-South edge of Cladinhold, Pom-
“Are you okay Shanty?!” She looked a bit burnt as she sat up.
“I being only a bit crispy and more worried that Dodo…” Shaking her head violently, Shanty looked me in the eyes sharply. “Never be minding that, I be knowing what the machine monster is going to do next!”
“Okay Shanty, you have my undivided attention.” Stating this as I climbed up and carefully laid Ocellus insider Dodo’s back behind her.
“It be dragging itself closer to the city so it can explode!” If Shanty was right and if the machine had even half a tank of oil when it does… fire everywhere and the whole town gets destroyed.
“Stay with Dodo and protect Ocellus, also get some rest.” I turned away from Shanty and waved at Jean. “Hey!”
I got his attention and then I started to draw in the dirt, octopus, building, octopus next to building, octopus exploding and building on fire, something like a pile a rubble afterwards. I kept the images as simple as possible for Jean to hopefully understand.
Jean blinked one or twice in confusion, his eyes eventually widened in understanding and horror. He turned and shouted to the black rat and brown mouse. They turned to him and he pointed at the octopus that started to drag itself forward while saying something.
Biggs said something to Jean and he quickly pulled the rocket tube off his back and tossed it to him, Wedge said something and he soon received a satchel full of ammunition that Jean pulled from his waist. I’m guessing Jean didn’t know how to reload that weapon, these two did though.
Whatever Biggs said next made Jean turn to us, he drew a circle on the ground and put two dots in it. Smolder landed next to us and looked at me questioningly, she was still on fire, so she tried not to stand too close to me and my oil soaked wool.
Jean pointed at Biggs and wedge and pointed at the two dots with the tip of his rapier, he then motioned at us and motioned in a circle. I nodded as I understood what we needed to do as I watched Wedge load the rocket tube and Biggs was kneeling with it on his shoulder.
Slashing his rapier against the ground one last time, I saw that Jean made a crescent shape to create a simplistic smiling face.
“They want us to circle up and protect them from any shrimp and prawn that might be coming from the... let’s call it ‘octobot’. Dodo will be our rear guard in case we need to abandon the town.” As I said this a rocket launched from the tube at the octopus machine that was slowly dragging itself forward.
The octobot lifted up a tentacle and it took a moderate amount of damage from the blast when the rocket collided with it. It had been aimed for its left evil core, the other evil core had fully regrown and the fake goofy eye had fallen off from the shockwave.
The octobot’s exposed evil cores were making us feel this general sense of dread permeating the air as they gazed at the town and us, it seemed more evil than it had a second ago. The sky was darkening thanks to all the smoke from the burning fields of grass from the oil attack the octobot sprayed out.
It was a good thing Ocellus wasn’t awake for this.
The octobot continued to drag itself forward through the field of flames on its burning tentacles. It didn’t need all its tentacles for forward locomotion, so it raised three tentacles and started firing flaming cannonballs that were mechanical shrimps at us. More importantly they were aimed at Biggs and Wedge who were in the middle of loading their next shot.
Jean or I couldn’t get near the prawn or shrimp or stop the octobot from directly targeting Biggs and Wedge, neither of us really wanted to go up in flames. Dodo move forward and started sending blasts of energy out of his beak and manage to deflect the cannonballing shrimp that might have had a chance of successfully directly striking Biggs and Wedge.
They all landed nearby and I moved forward unleased fired a bark blast on the far right one and watched as it blew apart once hit. Being on fire made the metal that the shrimp were made of structurally weaker, but far more dangerous to get close to.
Jean and Smolder were already handling the other two and when I heard the rocket tube fire I turned to see it would land. The octobot covered its left eye and the spiraling rocket veered to the left and smashed into the right evil core damaging it pretty badly. The entire machine rocked backwards slightly and when it tried to drag itself forward its body mostly just turned right as it suddenly lost control of its right side for a few seconds.
As Wedge reloaded, Biggs looked as nervous as I felt when the octopus got its right side back under control and pushed itself backwards to reorient itself to point at the town. As it did so several more shrimp came down, but Dodo, Jean and Smolder had it taken care of.
I was taking a small break recuperate, like me Shanty was both injured and exhausted. Shanty took to simply commanding Dodo on what to do and was doing fairly well at it, she’d be fine after a harrowing experience as she was far less fear filled than I was. So I didn’t have to worry about them for the moment.
Biggs fired a third shot and the rocket swirled through the air veering wildly out of control, when Jean fired his shot it went completely straight. It made me wonder what Biggs was doing to get the rocket to act like that and I notice that in the midst of already reloading their next shot, Wedge damages one of the stabilizing fins on the rocket slightly before he started to load it into the tube.
The rocket slammed into the underside and base of one of the octobot’s tentacles and it fully went limp from explosion. That kind of damage would slow it down immensely and disable another shrimp and prawn shooting limb completely. I guess the octobot couldn’t accurately defend itself if the rockets we fire were going to be a bit random in their approach. The tentacle taken down was the second from its left and it was getting in the way of the octobot’s movements.
It seemed like Biggs and Wedge had a rhythm going now as a fourth shot went out, only for the octopus to blow the rocket out of the air by intercepting it with one of the three shrimp it fired through the airspace the rocket was occupying. Never mind, the octobot could defend itself quite well.
Not being deterred in the slightest that the octopus blocked the shot with a shrimp, Biggs and Wedge were already loading up another shot.
The two shrimp that came down nearby were swiftly destroyed by Smolder and Jean, they had been damaged by the explosion of the rocket. How many shots did Biggs and Wedge have left? I looked at the sack and saw about five left, they had six shots and they had to make them count.
Biggs narrowed his eyes, pretended to pull the trigger and three shrimp were suddenly in the air, then he fired. The octopus was actually waiting for him to fire so it could intercept the rocket shots?
The shot wobbled in the air and then veered straight up, it’s exhausted stopped and it fell to explode against the top of the machine damage its metal hide mildly causing stress cracks to form on it.
Dodo deflected the first incoming shrimp, Smolder managed to hit the second with a fireball and Jean stabbed the third out shrimp of the air before it could hit Biggs and Wedge with an incredibly timed jab.
Another shot, the sixth flew straight and true. The octobot didn’t have time to move its tentacles to block as the shot landed directly in the undamaged left core, then entire machine shuddered to a stop for a few seconds.
Did that… no, it was moving again, but what was it doing now? It took two of its tentacles and wrapped it around the limp and useless tentacle, at this point the machine only had six viable small machine launching tubes, two moderately damaged tentacles, one disabled and the one that Smolder focused her breath on to cut a decent chunk out of it.
We heard the noise of metal being ripped apart as it used two of its tentacles on its left side to rip off the useless tentacle that was slowing it down. It then pulled back with the tentacle in its gripe. It swung the ripped off load of cylindrical bits of metal and it flew towards us like a freshly thrown bolo.
Biggs adjusted his aim and was muttering what sounded like curses as he fired our seventh shot and the tentacle that was flying at us was hit dead center to split in two. Both portions of the thrown tentacle fell to both sides of us and damaged a few buildings at our backs.
“Okay that thing is getting more nuts by the second.” Whimpered out Smolder, but what it did made some sense. “At least it’s two legs down for the most part.”
The octobot got rid of some dead weight, used it to make us waste one of our precious few remaining shots and it was now able to drag itself forward faster than it had been. It raised two tentacles and started using its five other legs to drag itself forward as it started to alternate firing shrimp form the raised limbs, the machine was getting far too close to us for anyone’s comfort.
The shrimp it was firing were disappearing into the smoke clouds above us and they were coming down from above, it was hard to spot the silhouettes. They were going to come down right on top of Biggs and Wedge’s position, Dodo had problems deflected them by aiming his beak beams upwards, as did Smolder with her fireballs. I didn’t even bother trying as my bark blasts were too short range to hit something falling at terminal velocity.
When they were about twenty feet from impact was when we got a reinforcement in the form of Bruno the somewhat traitorous pig soldier from the broken Devotindos Empire. He leapt up surprisingly high and tore the two metal shrimp from the air with quick swings of his broadsword, the bits of shrimp machines destructed upon strike the ground and he leapt up to took the next two down as well.
He stated a bunch of derogatory sounding words as he pointed at the machine that was almost upon the town’s edge. Another rocket went out and the octopus tried to block it with a tentacle only to miss by reacting too soon, it had its right evil core completely blown out. It would be a matter of time before it regrew that one and the other one needed to be destroyed quickly before it could get too much closer.
I moved forward and right next to Biggs and pointed out the other evil core, then the last two shots we had with a worried look on my face one of which was already being loaded by Wedge. He patted my head with his left gauntlet and nodded with a grim frown on his face. He hefted the rocket tube when Wedge patted it twice as a signal to fire the next shot.
The octopus was still raining shrimp down on us with one leg, half the machine went inoperable as it had before and that really stalled out the monstrous machine as it took it’s time to take full control of its other half.
The combined forces of Bruno, Smolder, Dodo and Jean easily kept them from coming close to hitting Biggs and Wedge directly, any that survived to uncurl and move on the ground were quickly dealt with.
Biggs pulled the trigger on the tube and the ninth shot flew out and managed to spiral around the tentacle that tried to whip into it, to slam home into the left evil core cracking it.
Wedge said something that apparently got Biggs to start yelling at him, Wedge looking cowed started loading up the last shot we had at stopping this thing. Our defense was going well enough against the shrimp it was raining down on our position, it gave me time to think about why this thing was built.
I think the octobot was built with the intention of winning fights through attrition, it’s what the unicorn known as Teatime Clockwork would have made of it if he built something like this. It has certainly taken quite a bit of damage from what we’ve seen and we didn’t even knock it down to half the effectiveness with all we’ve done.
I’m surprised that we even managed to do as much damage as we have thus far, which really hasn’t slowed down the machine in the slightest. Please let this last shot connect and this nightmare end.
Said shot went sailing out from the rocket tube and Biggs shouldered it to pull out his sword and held his shield in front of him, he was apparently going to stand his ground and Wedge seemed to be of like mind and bumped his shield against Biggs. They weren’t running regardless of whether or not the inevitable destruction of the town occurs, we however had no such thing holding us hear should this not work.
The final rocket, once it was close enough was struck by one of the three remaining tentacles on that cores side, specifically the far left one. The rocket didn’t explode and was sent spinning off into the air where it flew around wildly and with no chance of hitting its intended target now.
“Smolder get on Dodo we need to…” I was about to say ‘retreat’ when one the most ridiculously lucky things to ever occur happened.
The wildly spiraling rocket had been flicked off to the right of the machine, its numerous random changes in direction had it circle back around the entire octobot. As the flames on the rocket died it rammed its way into the back portion of the evil core destroying it violently in the ensuing explosion.
“Did that… did that really just happen?” Smolder asked tentatively as if she didn’t believe the rocket struck critically into the evil core and made the entire octobot go offline. “That has got to be one of the most random, luckiest flukes I’ve ever seen happen in my life.”
Even I didn’t believe it and I just watched it happen in real time, the octobot sat there lifelessly in the field of burning oil and grass under a dark sky.
Biggs pumped his fist and thrust his sword up into the sky with a shout of glee. Everyone started to celebrate, but I had my eyes on the machine.
A purple glow started on the head, slowly two doors split and pulled inwards in what was once seamless metal and slowly a large oval, vertically place, purple evil core pushed its way out. The flaming tentacles of the machine started to twitch and then they all shot forward and started to drag the octobot towards us once more.
The despair on my face was quite visible and frankly I was upset at this turn of event.
“Pom why aren’t you…?” Smolder slowly turned and gained the same look of despair I did. “ARE YOU SERIOUSLY KIDDING ME?!”
It wasn’t firing shrimp anymore at least, but I think that’s what the other two cores were for, shrimp and prawn production… this was the true evil core behind the whole machine. It didn’t take long for everyone else to notice it too. We just took out its factory capabilities, small victory there.
“I don’t be liking this octobot thing at all.” Shanty mumbled as she ducked into Dodo’s backside. “What can we be doing Pom?”
I wanted to call a retreat as it was almost in range to blow the city up. I looked around and tried of think of something other than that.
I... had... NOTHING.
“Well… Shanty… we need to…” I felt pretty bad about calling a retreat after all we just put ourselves through just to lose at the end. Before I could continue my thought I felt as much as heard the ground shaking as heavy was coming towards us, but it wasn’t the octobot making that noise. “Where is all that shaking coming from?”
“What? I thought that was the octo… whoa…” Turning to see what Smolder was looking at, I blinked at the sight coming up on us from behind and out of the town itself.
It looked like a large opossum knight styled machine and it was running on two legs, one that didn’t have a tail, but it did have two big fists and large flat feet as it stomped forward at a run toward us. The top of the opossum face had a knight helm aesthetic to it and the body looked like it was wearing medieval armor.
Instead of punching at us or stomping on us the machine leapt over us and landed feet first in the field of flames and continued its stride as it charged right towards the octobot. Said octobot was almost in range of to take out the whole town and was still encroaching upon us.
Looking at the back of the head of bipedal metal giant, I blinked as I think I saw a hint of Colleen sitting on top of the helmet as she piloted the machine straight for the octobot. Biggs said something in awe at the sight of what had to be Zebulos or Zephyrus technology in action.
That machines right arm pulled back and downwards. It pivoted forward and up to thrust the right fist into the center of the octobot’s oval evil core at the center of its head and the entire thing skid back hundreds of feet and the core cracked slightly.
The bipedal machine put up both its arms in a defensive stance in front of its body as it stomped forward towards the octobot at a slightly slower speed.
“I think… we need to just relax and watch the show, we can’t do much more here.” As I said this the bipedal machine stomped its left foot down on one of the fifth tentacle the inner most on the right side and then the entire machine swiveled and threw out its left fist.
The octobot’s tentacle snapped off as it was pushed back more violently than the last time. The octobot raised all its flaming tentacles ready to fight back as the bipedal knight robot stomped forward, it wasn’t going to put up much of a fight with five barely functional… four barely functional tentacles.
The bipedal machine just kicked out its right blocky foot of solid metal into the underside of the tentacle I had dented with my body and it snapped off entirely.
The foot stomped down on the ground after the kicked and the machine raised its left arms to throw an overhead punch right into the purple evil core damaging it badly as it sent the octobot sprawling and flailing almost onto its back.
The octobot barely managed to right itself when the knight machine launched a devastating right hook that fracture the casing surrounding the evil core, the cracks were worsening throughout the core and it started to lash out and strike at that bipedal machine’s legs.
We could hear the groaning of the metal even at this distance. The bipedal machine was taking some damage, but the octobot was weakening quickly.
The bipedal machine couldn’t move its legs, it raised both its arms and slammed them down on the octobot sending it skidding back further.
The bipedal machines stomped forward and the octobot leapt to the best of its abilities and started trying to crush the torso with its three tentacles as one was broken in that last hit, it only managed to prevent three of the limbs from moving doing this and the fourth, the left arm of the bipedal machine came around and smashed into the evil core’s casing damaging it even further and freeing up the machine.
It wouldn’t be long before the octobot was defeated, the bipedal machine kick its mouth inwards, the octobot body lit on fire as dribbles of oil poured from it.
The octobot was still going and lashing at the bipedal machine with its three tentacles, blocking and attack with its left arm the machine crouched and thrust its right fist up and into the evil core.
The evil core seemingly refused to shatter and was thoroughly cracked throughout as the octobot was flipped backwards by the uppercut. The bipedal machine moved to stomp on one of the tentacles off, the octobot was down to two and still flailing them to damage its opponent.
The right left fist of the machine swung forward and the evil core was knocked clean out of its housing, but the evil core still didn’t break. It looked like an eyeball that was sticking out of its socket and hanging by its optic nerves, if said nerves were made of threads of wire and bits of twisted and melted metal.
The core flash and the air felt charged as the octobot started glowing as if it was going to explode, the bipedal machine crouched down and jumped. It landed with both its feet on top of the evil core sticking out of the octobot and crushed it.
The glowing from the machine stop and a series of explosions ripped throughout the octobot, but it didn’t create a massive explosion overall and its body seemed to implode and melt in on itself in a pyre of flames.
Slowly the bipedal machine turned around and started to walk back towards us. Colleen poked her head up from the top of the knight’s helm and waved at us as she made her way back to us.
“I think… I think we did… we can celebrate now.” A part of me wanted to whoop for joy, but I was too tired to do much other than flop to the ground in relief.
“Yeah, like the fact that I’m not longer on fire.” Making her way over to me Smolder, using what little strength she had after that harrowing fight, lifted me and started to drag me towards Dodo. “Where’s my ribbon?”
“Over that way…” I pointed out lamely with a leg. “Lost my grip due to the oil on my hooves… I need a really long and hot bath.”
“So… we’re couriers huh?” Smolder had a weak grin as she helped lay me over Dodo’s back, she then went to retrieve her combat ribbon and made a face as it was slightly oil stained. She still tied it around her left horn.
The bipedal machine slowed to a stop and crouched down, Colleen hopped off and came running up to us. She sighed in relief to see I was still breathing, hopefully she didn’t do all of that just for me.
I wouldn’t know what to think if Colleen did and didn’t care about the town or anything of it's people.
We were the very definition of a screwed up squad, at least one of the more successful ones so far. We saved a town, now if only we can survive long enough that our injuries were better before we ran into any more evil core machines.