, Saffron was actually enjoying this fight. Her blood was pumping and her adrenaline was going full blast even if it was nowhere near as efficient as Perja’s completely controlled adrenaline. If Saffron’s talent was spicing up her life, then nothing said spice like a quickly worsening life or death situation.
Every injury Saffron dealt Perja would heal, but the problem with that was that Perja was quickly running out of energy and nutrients to heal with. Both Perja’s muscles and bones were under heavier amounts of stress than Saffron’s were and as such the pony and the Human were on a mostly even setting with Saffron eking out a marginal advantage by pacing herself in the fight and not taking any serious hits. She was taking Perja seriously and was performing hit and run tactics, she had her eyes on every movement Perja made and reacted as well as she could to avoid injury. She wasn’t perfect and every bruise could be felt under the thundering of her heart and her need to protect others and save lives.
“Why won’t you die?!” Perja screamed as she launched a kicked for Saffron’s chin and the pony allowed it to connect and carry her up into the air where she curled up and hit the floor rolling backwards avoiding the follow up attack once she was back on her hooves. She leaned out of the way of a wild knife swipe that could have dug a knife deeply into her skull.
It was in this moment that Perja was starting to get sloppy in her movements, she had been constantly going at Saffron after ripping the walker apart almost completely without pause to catch her breath. Now she was beginning to enter double edged territory of her abilities and was on the cusp of her abilities, where her chances of surviving the effects of her own abilities started dropping.
“It’s because I never give up.” The woman had overextended herself by missing Saffron with her last attack and the pony took advantage of that moment by pushing the skate system in her rear hooves full blast forward. The right hoof unleashing its charged load as Saffron jumped at the Human and launched a brutal uppercut into the woman’s chin. The armor on her right hoof exploded as the hoof blaster finally stopped being stable. The explosion badly injured Saffron’s leg and it shredded the EVA suit underneath the exploded bits of armor. It also sent the pony flying to the floor onto her back, but on the bright side she launched Perja bodily into the ceiling with a painful smash that caused cracks to form from the impact and broke more than a few teeth. Rolling onto her three legs and staying off her badly burnt one, she frowned grimly at the Human woman laid out on the floor with a portion of the back of her skull caved in. “I will keep protecting those who need me!”
Surprisingly Perja was still alive, but her body had to have been crippled and she couldn’t get up and wouldn’t be able to live for too long without medical help. Saffron wouldn’t kill her, but she wouldn’t help her either. If Perja died of her injuries then that was that, Saffron turned around and started to limp forward only to fall on her face and for some of her armor to fall off. The pony looked behind her and saw that Perja had a still somewhat strong grip on of her hind legs and had a wild feral look in her eyes.
Apparently Perja didn’t give up too easily either and could really hold a grudge for glassing her jaw and damaging her head, especially since she couldn’t fix brain damage.
-
“Glad to see a friendly face Gilda and I can only hope Greta is on top of solving that nasty self-destruction issue or we’re all going to die. Are you okay Rubis?” Trying to stand up was painful and Rarity was already gasping and slightly out of breath from trying, it even hurt to breath and that said how bad off she was from all the bruises she had acquired. Running around with a broken leg certainly wasn’t doing her any favors. At least she didn’t have any of the shrapnel in her, there was some instance in her luck still working for her. She was at least once again standing on her two good, if horribly bruised, hooves.
“No… I’m not about to lie Lady Rarity, I’m in terrible pain. I think I may have been hit in an artery or two.” Rubis propped herself up on her right shoulder, gritting both beak and the teeth beneath as she slowly pulled herself up into an unsteady standing position with the Trailblazer. The rifle seemed several magnitudes heavier to her now, she was really beginning to feel how weak her body was from being frozen. It was already heavy before, but now the rifle felt impossible to lift off the ground and it had probably saved her life with every material round it blocked. “It feels like I’m bleeding out.”
“I hate to be alarmist darling, but there’s a small pool of blood around you so that’s probably the truth of the matter. Flesh Tender, Frost Wind, if either of you are still alive we could use some help down here!” The Hazard Spider was already standing up, causing Rarity’s heart to sink. The small dent Gilda made in it wasn’t going to keep it down forever. “One of my people is driving the other walker if that’s what you’re worried about!”
“Yeah, you might want to get on moving the Boss Lady, because she’s kind of in the way and I don’t want her to accidentally be blown away by this piece of crap.” The walker slowly took a few steps into position and waited for the Hazard Spider to stand up. “An impressively engineered piece of crap, but still a piece of crap by my standards.”
Quite a few of the ponies had died when the Humans bum rushed the room, even when they had a better defensive position and a choke point to work with. At least there were three or so winged ponies able to fly down and pick up both Rarity and Rubis while Hazard Spider was still getting up.
“I admit the fact that this base might explode has me worried, then again you guys are just far too much fucking trouble to ignore.” Commander Quelk shook his head and rubbed at it. He hadn’t expected that incoming blow and whoever these insurgents were, they had managed to steal one of their walkers. “I can survive the bases possible destruction in this thing, but I won’t chance any of you freaks getting out of here alive.”
“You do realize if we fight I’ll be the one walking away from this unscathed right?” Cocky attitude in full force, Gilda just threw down a gauntlet as the walker she piloted spread its legs and arms out. The left arm came up motioned to itself. “I may be a bit of an insomniac that indulges in too much caffeine when it comes to my work in keeping the Boss Lady happy and out of an early grave, but I can catch up on all that sleep when I’m dead and I’m not dying! So do you think you can really put me to bed big boy?”
“Well aren’t you a rather cocky bitch?” The Hazard Spider stood tall on its four legs and its two material cannons whirred to life for a few seconds and the two arms clacked their claws. “The ‘Lightning’ model walker you stole won’t survive the next five minutes. I’m not scared of some lowly shock trooper machine.”
“I don’t know Rover’s mother very well, but if I did, I would totally be making a rather crass statement on it right about now.” Gilda rolled her eyes and gripped the controls on her right tightly, while she flicked a few switches and prepared herself for the fight of her life. The walker arms came up in a boxers pose and started to shift slighter. “I wouldn’t underestimate me if I were you and you really should be scared of me.”
The stolen walker wasn’t doing badly from Gilda’s perspective, there was light damage to the shoulder when Gilda rammed into the more heavily armored machine and the systems didn’t seem to be overly run down from having been boosted for a short time. Temporary mechanical boosts wasn’t a problem and well within the parameters of this Lightning Model walker, outright overclocking the darn thing on the other claw would have a rather significant adverse effect on performance. Only doing something like that would start tearing the walker apart and Gilda didn’t want to do that, even if she really wanted to see what overclocking the walker would do.
Assessing Hazard Spider at a glance, Gilda figured the energy cannons her walker had weren’t going to be doing much damage to that armor unless she fired them while aiming for the joints on her opponents machine at close to point blank. The Quadruped machines biggest weakness was that if it lost two legs then it was entirely immobilized, which was easier said than done when they were just as armored as the rest of the darn thing. Mobility was the key difference between the two machines, the four legged model obviously offered stability to carry heavier weapons like the two material cannons on its shoulders. After those two guns expended all of their ammo they would quickly become dead weight. Though limited in ammunition the material cannons could deal a lot of damage in a short amount of time, the best option was to make the guy waste his ammo before he chewed the walker she was piloting apart.
It was better armed and had more armor, it only lacked mobility and whatever those parts that fell off it were. Said parts appeared to be vestigial at best after having been recently destroyed if the damaged backside of the upper torso was anything to go by, the performance of said machine still looked pretty solid even after she slammed it and that gave her a method to gauge what kind of damage she could do. Gilda was a genius and she could take this thing down, she’d have to the overclocking process at the right moment and she already had it prepped for emergency purposes.
Overclocking would give her enough power for a minute to wreck her opponent and she still had a backup plan for if she failed to deal a killing blow in that time frame. Once she started overclocking the systems in the walker they would inevitably fry and the machine would go completely dead. There was no fixing the walker after that point unless she overhauled everything and she didn’t have the time or the resources for a full bodied overhaul.
This just meant that it would be a test of Gilda’s piloting skills, especially since her opponent didn’t know her very well. After all, who better to deconstruct something than a mechanic?
-
Fluffy Puff, the most intelligent Puffle ever, got a little turned around after being hit with at least two shock bolts and about a hundred material rounds consecutively. Well she was only as intelligent as a sea sponge or maybe even less than that, but that was enough to get her interested in the dark spooky hole at the back of the frozen storage room.
Something smelled interesting and she decided to pursue it and ignore the fact that she was leaking strange fluids or that doing so was making her feel funny in a not so good way. Was this what it felt like before you went to sleep forever? The Puffle didn’t like it one bit and was going to stay awake until she felt better.
-
(Chrono Trigger Boss Theme 1)
Gilda decided to start the fight off not by going directly at the stronger machine, but by strafing around to the left of the Hazard Spider. Oh she knew it would track her movements and quite well at that, the upper torso was basically a turret that could turn and point in almost any direction it wants easily enough and the lower torso could have it move in any direction. Gilda was slightly more limited in her movements.
Quelk started off by firing the material cannons and that was when Gilda flicked a switch twice and then the walker she was in seemed to jump forward and out of the path of hundreds of rounds now spilling from the twin cannons. One thousand rounds each was nothing to sneeze at and would take a while to deplete entirely. Gilda’s walker took several hits towards to armor at the back, a lot of the shots dug deeply into the armor and others whizzed by missing and digging into the surrounding walls. The blasts of energy that were being fired alongside the two material cannons were a lot slower and missed entirely.
Gilda wasn’t idle and was consistently firing energy shots back, her sudden boost forward would confuse him for a few seconds and she tried to capitalize on it by firing as she continued to strafe around the walker. One arm was outstretched and the other was crossing in front of the torso of the walker, only it was hard to hit any of the joints in the other machine at a distance with the armor overlapping in several places. At least the thing wasn’t shielded and if it had been, then Gilda would have to find out what Rarity got up to when she faced this thing down so as not to make the same mistake when it comes to building shield generators. She had gotten to this party a bit late, thanks to those stupid slow ass elevators.
Speaking of late, Gilda wondered where Ember was in all this. She saw a Parrote and Rarity, but the blue dragon wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Not exactly the most important thing to be thinking of, because her shots were doing various amounts of damage from surprisingly moderate to very little. That armor was a little tougher than previously thought.
The surprise from the boosted movement didn’t last long as the Hazard Spider swung around and slammed Gilda’s walker in the right arm with its left outstretched claw. The two legged walker was staggered as it slid back a bit before it righted itself and jumped sideways while covering the canopy with both arms to avoid any dangerous hits from the stream of material rounds. Several of said material rounds chewed through the armor, but didn’t seem to hit anything serious.
Gilda read the damage readout and winced, it had only been about thirty seconds and she was already taking some bad hits. She could not present her back to this thing, the material rounds could actually pierce her walker’s armor and possibly blow up her power source. There was also already a crack in the canopy from a material round that had just glanced off of it creating a very audible noise that made Gilda jump in her seat and narrow her eyes as she gripped the controls a little bit tighter.
Stepping forward she threw the left balled claw up under her opponents machine and knocking it’s cockpit upwards and causing it to take several steps back, she quickly took the opportunity to start firing several shots into the knee joint of one of the legs at point blank range. She did manage something approaching significant damage with the five shots she got in before she was promptly knocked backwards by a double blast to the belly of her walker. Some of the armor melted to slag weakening the area below her canopy, this was followed by more material cannons ripping into the armor. She proceed to strafe to the right this time and again covered her canopy with both arms.
The sustained fire of the material cannons were really taking their toll with every single hit and Gilda couldn’t afford to keep taking damage from them. Strafing wasn’t working too well, so she decided to immediately switch gears and distance herself from Hazard Spider. Suddenly changing pace to run down the row into the frozen storage room and gain some distance for her next attack.
The sudden change in direction was unexpected as the Hazard Spider continued to turn in the same direction Gilda had been moving, it lost hundreds of rounds hitting nothing before its upper torso started tracking back towards its opponent.
Gilda was only going to boost a few more time and then she’d have to hit the switch she was avoiding that would activate the overclock. Once she did that it would spell this machines imminent demise no matter what she did. She instead flicked the same switch she did before in the same manner while sliding and pivoting the walker to point towards the Hazard Spider. By the time that it got back to looking in Gilda’s direction, she already had the walker positioned in a stance to perform its next attack.
The Hazard Spider unloaded another hundred or so rounds, but a majority of them missed or hit the legs of the Lightning Walker Gilda was piloting, it had jumped straight up in the air holding its arms out and it gave off a bright flash when it landed upon the ground. The flash was confusing enough, but the sudden burst of speed after a small crouching motion led the bipedal walker to being on top of the Hazard spider before it could even react. Gilda’s walker did decent damage to two of the legs and the canopy with the sudden shoulder charge that slammed the Hazard Spider into the wall next to the gaping hole. The hole was just made a bit big bigger and the leg Gilda previously shot up was now moving a bit more jerkily.
The Hazard Spider sparked and twitched as the two legs facing Gilda took up a kneeling position. Gilda charged forward and unleashed a left punch, then a right punch and ended by blasting it repeatedly with both energy cannons trying to aim for whatever she could set her eyes on at the moment. She got as many shots as she could squeeze in before it could retaliate, both the material cannons of the Hazard Spider fired at this range and Gilda leapt backwards out of the way of the incoming fire several times while incurring more damage to her walker.
There were sparks from the material rounds hitting the floor leading up to Gilda’s walker that had been hardly avoiding the energy blasts at this range and quickly took up a defensive stance leaving the arms to get chewed up by the material weapons fire. Gilda almost hit the switch to overclock the walker and held off for a moment, as she jumped the machine forward and to the left and then forward to the right through a hail of fire material rounds sparking off the armor and energy bolts missing within millimeters of the hull of her walker. From an outsiders perspective Gilda was certainly getting trashed, but her opponent was wasting a lot of ammunition trying to put her down.
Gilda made her machine perform a third lunging action until she got close enough and stopped short of the right punch the Hazard Spider launched her way while stepping forward. She quickly took a few steps back to avoid the follow up left straight. She quickly stepped inside the machines guard between its legs and threw a straight right into the middle of the torso, a loud clanging noise and surprisingly she damaged the uppers torso’s ability to pivot as the metal dented inward on something important.
A blast struck Gilda’s walker and it stumbled backwards with its left forearm smoking from the damage it just took, she barely managed to block that and her canopy now had several more cracks in it and she was receiving alerts about it. The screen in front of Gilda was blaring warning and she couldn’t hold off on hitting that switch much longer and she wasn’t doing as much damage as she thought she could. She begrudgingly and silently admitted that this jackass was actually a moderate pilot.
A quick glance at the damage her walker had taken and it was started to dip into the red on various body parts and systems. The right shoulder in particular was one of the worst off from that last tackle she unleashed and the damage to the left forearm was almost enough to prevent the energy weapon from firing off. Some of the hydraulics in the legs were a bit messed up from pushing so many boosts through them and her canopy was a few wrong materials rounds away from ripping her to shreds. Gilda didn’t feel fear, it was quite the opposite as she was ecstatic and excited. Gilda decided to bring up the possibility that she may be a very mild technophile with Vera later as the other walker was earning her attention in the oddest of ways, now wasn’t the time or place to be thinking of such stuff when it was a matter of survival.
The Boss Lady seriously needed the help and it got Gilda away from her boredom, it was a win her book and she wasn’t going to lose even if she had to detonate the walker she was in to take that thing down… what would happen if she detonated this thing while it was overclocking? There was an idea, but she had to immobilize her opponent to implement it correctly.
She had to make that machine expend the last of its ammunition, the thing was practically loaded with armor piercing materials and she needed that kind of fire power out of the way before she lost her walker. She could feasibly dodge the energy weapons while flying, the material rounds would just shred her unarmored butt and she’s already made it expend thousands on her. How much could it have left? It was either make it waste the ammo or destroy the weapons which was a bit harder to do when her weapon couldn’t damage or reach them on the shoulders.
In the other machine John Quelk looked upon his own readout and saw that Hazard Spider was damaged in three critical spots slowing it down. His machine was capable of taking an entire battalion of Lightning Model walkers which were basically grunts of their armored division. If this was true, then why was he having so much trouble with this one and how in the hell did the person piloting it make it speed up like that? There was just something not natural about how well it was performing, but it wasn’t like it wasn’t taking copious amounts of damage and that was at least the realistic part of this situation.
The one thing that really scared commander Quelk about all this is that he’s spent almost all of his remaining ammunition on this one walker alone, more than he would have normally on several piloted by Human hands under the exact same specifications. He was an armored division pilot of great renown and to his utter dismay, the pathetic mass production walker he was fighting was still somehow standing and continuing to chip away at his walker even as it was falling apart in front of him. Even if it couldn’t really do much to the heavily armored portions of Hazard Spider, it was getting him where it counted tactically by slowly disabling his mobility.
Overall the four legged Hazard Spider was still doing better than Gilda’s battered and almost broken walker.
Gilda charged forward and blocked with the right arm before taking a swing with the left at her opponents canopy, the Hazard Spider stepped backwards and unleashed a torrent that had Gilda backing up until the two material cannons started making loud clicking sounds. Despite doing a phenomenal amount of damage to the walker Gilda stole, they had finally run dry which was the time the griffon had been waiting for.
The griffon checked the weapons systems to see they were still functional, the armor was now a completely lost cause and any real damage after this was going to really make her walker fall apart faster than one of Greta’s mechanical pets. Her opponent was about to see why good mechanics were dangerous. This guy wasn’t a mechanic, which was pretty much clear to Gilda judging by his performance and she was about to play the card she had been sitting on for a while.
“I’ve been waiting for this moment, time to show you what you Humans have been missing!” Gilda smirked and then hit the overclock switch and… nothing happened.
“Oh and what is that?” Quelk taunted, he was still doing well even if he was out of ammo, lost his shields and his special weapon.
Gilda looked at the readout on the damage to her screen and then slapped her face, she reached up and flicked the switch she’s been using to perform short term boosts once instead of doing it twice like she had previously done. The response was immediate and quite shocking as Gilda’s walker seemed to expand slightly before contracting and took on a dark purple glow.
“Sorry, forgot to make sure a switch was flipped.” Instead of a badass one liner, Gilda went with an apology and the second she pushed the controls to move forward the walker blurred and was moving at three time the speed it normally could. Quelk couldn’t very well keep up with what was happening over the course of the next few seconds even if he tried, as the walker was responding as fast as Gilda could operate the controls. She still had to say something about what was about to happen as she closed in. “Say hello to F U mode!”
The first blow was immediately followed by the second and third leading into a fourth punch from the now stupidly fast machine. By the time Quelk was trying to return a leftward swing in retaliation the arm was grabbed by Gilda’s right, stopped completely and the left came up and rammed home into the elbow joint causing a shrieking noise as the metal protested against the sudden jarring hit followed by a right straight into the Hazard Spider’s canopy as Gilda released it upon hitting the arm. The entire canopy cracked upon impact into a spider web shaped mass of fractures, but it still held together.
Quelk after having the inner left elbow hit tried to move the right arm and get the fast machine off of him with a shot. Only it was knocked upwards before it could fire or even connect and it was blown backwards by his opponent’s right punch that almost seemed to wrench the arm out of the right shoulder socket and was hit with a blast of energy more powerful than the ones his machine could unleash. It was absurd and maddening that the thing could even put out that much power.
“Oh, of all the… damn it.” Gilda looked at the readout and the sudden worsening of the alarm to find that the overclock might end a bit faster than she wanted it to, mostly because the actions she was putting the machine through were actively working to tear it apart as she pilots it. Well no time like the present, set the thing to explode while it was still going and get in a few more licks. “Boss Lady get everyone clear, things are about to get toasty in here!”
Gilda didn’t look to see the reaction, though there were a lot of wings flying to get away and a lot of movement up on the blocks. She was focused on one thing and that was taking down the armored asshole before her.
“She’s not kidding, everyone start moving away from the edge of the blocks and get away as far as you can!” Rarity understood Gilda pretty well and knew that when she said something, it was exactly as it sounded based in both opinion and fact. When Gilda said something was about to go up, something was going to go up and then some.
The slightly smaller walker laid into the Hazard Spider for all it was worth and crippled both the nearest legs with two blows each and the continued to wreck the arms and torso trying to breach through the armor. The screeched of metal was heard as pieces fell off both the walker Gilda was piloting and Hazard Spider, the one Gilda was piloting was starting to look like a zombie by comparison that the other one was still holding up.
The demented glow around the smaller machine started intensifying and Gilda decided it was time to bail, she blew the canopy dropping it to the floor and lunged the walker forward to grapple Hazard Spider’s torso as much as it feasibly could. She then gripped the top of the opening in her cockpit and flipped herself onto the roof in an impressive show of agility, then leapt and started flapping her wings frantically flying away from the back of her own machine.
The glowing hit a crescendo and blinding flash filled the room as did a massive explosion that sent Gilda rolling and tumbling through the air. She managed to catch herself before she slammed into the side of the flooring of one of the blocks and started to hover, eyeing the large billowing cloud of smoke where her machine used to be to see something moving inside of it.
Now the Hazard Spider looked like the zombie and there wasn’t much left of the walker Gilda had used, she had blown it to hell. It was a bit horrifying to realized that the Hazard Spider was still able to stand and move somewhat. The armor on its body was shredded somewhat, but it was still going and thankfully Gilda planned for this occasion.
“What’s the plan camarade?” Rubis’s feathers were not only messed up, the few bits of skin showing under them was pale from the blood loss and being recently patched up didn’t help her one bit. Gilda kind of amazed her and she was looking to Gilda for a plan of action since Hazard Spider still wasn’t down.
“If you and anyone else here has a loaded and viable weapon be prepared to fire it. I’ve still got some aces up my sleeves, but I’ll have to get in close to use them!” It was a yelling Gilda talking about the satchel full of freezing chemicals in vials, the chemical sprayer and of course her plasma rifle. Her hearing had been messed up from being so close to the shockwave and she was going to need some medical leave after this. “Fire whatever you can, you’ll know when to do so!”
Gilda had caught her breath enough that she launched into the air from the block and dodged the blast of energy from the left claw of the Hazard Spider, but the right sparked and failed to fire. Gilda pulled the chemical sprayer and rolled out of the path of another bolt of energy that nearly clipped one of her wings, she wasn’t going to lose her ability to fly naturally damn it!
Swooping down Gilda started spraying the left arm of the tortured machined with the freezing chemicals and upon reaching the shoulder that arm could no longer be moved. It tried to fire, but the ice was preventing it from functioning. The right one took a swing at Gilda and she flipped backwards out of the way and was surprised when a sudden stream of flaming rocks and material weapons were all firing upon the frozen arm. The sudden heat from the flaming rocks and a lot of material weapons fire caused the arm to fall off in a small explosion that had the walker staggering, now the Hazard Spider was lacking an arm and its armor wasn’t protecting it from much of anything anymore.
“We still have enough for one last lightning bolt, guys help me out here. Hey you, freeze the other arm and get clear!” A voice from above sounded out.
Gilda flew in and out spraying the other arm down freezing it in place, she stumbled in the air as her wing was hit by the tip of the arm before the ice covered it. She caught herself in time before she could hit the floor and flew away quickly noticing the swirling mass of light starting to collect above the Hazard Spider with what remaining clouds there were. Frost Wind and his weather crew managed to cobble together one last blast of lightning and it was devastating blow that took down the Hazard Spider completely.
The shock from the lightning bolt caused the right arm to be atomized instead of just falling off Hazard Spider, said walker had no weapons left and if it could move after all that then it would be very slow to get anywhere. Gilda flew up high, hefted a vial and then pitched it at the canopy of the machine. The cracked and battered canopy shattered completely as soon as it started freezing.
The man in the seat was frantically trying to work the controls, though the lightning bolt had logically fried every system left operational. The whole thing was dead and soon he would be too as someone on the blocks took the moment to fire several energy blasts into his body coating the surroundings in his blood, he died slowly gurgling in pain as his blood pooled in his throat choking him to death from being accurately shot in several arteries.
There was a moment of quiet, the alarms of the bases imminent destruction was the only thing heard going on in the frozen storage room as many a pony, a parrote or two, one griffon, even a little Human girl and any of the other species that had managed thaw out safely turned to Rarity. Rarity closed her eyes and sighed, before falling onto her butt in a sitting position.
“Now if only Greta or anyone could hopefully...” Rarity started to mutter under her breath.
“Two minutes remaining to evacu… self-destruct cancelled…” There were some sighs of relief all around, but they weren’t out of the woods yet.
Gilda had lasted more than five minutes and then some considering she was still alive and winging it for Rarity to give her a hug, shooting a completely defenseless guy was one of the most metal things she’s ever seen the Boss Lady do! Now if she could convince the Boss Lady to wear a punk mane style, then she would be more awesome as unlikely as that is to occur.
“There it is…” Blinking her eyes trying to keep them open, Rarity was really quite tired of this whole affair and didn’t like the fact that she was the one that ultimately killed that man, but she really didn’t want him to survive any of this. Not after everything he put everyone through and all the people he’s helped to kill, there were some people that shouldn’t be left to chance to cause more loss of life. She didn’t feel like a hero for what she just did, but she’d face that later. She needed more sleep, the few hours she got when she was in that box before Fluffy Puff found her wasn’t nearly damn enough. Gilda was being oddly affectionate with her all of the sudden and she didn’t mind all too much, she cleared her throat and spoke loudly. “I hope nobody holds that against me, I’m going to sleep now and I better not die in my sleep before my cousins wedding! It’s important… to me… try to continue thawing people out as safely as you… Ember…”
With the last of her strength spent staying awake in the awkwardly cuddly griffons arms, Rarity passed out from exhaustion for the second time since she entered the facility. When she woke up, she was hoping to be healed, to get a long hot shower, comfort food for everyone no matter what it was, a deep tissue massage and a makeup kit. Heck she would certainly pay to get her whole crew into a five star resort and just say damn it all to the consequences of possibly bankrupting themselves.