-Elhorn, north of Caldinhold, Ocellus-
The opossum wore purple armor, a red rocket pack and he had dark gleam in his eyes. He gave off a physical presence that reeks of danger. His emotions were also downright arrogant.
To think we had gone out of our way to avoid a fight on the way back.
It was odd that Axel Gear had no backup whatsoever. With the stories we’ve heard, he might not even need it. Everyone, but Ligstrun, Nicole and me got out of the wagon and were preparing for a fight. There was a lot of terror coming from our friends.
Pom had a slightly upset look on her face as she took up a protective position in front of the wagon.
Smolder was hiding her tenseness as she idly clawed at her combat ribbon that was elegantly placed on her right horn by me.
Shanty had her eyes narrowed on Axel Gear and she was ready to fight from the moment he tried to attack Dodo.
Jean pulled out and readied his rapier with his right hand.
Bruno tightened the grip he had on his weapon and was sweating with fear.
Colleen checked her weapon and stayed back trying to keep her calm in the face of the terror flooding her mind.
Everyone started to spread out slightly while Dodo backed up the wagon while warbling warily.
“I take it you’re the courier team I’m looking for, you’re quite unlucky to see me again mutt and I can see where Gedol’s rumored traitor got off to.” Axel Gear landed in front of the wagon with his arms crossed and he had a smirk on his face. He glanced at a cowering Ligstrun in the back of the wagon, a shivering Colleen, a sweating Bruno and a wary Jean. He just glossed over the rest of us as if we were unimportant. “I’m not impressed, this won’t take very long.”
We had numbers on him and he was still highly confident in his abilities. There was something off about the sword he was holding.
“Is that sword magical?” I had to ask, hoping for an answer.
“My rival will come for it. He can’t finish his quest without it, so do try and make me relinquish it… if you can.” The sword Axel held out started glowing red hot and his rocket pack started to hum with power ominously. He didn’t need to answer my question, his actions answered that loudly enough. “Now let’s get to why I’m here!”
-White Knight Couriers vs. Axel Gear the Dark Rocket Knight-
With a flash, several spiraling crescents of energy fired from Axel’s blade as he swung it with a ferocity and speed that his many opponents were barely ready for. This attack was called a spiral edge, a famous rocket knight blade technique.
Shanty masterfully deflected the one coming at her and even sent it back with a single left hoof swing, Axel had to perform a short burst to the side to dodge it.
Axel was nearly hit by a second reflected attack as Pom bounced the one sent her way off of her wool, this made Axel burst straight upwards to hover as it passed below him.
At the first sign of movement Colleen had dove straight to the ground making the spiral edge soar straight over her head before the power behind the attack ran dry. She knew how dangerous Axel was.
Bruno managed to cut through the magical attack launched at him with a well-timed swing, sheer grit and raw brute force to defeat a single instance of spiraling magical attack called a Spiral Edge. He wouldn’t fair too well if he had more than one of those attacks concentrated on him solely.
Jean was the unluckiest and narrowly avoid being directly hit by the attack by jumping to the side, it still left a small hole in the side of his recently refurbished armor that made him shiver once he noticed the damage. He still stood firm and held his rapier aloft, far more ready for the next attack.
Smolder took the attack on her arms and, despite being blown back a fair distance, the force of the attack did very little damage. Being resilient to heat and magic helped her a lot in this case.
Axel had sent an attack at all of them in under five seconds, this was all it took for Axel to get a read on every single opponent currently facing him.
The sheep, the goat and the orange lizard were more dangerous than Axel previously had thought. His threat assessment of them changed somewhat despite the fact that they didn’t wield any obvious weapons.
That they had even managed to respond sufficiently told Axel almost all he needed to know about their capabilities. He didn’t think the unknowns were dangerous, he wouldn’t be making that mistake now given how they each personally handled his opening salvo.
The dark knight’s mind was running a literal mile a minute and calculating all the vectors he could feasibly boost into with his rocket pack to go on the offensive, his brain acting like a super computer having been kicked into action at the possible excitement of a halfway decent challenge.
Now who was Axel going to target first with a mad gleam in his eye and a smirk on his face?
His rocket pack roared and he shot forward while lighting on fire and began spinning, turning his body into a burning drill shooting straight past a surprised Pom and for Dodo their weakest link. Their transportation and ability to escape the area.
Dodo quickly lifted his right leg up and stomped it down creating a dust cloud that Axel shot into, a second later and a weird sound is heard and the rocket knight came somersaulting backwards out of the cloud to land on his feet.
A second later something flew out of the dust cloud after him and Axel swung his sword downwards.
This was a large mistake on Axel’s part, given both his eyes received two halves of a mass of cupcake batter making him grunt out loud and stumble back in mild pain.
Once the dust cloud disappeared, the wagon was a lot further away than it was previously and Dodo was staring at Axel warily, but seemed to be preparing for another attack to come his way. Nicole was sitting in the seat in Dodo’s back whispering to him gently.
Bruno, willing to take advantage of Axel’s temporary blindness, charge forward and lunged for a downward slash.
Turning, and without being able to see, Axel deflected the downward strike with a simple flick of his blade. Axel then spun around and outward while launching two incredibly accurate spiral edges at both Jean and Colleen, upon finishing his spin he leaned forward and proceeded to rocket straight into Bruno’s chest head first knocking him on his back in a painful manner.
Finally, after zipping straight up into the air into a hover, Axel wiped way the hardened batter in his eyes.
Axel simply grinned in excitement and flicked his ears. He quickly dodged the two slow shots Colleen fired back at him as she herself narrowly rolled out of the way of the spiral edge aimed at her. Pom managed to deflect the spiral edge aimed at Jean straight up.
Axel launched a spiral edge at the prone Bruno trying to pick himself up with his sword, another at Colleen and then jetted up fired a spread of four missiles from his rocket pack at Shanty.
Jean and Pom surged forward to defend their friends. Pom looked conflicted about protecting Shanty or Colleen and made a quick choice.
Jean thrusts his rapier to send a small bullet of air with precision to blast apart the spiral edge before it could reach Bruno. He began a reckless charge to get closer to where Axel was going to land and started to rapidly thrust his sword in front of him.
Shanty destroyed three of the missiles with several quick swipes, but missed the fourth. With a quick Pom wrapped her body entirely around Shanty to take the fully brunt of the small explosion that knocked both of them away.
Axel proceeded to somersault incredibly fast with the assistance of his rocket pack, his blade flickered out and deflected every single pressure blast Jean sent his way. One of the deflections went straight Colleen’s way while deflecting her next shot back at Jean.
Jean threw himself to the ground making Colleen’s deflected shot fly past him. Colleen wasn’t as lucky as her armor dented at the center of her chest and knocked her onto her back, the air knocked from her lungs.
Axel bursts towards Colleen and suddenly stopped, narrowly avoiding the fireball that passed by his face as Smolder started firing several blasts of fire at him.
Axel swiftly veered around Smolder’s fireballs and another shot from Colleen while she was on her back and dropped to the ground to burst backwards avoiding another pressure bullet from Jean.
It took a moment, but the White Knights Couriers were finally getting into the rhythm of the battle with helping one another. Even so they had yet to manage a solid or even damaging hit on Axel even as they had him in a projectile crossfire, his form was blurring as he dodged each attack with insanely powerful leaps that he did without the assistance of his rocket pack.
With a quick flourish and twirl of his blade, he sent some of their projectiles hurtling back in their general direction.
Jean’s armor became red hot around the belly when one of Smolder’s fireballs struck him, this quickly made Smolder quit spitting them with a worried look on her face.
While charging towards a landing Axel, Pom let out a quick bark blast. Axel went to deflect it as Pom began inhaling sharply.
Just as Axel’s sword was going to deflect the energy it evaporated before it could meet the intercepting blade.
Axel narrowed his eyes as Pom exhaled sharply and disappeared from sight entirely, he barely got his blade up in time to block Pom’s right hoof flying forward. He pulled his sword back and quickly swung it with force, Pom blocked with her legs and was sent flying away from the powerful blow Axel landed on her and the magic repulsing effect of Pom’s wool acting against her.
A second later a painful cutting edge dug into the side of Axel’s face, he quickly turned to slam the pommel of his blade into the offending Shanty’s face before she could even touch the ground from her lunging attack.
Shanty was knocked a fair distance away with a grunt as she tumbled and a small head injury.
Axel ran his gauntlets left thumb over his face, it came away not only wet with his own blood, but with a bit of water too. With a sniff, the dark knight idly noted that salt water was why that single attack had stung far more than it had any right to.
Axel glared at Shanty as she and Pom took up a position together and idly blocked Bruno coming at him from his right without even looking. With a push, the sword was knocked upwards and back.
Axel swiftly slashed his sword upwards and it dug into Bruno from right hip to left shoulder knocking him away in a splash of blood from a pointblank spiral edge.
Following this action Axel launched two spiral edges at Colleen and Jean again, he also fired four missiles from his rocket pack. Two missiles fly at Shanty, one was angling for Bruno and another aimed at Smolder.
Jean managed to jab his way through the spiral edge and was held by back from pushing forward by a third spiral edge launched by Axel.
Colleen bursts out of the way of the spiral edge aimed for her, finally utilizing the rocket pack on her back, and squeezed off a shot from her makeshift energy pistol while in the air.
Axel yawned and deflected Colleen’s shot into the ground, this was followed by Bruno squealing loudly as he was violently scorched by the missile sent his way barely managing to block it with the flat of his blade.
Smolder managed to make the missile aimed at her prematurely explode a second later with a gout of flames spewing from her mouth.
Pom was in the process of taking the concussive force of two small missiles for Shanty, said goat gave her a worried look afterwards. The lambkin stumbled about dizzily a bit before shaking her head and brought a hoof up to it to steady herself.
Bruno was forcing himself back into a standing position, Colleen quickly burst over to his side and helped him stand.
While this was happening Smolder was trying to get in close to distract Axel away from them and possibly grapple onto him to do some damage with her claws, Jean busy backing her up with close up attacks that Axel had to put his full attention towards.
As Axel traded blows with Jean wielding their respective weapon, every once in a while he would strike out at Smolder to prevent her from latching onto him or more importantly doing anything funny to his rocket pack.
Jean was proving far more of a threat to Axel up close than at a distance as Jean pushed his dueling expertise to their very limits.
Axel was proving both his might and incredible prowess in combat, he felt that he should only be matched by one person and thus he started to fight even harder. He hammered away at Jean’s offensive that quickly became a struggling defense with increasingly powerful blows flowing into their fight.
With particularly strong strike, Jean’s sword fell from his numbed and paralyzed webbed fingers.
Despite Axel’s attempt to take advantage of his opponent dropping his weapon having blasting away Smolder with a point blank spiral edge that actually scratched her scales, Jean swiftly took up his rapier in his left hand and blocked the next powerful blow haphazardly.
It was quite clear that Jean was not as good with wielding his weapon offhand, but he made do as he continued to try and get an attack in on Axel’s ferocious offensive.
Axel leaned back avoiding a shot from Colleen off to the side and kept putting pressure on Jean while knocking back an angry looking Smolder again in the middle of attempting to break either the frogs will or his weapon.
The weapon looked more likely, as the more Jean tried to defend himself the more his weapon was starting to show wear from the many dents and cracks from colliding with Axel’s magic sword. It was only by pure skill that Jean’s weapon hadn’t shattered under the thunderous force of Axel’s swings and was staying intact.
Axel’s sword had yet to show any signs of damage and Axel had yet to show any signs of actually slowing down in his daunting assault.
In the middle of his unceasing onslaught against Jean, he slashed out two spiral edges towards Colleen and Bruno. He also launched four missiles from his rocket pack, one of which immediately hit Smolder sent her flying a good two hundred feet away before it finally exploded. This freed Axel up from the various distractions.
Of the other three missiles, one was targeting either Pom or Shanty, they were in the middle of trying to plan something. The other two shot towards Bruno and Colleen who were already going to have enough problems dealing with the spiral edges that were about to hit them.
Pom unleashed a small bark blast and it struck the missile making it explode before it reached them, she turned to Shanty who nodded back with a frown. The two of them started moved towards Axel at the same time.
On the other side of Axel Gear, Colleen took the edge of the second missiles explosion as it had gotten too close when she barely managed to shoot it down. She was knocked onto her back, gritting her teeth and tightened her grip on her weapon. She slowly picked herself up and looked to Bruno.
Like Colleen, Bruno had barely dealt with both the spiral edges coming at them with two swings as harsh as he could manage them. He was now grunting, quite out of breathe and badly hurt. He stood up and said something, he held out his sword to Colleen and she looked to him in shock.
Axel, having knocked Jean off balanced, exploded forward and attempted to run him through with his blade. It was diverted by something wrapping around his right arm and pulling his thrust entirely off to the side, he swiftly yanked Smolder down to him and smashed her in the head with his left gauntlet.
Smolder went down knocked senseless and groaning on the ground.
Jean pushed his rapier forward while Axel was distracted. Axel leaned back out of the path of rapier and kicked his left metal boot up into Jean’s stomach while unraveling the ribbon from around his right arm.
Axel, once free of the ribbon, brought his blade around to rip a large chunk out of Jean’s armor. The blow dug into and across Jean’s chest making him stumble back clutching at the wound.
Axel was about to follow up with another stabbing when Shanty snapped a flying double buck to the left side of his face making him stagger away from Jean.
Shanty grinned at Axel and he swung his blade forward for her, she swung her right hoof forward creating a crescent of energy that slammed against the blade’s edge.
Both the weapon and Shanty’s hoof deflected, they were pushed away from one another by the forced of the blow.
Before Axel could retaliate or attack Shanty he took an even heavier impact across the right side of his forehead denting his helmet. He turned to see Pom rolling backwards away from him after launching a second flying buck into his head after having circled around him.
Despite how powerful the blow was, it still didn’t knock Axel over or even seemed to have phased him all too much. As he immediately burst towards Pom and shoulder checked her to send her skidding across the ground.
Axel swiftly launched a spiral edge Jean’s way only to have it deflected back at him by Shanty leaping up and slashing at it with a hoof.
Side stepping around the reflected spiral edge, Axel bursts forward skidding across the grass on his feet with his sword held in front of him towards a nervous looking Shanty who glanced at Jean behind her.
Shanty planted her right hoof in front of her, arched her back and then when Axel was close enough pivoted and lashed out with her hind legs releasing a large blast of water that stopped Axel’s momentum and knocked him back slightly.
Axel quickly launched a spiral edge at Shanty who wasn’t in a position to deflect it, Pom leapt into the way and bounced it back at him off of her belly before she landed on her side. He had to duck around it and then stopped attacking for a moment.
It was here that Axel figured he should have taken a hostage or kept attacking the ones he downed, because Jean, Bruno and Smolder were no longer present.
Pom charged forward while rearing up onto her hind legs, she thrust her left hoof forward and it got deflected off to the side by Axel. Pom kept her forward momentum going to ram into him with her right shoulder, he interposed his blade between himself and her.
Pom clamped her wool down on the ground upon impact and this time Axel was sent tumbling when Pom’s wool flashed.
Axel stabbed his sword downward to stop his tumbled and as he was getting up to his feet to charge forward, Shanty came down from cartwheeling through the air to slam both her rear hooves downward into his chest plate knocking him further back and making him grunt in pain.
From a leap, Pom slammed Axel in the left side of his helmet with both her hooves held together. This had Axel staggered even more, he lashed out his sword at Shanty who was not where he expected her to be as the spiral edge just met empty air.
Shanty skidded at Axel’s legs on her belly forcing him to fall on his face, he quickly rolled out of the way as Pom came down for a one legged axe kick that put a crater in the ground. He burst from being prone and on his feet and then blasted his left shoulder straight into a surprised Shanty’s chest, sending her flying after she tried to attack him with another lunging strike.
A pirouetting Pom came in and slammed both into her hooves home into Axel’s side with enough force to lift him off the ground and he skidded a few feet after landing. He clutched at his side where the blow landed with his left gauntlet and was grimacing in pain.
Even then, not once had his relentless grip loosened on the magical sword he held.
Axel grinned at Pom and glanced at Shanty groaning on her belly, the goat was struggling to pick herself up after being hit by several hundred pounds of opossum and metal moving like a freight train.
Pom narrowed her eyes at him and began to inhaling. Once the spiral edge shot out, Pom exhaled and was diving into its path immediately.
Axel bursts up into the air at an angle and then started to come down boot first towards Shanty with Pom unable to intercept.
Shanty kicked off into a roll to the right as Axel’s metal boot slammed into the ground where she had been, Axel turned and launched another spiral edge at Shanty who managed to swing both her hooves with enough force to deflect it.
Pom was up and running towards Axel as he launched a chain of five back to back spiral edges at Shanty.
Shanty managed to deflect four with a right hoof, left hoof, left kick and a right kick, only for the last one to rip through her left shoulder making her scream as she was sent spinning to the ground.
Pom tried to ram into Axel only for him to burst straight up above her and point his sword downwards towards her back as the magic glow of the sword went dark. He came screaming down on top of Pom in an attempt to sunder her spine.
A bursting sound not from Axel’s rocket pack sounded and Colleen flew in to deflect his blade with Bruno’s sword and then opened a rent in his chest plate with a powerful horizontal burst assisted swing.
Pom made her way over to Shanty and looked over off to the side with her ears twitching at someone shouting something, she quickly draped Shanty over her back and ran off as Colleen and Axel clashed while bursting around on their rocket packs.
Axel bursts towards Colleen and she locked blades with him.
Colleen put out her own burst from her rocket pack.
This barely put a dent in Axel’s forward momentum as he continued to push Colleen back until he eventually overcame her and knocked her down and slashed her from her right shoulder to her left side.
“I shouldn’t have left loose ends like you.” Commented Axel coolly as he went to swing for Colleen's neck.
A horizontal bolt of lightning struck Axel’s chest making all his muscles lock up, his eyes widened as he and Colleen heard a painful ear hurting sonic boom.
A hypersonic metallic ostrich named Dodo slammed his right foot into Axel’s armored chest, sending him flying.