-Floating Continent Temple Courtyard, Jacky-
If I remember right from my biology lessons, these guys are carnivorous. So a giant version is definitely not something we should be around when it was lunch time, like right now for instance.
The bug eyed bombardier beetle looked between us and then turned to me and opened its mouth, it then spat a stream of pale greenish yellow fluid.
I rolled behind a column and heard a sizzling noise as the chemicals it spat at me covered the pillar.
It spits acid… because of course it does!
“Nefer stay out of danger, you too Flotsam, unless either of you think you can help with this thing!” At least Gene currently held the spear and he would be quite helpful in fending off this monster. “I don’t think it needs to be said, but take cover and stay in it!”
It reared up and its butt loosed an insanely fast fireball on my position and once the fire made contact with the acid… it exploded.
The sudden shockwave went through the pillar and sent me flying back first from that pillar into another one. This did not help my healing injuries from the boulder incident and the new pain to my spine was quite excruciating.
So it also sprayed high speed fireballs from its butt, said fireballs made the acid it spits from its mouth explode violently. Said explosion also toppled the pillar I had been behind off to the side.
When did the things I have to deal with start including fire and explosives? I hoped this wasn’t a common trend for the rest of my life. The acid was new at least, which also just as lethal by the way it eroded the ground. The pillars could hold up to the acid at least, but not the explosions.
Were we seriously going to fight this six legged menace? Yes… it didn’t look like it was going to let us leave as it quickly moved over to me on its six legs.
Oh sure, it was the size of a small party tank and incredibly lethal, but that’s not all folks! It was also ridiculously fast on its six legs and it was about to spray me with acid. Said acid would probably break my body down to easily chewable protein rich bits for this thing.
It went to exhale and its head was knocked to the side and a spray of hemolymph came out of the gouge Gene had dug out of its face with the spear before pulling back. This had also sent the acid spraying off to my left as I slowly got up.
I starting running to the right for a few pillars as it started spraying fast flying fireballs into the air at Gene, he was having problems avoiding them as they came flying out of the beetles rear at high speeds.
Once I took cover I got my bow out and turned back to the problem.
I pulled the string while holding my bow in the sunlight and took aim, I let fly a blast of light directly into the side of its right eye as it turned about to keep track of Gene swiftly changing directions in the air.
My shot caused the beetle to lose its ability to aim, Gene avoided the next lethal salvo while it was disoriented and quickly got out of sight.
The beetle, regaining its senses in seconds, turned and leaped on to the pillars and started to walk across the top of them.
Upon reaching me, it looked down and reared up its abdomen. I ran for it as it sent out a waves of flames against the ground to encompass the area it was standing over.
I ducked behind a pillar as a spray of acid followed my egress. Again the pillars held up pretty well, but if they were hit with fire…
Gene rammed the spear into its abdomen creating a small rent there and a splash of hemolymph.
He got it to turn around by ripping the spear out and flying behind it.
It spat a wad of acid into the air, but it was not aiming directly at Gene which confused both him and me, then it fired a high speed fireball right into the acid.
The explosion hit Gene sending his smoking form spiraling into the ground where he rolled with the impact and slammed into a pillar.
“Generic!” Okay I think Jade’s nickname for him definitely fit, but that wasn’t important right now.
I stepped out and started rapidly firing blasts of light into its rear end as it went for the downed Gene. That wasn’t doing much damage and I wasn’t annoying it enough to get its attention back on me.
So aside from hitting the eyes, the oversized bombardier beetle was probably heat and light resistant.
“Come on, there has to be something in my tail quiver…” I had to have at least had something to hurt this monster enough to divert its attention.
Sharpened fork? No, not strong enough. Baseball? No, blunt force isn’t useful for its armored hide. Golf ball? Pretty rainbows, but no. A labeled vial of delayed instant… why do I even have this?!
The monster was about to spray Gene, who was trying to get up.
Never mind that it was the only one in my quiver, I was using it!
I put the vial to my bow string and launched it for a spot between Gene and the monster.
The vial shattered on the ground spreading the liquid everywhere in front of the monster.
The monster stopped inhaling to spray Gene down with deadly acid for second, just to stare at the fluids on the ground.
It then went to spray acid all over Gene, only for a one foot thick five by five stone wall to immediately pop up right into its face. This forced its head upwards and made it splatter its own head and body in acid.
The ever infamous potion of ‘Delayed Instant Wall’, brought to you by Kuril La Perm using classic zebra liquid magic.
I will never doubt the usefulness of such a thing ever again. I had before, when I thought you could have said thing made without the whole delayed reaction part. It seemed somewhat useless for something that was supposed to be instantaneous.
The bombardier beetle roared in pain. While the inside of its mouth may have been protected, its body thankfully wasn’t immune to its own acid and it stumbled back trying to shake off the acid burning through its exoskeletal hide.
Unfortunately the acid didn’t get in its eyes, because that would have made things easier for us wouldn’t it? At least its attention was now directly back on me and it looked quite angry.
Its smoking form turned to me and roared, it then open its abdomen and two wings slowly slid out and spread open.
Ah yes, I had almost forgotten that beetles can fly and that was clearly bad.
Once its wings were deployed, it took to the air slowly with its wings flapping rapidly. Okay, because of its size maybe it wasn’t capable of flying very…
It’s butt ignited and it rocketed high up into the sky and then curved around coming right for me. So it can not only shoot fire from its butt, but it also acts like propulsion speeding up its flying?
“You are without a doubt an evolutionary marvel that I wish I had never met!” As it strafed the ground with acid and fire from its rear creating. I was already running two columns over to my right as an entire line of explosions wreaked havoc where I was previously.
“Yeah, I’m not even going to try and fight that in the air.” Generic muttered as he landed next to me and the beetle monster curved around for another pass.
“Are you okay?” I asked looking at his scorched body.
“Could be better. Almost burnt out some primaries on my right wing, that hurt a lot. Thanks for the save Jacky.” Gene coughed out a bit of smoke. “Now think of a way to take it down quickly, before it decides to get even… worse!”
Gene grabbed me and flapped backwards several times as the pillar we were taking cover behind went up in several explosions back to back. The beetle had stopped blasting fire out of its butt and decided to slow down and actually aim both its mouth and tail at the same target.
It hovered menacingly over us as it prepared to fire another combined blast.
-Flotsam-
If I was going to be part of this crew, I might as well make myself useful and try to keep the whole misfit group alive.
I gagged as I finally swallowed the banana peel, the taste was always so horrible. At least the peels were somewhat nutritious if absolutely horrible tasting to me.
Pressing my left hoof ending in a useless floppy flipper against the end of the downed pillar, I imagined a bubble elongating and wrapping itself around it. I lifted my hoof slowly until I had the pillar lifted up and started pointing it towards that oversized bug.
Jacky said I wasn’t useless, I had better prove her right before she was rendered a pile of mushy bug food.
-Jacky-
Gene and I got separated by another explosion, the monster was choosing to come down on me thankfully. Gene looked a little more burnt than last time and didn’t look like he was going to get up in time to save me.
Didn’t know what Nefer or Flotsam were doing, but I could use someone’s help right about now.
The beetle inhale and reared its tail back while pointing towards me and then it let loose, only for the world to blur around me for second as I felt air beneath my body.
I blinked as I fell towards the ground slowly being held aloft by the annoying giant butterfly that was struggling to carry my weight and had used its momentum to sweep me out of the way of the blast.
As soon as my feet hit the ground, the butterfly quickly folded up its wings and whined as it pressed into my side insistently when the beetle turned towards us and away from its conflagration that created a large hole in the ground.
The bombardier was about bombard us again.
“Go over to him and help him up!” I pointed to Gene a distance away slowly propping himself up, the butterfly looked at me like I was crazy. “Don’t fight me on this, because we will be caught in the next explosion if we do!”
The butterfly kept its wings folded up tightly close to its back and ran over to the where Gene was on its legs.
Meanwhile, I avoided the next explosive acid bomb and several hundred fireballs spraying after me.
-Flotsam-
I didn’t exactly know how this works, just that it did. With both my hooves on the end of the pillar. I wasn’t exactly gripping with my frogs, but with the ability itself that had a short time limit.
Holding the pillar horizontally should have split it in half, something about my ability was holding it together when it should have snapped.
I now imagined launching the bubble wrapped around the pillar away from me as fast as I could make it go, then I mentally slapped the entire pillar into motion.
Something kicked me back and I felt a blast of invisible energy, as if something popped right in my face.
A second later, I felt the back of my head ram into something as my body rocketed backwards by the sudden force of whatever it was I had done. It wasn’t like I had researched my ability to lift heavy things all too well and this was the first time I actually tried something new.
Blinking through my currently blurry vision, possibly related to my current head injury, I could see that my hooves were empty.
The beetle was now missing its right wing and a section of its abdomen shell as something, most likely the pillar, kept going for a bit before nosing into the ground and sliding a good distance.
The beetles remaining wing couldn’t hold up its weight and it slammed into a pillar destroying the other wing as well and making it screech out in horrible amounts of pain.
Funny, I should have blacked…
-Jacky-
Holy Anointed Sardines, which absolutely no one ever talks about, did Flotsam just seriously do that?
I certainly doubted Nefer could throw something that big and at that speed. Looking over to Gene he was out of it and the butterfly was trying to help him stand.
I shook my head and got it back into the game… the Bombardier Beetle was standing up and I needed something to deal with it in a more permanent manner.
“What could I possibly do to… oh… wow… I’m so stupid!” I smacked my forehead with my left talons and then reached into the quiver at the base of my tail with my right talons.
I simply pulled out a matchstick. A cannon lighter wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
The beetle roared and looked towards Gene.
“Oh no you don’t. Hey, over here, ten points if you can spray me with acid!” Pocketing the match in the left side of my cloth pants, I pulled a fork and fired it right into the bombardier beetle’s antenna causing it more pain. “Come and get me you load of hot gas and air!”
The beetle turned towards me and moved forward inhaling, I pulled the match from my pocket and struck it against the ground. It didn’t light… why didn’t it light?! I struck it against the stone again receiving some sparks.
“Oh come on! I know you’re not a dud, come on, come on… yes!” Striking the matchstick several times, it finally lit brightly ablaze.
I, carefully, nocked it to the string of the bow I still had a strong death grip on and fired it straight at the beetle and not a second too soon.
It opened its mouth to spit a stream of acid and guess what this acid does when you introduce fire to it?
So I might have wasted that vial of delayed instant wall and should have thought of this sooner, but it wasn’t like I was in the right frame of mind to kill this thing when I was too busy surviving it.
The match went down its throat, it suddenly gagged and choked for a second looking quite perplexed.
A few seconds later the front half of its body started to glow brightly and started expanding in an ugly lumpy manner.
“Everyone cover your ear holes and hit the deck, it’s going to blow!” I threw myself behind a nearby pillar and curled up as tightly as I could while clamping my talons over my head.
The multiple explosions were loud enough to be deafening, violent and horrific sound with all the squelching noises involved therein.
With one last blast I could see the abdomen without the front half of the body flying off for a good distance where it eventually hit the ground and went up in a pillar of roaring flames.
“I think that went rather well…” I quickly stepped out of the path of a heavily damaged pillar toppling towards me. “Relatively speaking of course.”