-Saint Canard Street, Pom-
“Ocellus confirmed Ms. Shuttle is moving into position for support fire, we need to hold out for three minutes at least.” Dormarch stated as the shell of the vehicle I was behind was getting filled with holes as projectiles punctured it in various places and Moliarty was soon going to drill through it with one of the three tanks. His personal tanks drill was not working correctly so it was going to take at least some time before this vehicle was hit.
“If you hadn’t noticed, we don’t exactly have that time.” I scrunched my body up smaller as a shot whizzed by my right ear. “Permission to use Dancing Flame in a limited fashion?”
“How limited are we talking here, not that it isn’t a good idea, but if you take a hit while entering or exiting the dancing flame state…” When it came to my health Dormarch was serious, but in this case even he could see the kind of trouble we were in.
My body is not a sponge made for bullets, in fact being in a Dancing Flame state was one of the major reasons for me contracting an arrhythmia problem.
“Yeah, I too prefer the chance of living longer.” As I currently couldn’t get any help form Dolly, she was up the street poking her head out of the alleyway trying to think of something to do. “Any ideas? I’m already denying anything Dolly might be thinking of doing currently through our bond. So my idea would be the most appropriate as I don’t think I’ll get a chance for bark blast, bark breaker is situational and useful against single targets. I can’t take out both of the other tanks at the same time and I need to find the frequency to hit them with to even deal an optimal amount of damage to their armor.”
Dolly could block bullets, the sheer volume of them being fired my way could knock her over and she’d be exposed, though she has been building up quite a bit of muscle for holding up against such onslaughts previously. This was at least sixty guns firing constantly on my position which was slowly tearing apart, I wouldn’t want her trying with that many projectiles from various sources.
I just sent Dolly a reminder that her body still had the resilience of an average dog even if magic does make her slightly tougher than average, she wasn’t personally up to taking a bullet to the body like I had and I had barely survived one.
I also reminded her that she was not up to controlling the momentum of bullets, she had to be in direct contact with something to manipulate it. I could use our bond to manipulate the power myself through contact with her, but I wouldn’t know about using it personally since it was intrinsic to Dolly and we were currently separated.
Dolly could dodge bullets as well and quite easily with her flowing motion abilities, but at best she’d be able to get to my side and then what?
She needed a break from doing that ‘aero’ thing, it could get quite tiring to use magic actively like that. I suggested Dolly find some way of trying to force momentum into something large and redirect it in the direction of the moles. Her momentum controlling abilities is good for throwing things with ridiculous force, provided she can even move them in the first place.
The sounds of incoming projectiles finally stopped.
“Is this really the best you have to offer Leap Lamb? Cowering behind a ransacked car, this is far too pitiful for someone that’s supposedly survived Rev Olver Ocelot’s Shred Treads paramilitary group raining rockets down on them.” Moliarty was taunting me, trying to goad me out of cover, unlucky for him I’m smarter than that. “You are apparently at a major disadvantage here, so I have to wonder how the Shred Treads failed to take you out. Drive forward and crush her, she’s obviously not going to fight back.”
“Whatever it is you want to do, do it.” Sighed Dormarch reluctantly. “Just use it sparingly and don’t get stay in that state for too long.”
“Oh a lot of luck went into surviving the mercenaries Moliarty, but....” I started to inhale deeply and focus all my effort into my left leg. After sending an idea Dolly’s way, since she could maneuver into position to do so if there were less moles to look out for her. I popped up, exhaled explosively and swung my left leg forward jabbing at the air rapidly while propping my body against the car. “Thousand spear! I may be whimpering, anxious and afraid, but I am not exactly helpless! Wow… that has got to be the oddest thing I think I’ve ever said, well next to my conversation with Mr. Beelzebug…”
My leg started to burn and I fell back into cover before a rocket burst against the car, said explosion took a solid half of the vehicle out. I think I actually managed to take down a good number of moles doing that, maybe even a third of them.
They weren’t tough physically and that made me wonder what would happen if I had hit targets that were a little more bulky in muscle than the flab some them had with a Thousand Spear.
“I really need to recalibrate the sight on my bazooka… what was that attack in effort of? All you did was jab your hoof at the air once. Isn’t she just… wait… what the!?” I think Moliarty finally looked behind himself, of the sixty or so militant moles that had been out in the open shooting in my vicinity. Twenty three of them were now down on the ground each with several hoof shaped imprints in their bodies, they had been packed together tightly enough that even if my aim was only moderately bad I’d still hit quite a few of them. Wait a minute… aim? “Ah, so you are still quite a threat even pinned down as you are. Though I wonder how you did that with a single thrust of your hoof.”
It wasn’t a single thrust Moliarty, more like two hundred and seventy three, give or take a few hoof thrusts because I can’t count that fast. Not exactly to a thousand yet and I don’t want to know what would happen if I do actually reach that point that I could hit a single point or multiple points with a thousand blows from a distance. I was becoming as ridiculous as my friends and it was getting harder to deny the fact that I can really put up a fight.
I was immediately trying to get control of my Dancing Flame state after coming off it, the fact that Moliarty only saw me thrust my hoof once made me feel a little shocked that my personal technique can beat his beady… oh right… moles don’t exactly have good eyesight do they? Then how were they shooting so… oh.
Moliarty has goggles and was fit and incredibly intelligent, the other moles were… ah… I think I should have profiled their threat level earlier.
Dolly, can you confirm something for me quickly, move into position and attack the moles when necessary. Can you use a full dumpster for it? Okay.
I’ll keep Moliarty’s attention on me… no its fine Dolly, my leg is alright, really! Wait you can feel my soreness? Okay after this is all over we definitely need to research this familiar bond with help from Lena or Violet. The only other person I could think of is Rafiki and he’s a bit busy being the spiritual guardian of the Pride Lands.
“Don’t use your leg like that again for a minute, try to center yourself and pull yourself back fully from that state, because your heart rate is getting kind of bad Pom. Try talking to him, continue to stall for more time. Do not push too hard Pom.” Dormarch, even I’m sure you have to realize that half my cover was blown already away and Moliarty has obviously just finished reloading his bazooka. “Also can you please learn some techniques that are not so self-destructive to you?!”
“Sorry Dormarch.” I murmured honestly as I cradled my sore left leg. “What about that Search Hunter thing you told me about?”
“That’s different, overclocking myself for a teleportation attack is not an immediate problem to me biologically. Well whatever passes for working biology for me when an entity like me manifests outside of a digital space.” Something Dormarch was reluctant to do, even if I could use a hug right about now. “What now? There’s still a lot of them and they have us, more importantly you, pinned.”
“I don’t think… that they actually do... The number of moles might actually be more of an intimidation factor than an actual threat or danger considering everything we’ve seen so far.” As I said this Moliarty fired his bazooka and I calmly walked out onto the street, not caring as my cover was completely blown apart. I personally think he just wasted one of his shots. I gave him and his remaining forty or so moles that weren’t groaning on the ground a flat look. “You know… there’s something I have to wonder about when it comes to your guys Moliarty.”
“You sure changed your tune… also you’re out in the open, aren’t you worried you’ll be shot?” Moliarty was confused by my sudden change in demeanor. “Something isn’t quite right about you, I would be trembling with this many people pointing weapons at me if I were you.”
I just figured out that being near large objects was actually bad for my health given what I now knew about the moles and Moliarty practically confirmed it for me by trying to play up the fear factor.
“Go ahead moles.” This was going to be one of the weirdest things I have ever tested, not that I would test this with my life on a normal occasion but… in this situation I think I could live with it if I actually got hit. “Shoot me, I dare you.”
“What?!” Dormarch stated with clear shock.
All of Moliarty’s moles fired at me, I closed my eyes as forty plus bullets whizzed at me randomly. I opened them a second later and realized that I was perfectly fine even with all of them in a line aiming in my general vicinity.
“Ah… so that is what’s wrong, you’ve actually figured it out.” Moliarty suddenly looked quite worried and might even be panicking slightly. “I didn’t think you would catch on to it this soon! You are quite the worthy foe Leap Lamb.”
“You mean like how exactly did your army train to shoot at things while living underground with any concept of accuracy against anything smaller than a vehicle in general? If they trained in tunnels they really didn’t have to worry about hitting things in tight spaces with those weapons as long as they aimed in a general direction.” Not a single bullet had actually come close to hitting me. “Otherwise, they are not actually trained to aim, much less being trained well. A single genius can apparently only do so much.”
I was wondering why their aim had been sporadically bad and good in equal measures. It just clicked when I realized that they weren’t aiming at my position while I was in cover.
They were aiming at my cover itself… bigger target, easier to hit and chances of hitting me go up because I was behind it. No longer in cover, they have no wherewithal to actually hit me since I was not the kind of target they trained for in general… if they had any training at all. Even that was suspect to me.
“Well I’m horrified, but judging by all the trajectories. You’d actually have to be moving for them to actually hit you with that kind of aim… that… I just… what? How?!” Dormarch was quite confused that I walked out into the open and told them to shoot at me. When you have half a dozen short sighted moles firing guns in a general direction, the volume of projectiles is more likely to hit by accident. “There are so many of them, they have to of had some kind of training to be using those weapons right? How could every single one of them miss you?”
“You’d think they wouldn’t Dormarch, but consider this… how many of them are wearing sight correcting goggles like Moliarty?” If any of them had anything approaching a sense of aim to begin with, then I’d be utterly surprised. “None, also they are all near sighted…”
I trailed off and let that sink in, for me and for Dolly who’s sending an evil grin with her mind and I could practically feel her setting up something large with that new bit of knowledge in mind.
At best, all the moles likely running rampant around the city are just trying to keep more important areas of the city locked down by sheer presence. I can guess as to why Negaduck would want them doing this, I had nothing concrete though.
Moliarty was the biggest threat in his army… because he was almost the only thing threatening about all the moles. Their vehicles were still truly dangerous sure, but the moles themselves? Nope, I just realized that Moliarty was a genius… one with numbers, a personal technology base, also lots of smoke and mirrors. A lot of that going on around here, but where was the magic behind it and was it doing what I think it was?
“You equipped the moles with weapons, but none of them have goggles to improve their vision and aim like the ones you wear.” I pointed out dryly as the moles continued to fire at me and I looked down at the ground. There was a five foot circle of clear space around me, outside of said circle was where all their bullets were hitting in a haphazard random manner. “I’m quite sure I know why you’re their leader now.”
You’d think one of the moles would get lucky by this point and actually hit me by accident after firing a second and third salvo in anger, apparently they couldn’t hit a target that wasn’t moving. They could probably hit a charging bull quite a few times, but the broad side of a barn? Nope. I would be more worried about dealing with armed eggheads that didn’t have malfunctioning equipment via Dolly sabotage.
“Yes, well… we can still run you down with the drill tanks!” Moliarty shouted, the two other drill tanks spun up their drills and all three tanks started driving forward towards us.
“Yeah, about that… Leap Lamb, Ms. Shuttle just fired.” Dormarch said with small smile, he pointed upwards on the screen as I looked up from the PET and I grinned. “Incoming, move back three feet or hooves. Whatever metric you want to work with.”
I started doing as he asked and that’s when the artillery fire from Ms. Shuttle’s chemical cannon finally came in from outside the city. Three pink orbs slammed into the area surrounding the tanks creating powerful explosions.
This caused a lot of confusion for the moles, also they were all screeching and panicking about being suddenly dyed in pink dust. At least it didn’t look like any of them were dying.
“Collect yourselves, it is just… wait a minute I recognize these chemicals by smell. They will…” Moliarty’s drill tanks melting into piles of colorful sand was an impressive sight. The people in the vehicle dug their way out of the colorful sand.
I just stood there looking as the other two tanks did the same and all the weapons the moles were wielding were also falling apart because of the chemical attack.
“Yeah, that would be the resulting effects of Honey Lemon’s chemical metal embrittlement formula. Useful for disarming villains apparently. Good job on keeping them distracted… and giving me a heart attack Leap Lamb!” Dormarch muttered with an honest appreciation as they lost all their weapons. “Which their weapons seemed to be particularly susceptible to.”
“Okay, so… what were you going to do to me again?” I asked lazily, then my eyes went wide as Moliarty hefted his still intact bazooka up, along with the ammo that was also still intact.
“This!” Moliarty fired and I dove out of the way as the street exploded and I was sent flying into a wall. I’m thankful to be covered in a soft impact absorbent material. “Unlike the vehicles or other weapons, my bazooka is made of a strong polycarbonate plastic material as strong as metal. I always save the best for myself of course, because I know how to actually use it!”
“That hurts our feelings boss.” One of the moles whined.
“Well become a genius like me, then we’ll talk more often on a level you would finally understand!” Moliarty said as he prepared to fire at me again.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I swiftly asked as I smiled at him innocently.
“Oh and what could I possibly be forge… oh… Caper Canine… OF COURSE!” He apparently heard the sound of something large coming at him from behind, the two moles nearest to him dove off the sand pile that used to be a street devastating drill tank. “Ugh!”
Moliarty was summarily struck by a dumpster and it was a fully loaded one too, that seriously had to hurt and after it bounce away spilling it’s contents, Moliarty tried to work himself into a standing position when he was interrupted by Dolly. He was having a hard time of it after Dolly managed to land a hit on him.
“That’s what you do with a drunken sailor early in the morning~!” Dolly sang out with a bit laughter, I can’t help but think that Shanty had something to do with that.
“Why you… wait… did she just sing?” Moliarty was now off his game and his genius intellect probably hasn’t noticed the thrown dumpster had destroyed his bazooka. That and he was probably seriously hurt by taking a dumpster sized momentum bomb like that.
“It’s getting her to stop that’s the problem.” I said in sad tone, Dolly barked something that I wouldn’t ever dare repeat at me before she went back to singing.
“Toss him out with the garbage, don’t let him back in until he’s clean by the yardage and make sure that his luck is not as dry as him before moving him back in with the supplies using the cartage~.” Dolly was being a good distraction as I moved up to several moles and started knocking them out from behind one at a time. Even Moliarty was still too perplexed by Dolly’s performance, at some point he was going to recognize that we were attacking the moles, Dolly doing so with her skateboard as she danced and sang. “Maybe he won’t smell like the pigsty in the evening, hopefully he won’t leave that lovely lady grieving and he hopes to seriously wake up from his dreaming, about everything that happened upon that next morning~.”
“You idiots, stop getting distracted and start fighting back!” Moliarty yelled at the moles who were suddenly shaken out of their reverie by his sudden and sharp orders. “Ohhh, where’s the rest of that backup I signaled for?”
Backup, when did he…
The ground rumbled and two drill tanks burst up in the middle of the four way intersection and flopped onto the ground. Moles started to pour out of it and the moles that were distracted by Dolly finally got their brains in gear and actively started trying to attack her and me.
“Protect me until I can get on one of them, we can still turn this fight around! Don’t keep the drill tanks above the ground for too long they have weapon destroying artillery!” Moliarty despite being battered and beaten could still run surprisingly fast. “I said ten minutes, but I’m not taking these insults laying down!”
Several moles got between me and Moliarty before I could knock him out cold and I had to start fighting and moving back. The drill tanks brought freshly armed soldiers, we were in for one heck of a fight now.
So… one hundred two to four hoof tall moles versus a lambkin and a dog with an energetic personality. These odds were not exactly in my favor, but I was conserving energy pretty well. I was going to need to eat after this though, this was going to work up quite a bit of sweat.
“Dormarch.” My tone was slightly tight as I slapped an approaching mole across the face with my left hoof.
“Sending information to Ocellus and asking if Ms. Shuttle has an idea of how to handle this, especially if they are going to start diving into the ground to avoid her shots.” Why did you just imply that the streets were going to be full of holes by the end of this Dormarch? I was actively trying to avoid extreme property damage!
Hope Shanty’s situation was going far better than what was going to soon become a mole mashing melee. Along with fighting two tanks that could pop up anywhere from the ground, possibly with more moles to fight.
-Saint Canard Power Plant, Shanty-
I felt an itch for some reason, Pom must be thinking about me.
“You sure you can be fixing the problem?” I was worried about Pom and Dolly, they were going to be doing a lion’s share of fighting outside. I am hoping they be alright.
A large rumbling sounded off shaking the whole power station and it be sounding like something erupted, that better not be being a bad thing.
“If it’s electrical I can, I’m good with electricity.” Gandra be sparking energy between two of her digits on her right hand in demonstration. “Practically made myself immune to it.”
Yeah, they be fine. I’m not losing anyone else, nope, not at all. It just be the plague of fear… fears that can be realized if we don’t hurry here.
“How did you do that?” Be whispering the third member of our team following behind quietly with her pistol out. I be thinking Fawn was not used to being in the middle of a fight.
“Some minor personal experimentation. Slightly painful, but I think the effort was worth it.” It be cool Gandra, but I don’t think I would be wanting something like that in my body. I already doing enough cool stuff on my own.
“Have you been checked out for problems professionally by a medical expert?” Fawn asked as we be continuing to snoop around the building silently until we saw some light from the end of a corridor.
“Well my health hasn’t been too adversely effected… but… yeah I do kind of need to do that.” We all stopped to look at Gandra and she be wincing and looking away. We eventually made it to the doorway where flashes of light were coming from. “Also I do need to make sure that my nanites won’t go haywire and that my body is still producing enough energy for them to work effectively. I’ll go first, stay behind me.”
“Ah so you’re finally here Darwking… wait… you’re not Darkwing Duck. Who are you guys? Ah well, at least I have someone to monologue to about my brilliance… well aside from brighty here!” The large rat biped with a cylinder on his back be holding up a lightbulb that flickered in his grasp several times. “Yeah, but what would Pinky do without The Brain? He needs his entertainment after all.”
“Are all the villains here being clinically insane?” It be an honest question.