-Equus, Ponyville, Jaded La Perm-
“Get a hold of yourself!” I shook Gallus who looked to have come to his senses. “Okay your turn.”
“Wait, wait, what’s going…” Gallus was grabbed and rapidly shaken by Sandbar, slapped a few time and then shaken again.
“Get a hold of yourself Gallus, you’re a cool griffon and you need to get a grip!” Sandbar shouted in a manner most encouraging. “Okay your turn.”
“What in the…” Gallus leaned to the right and saw the line of ponies and creatures ready to come forward and slap some sense into him.
“Yay, I’ve been waiting for this, get a hold of yourself Gallus!” Silver Stream shouted as she shook, slapped and shook Gallus again. “Okay Fluttershy, your next!”
“Really, I think I’ve got my sense back you don’t really need to…” Gallus was grabbed by Fluttershy and she started shaking him, slapped him twice and then shaking him again.
“Please just let me have this last go Gallus.” Fluttershy muttered as she shook him violently while looking into his eyes innocently. Fluttershy was like a cute little otter, one with a hidden dark side. “It’s been a pretty long day.”
“Fine…” Gallus grunted.
“He’s okay now everyone!” All those waiting in line whined and were saddened to see the griffon they were helping was now aware of himself, we’ve been shaking and slapping Gallus for the last hour… I even got to go twice on my adoptive little brother. Sure I might have been the cause, but doing this was one of the funnier ways to go about friendship. “You can all leave now, thank you for coming to support Gallus in getting his senses back!”
“… Can we at least keep getting muffins?” Derpy asked with a raised hoof and half the crowd started to agree with that sentiment.
“Am I evil for starting this conga line mom?” I turned and asked my mother who was bringing out a tray of muffins for the hungry populace that decided to get in on the slapping Gallus back to his senses.
“No, we’re Abyssinians, being jerks is implied with our species. Even if stereotypes are not entirely correct, we’re still very much cats.” Mom said with a gentle nod before leaning closer towards Gallus and placing a muffin into his confused talon. “How are you feeling kitten?”
“Like an entire town... went to town on me." Whether Gallus knew it or not, he had a lot of friends. I hugged my griffon brother and gave him an affectionate nuzzle. "I’m kind of surprised by the turn out though.”
“I’m sorry I broke you little brother!” I should probably keep my Zampony out of sight for a few days, maybe store it with the Capture Bridle Defend organization for a few weeks. “Comes with the territory though, our family lacks both common sense and is fifty apples shy of normalcy as I’m sure Applejack would tell you.”
“Eyup.” Applejack intoned blandly as she took an apple crumb muffin, everyone around rolled their eyes at that.
-Earth, San Fransokyo Mall, Ocellus-
We really couldn’t stay here for much longer we were being swamped from two sides, the only thing keeping the Hunter Drones from encroaching successfully was the Migrator and even that was taking damage from the amount of fire it received.
Apparently the Beuno Nacho kiosk was built to survive class five villain attacks, it was proving to be very helpful in this situation as the blond haired young alien duck biped continued to fire puck after puck into the crowd of robots.
Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin had been hit once or twice, but as for Grin and Fredzilla they were taking the brunt of the robots firepower.
“We should retreat, how fast can that get us out of here?” Provided the robots didn’t damage the wheels on it too much, the vehicle was our best option and its armor was starting to look pretty poor despite dealing the most damage to the Hunter Drone numbers... and the food court.
“Depends, this is the most Hunter Drones I’ve ever seen at once in my life.” You’d be an expert on that at least Nosedive, the blonde haired duck’s armor was getting equally battered. “They really want you to jailbreak their empire and more than three hundred of these things is a little much to throw at one person. Grin, can you and Zilla figure out how to clear a path to the Migrator? We kind of need to retreat here!”
“I can slow them down, but we’ll need a big distraction.” Bazooka Bunny announced as she took cover.
“This is Mental Magnet, I’ve captured Professor Nimnul and Baron Von Steamer, moving on to Professor Dementor. Most of his guys are injured and Baymax is interested in helping them as much as capturing them.” Nice for us to know he was doing okay, Mini-Max was quite useful for communications as much as Dormarch was. “Just want to warn you that Drakken and Shego look to be calling in reinforcements. Momakase is going to lend an assist when she can.”
“Wait, we’re not going to retreat yet…” I received some odd looks for that, but they kept shooting or fighting even as a battered Fredzilla and Grin ducked behind the counter. Grin had various light wounds and Fredzilla’s suit was heavily battered under the constant pressure of energy weapons fire, despite that his handheld spinning weapon was still in good condition and was holding up quite well. “Can I get an ETA on the northern and western lizards, the movements of the robots to the south of the mall and Team Possible? Also unknown forces are friendlies called The Mighty Ducks, the red robots are called ‘Hunter Drones’ continue with that knowledge in mind.”
“The one from the north on approach and will arrive in several minutes if current pace is kept, the one to the west will take ten minutes with several possible waves of Hunter Drones arriving earlier than that. Team Possible is pushing through the Hunter Drones, arrival is estimated to be at least thirty seconds.” Okay my suspicions just jumped up several notches due to Baymax’s information and given what was said about there being another shape shifter in the area… I needed to hear about the Hunter Drones possible moving into position south of us. “Hunter Drones to the south seemed to be lightly scattered and watching the roads. A good number of them were destroyed by The Mighty Ducks moving through the area.”
“Well that just confirmed it, we can’t retreat to the south.” They were expecting us to head that way and were laying traps or ambush points. I noticed the curious look I was receiving from the huge duck Grin. “Okay, so if we’re seeing a lizard big guy coming from our north, a tall old staff wielding lizard guy from the west… well 'if I were a shape shifter', I would be setting up traps and distractions to separate me from the rest of you so I can be more easily captured when we run straight into them to the south which has been our direction of retreat up until now.”
The irony was not lost on me making such a statement, but changelings have long since perfected shape shifting warfare a long time ago. I was never a soldier, but I still understood stealth and ambush tactics perfectly fine.
“I’m going to need at least two people with me at all times that I absolutely cannot be separated from long enough for that Chameleon guy to make a hot swap to even attempt a kidnapping.” Because goodness knows someone was about to suggest what I think they were. “As such, none of us should split up and any gear that we can use that Chameleon can’t is enough of an identifier of safety to me. Mini-Max, Rufus, Dolly are always going to be safe. I can’t let any of the rest of you leave my sight... we need to hold position and break the siege by heading north or west.”
“Might I say that that is an understandable and well thought out argument? You are very bright person Ms. Callaghan.” Grin said in a gentle voice, the giant duck guy was absolutely worried about me. He should be, because these lizard guys might kill me when they find out what I really was if they could somehow force me to revert back to being myself. I could only hope their magic user was mildly incompetent, just enough so to not tell there was something off about me in a magical sense. “Are feeling you okay?”
“Please, call me Abigail. I’ve come under attack by a villain where I was living, I got dragged around the city with what is my best friend and then I find myself being hunted by hundreds of robots.” Stating this bluntly I looked Grin in the eyes. There was also Shanty and Dolly getting worse injuries on top of ones they barely had a day to recover from after an exhausting day long crisis. There’s frying pan, there’s fire and then there’s volcano. We have long since skipped well past volcano. “What I am is quite stressed and I have plenty of reason to be!”
There was also Wheel Cat engaging Phantom Blot from what we last heard from her, but we don’t know what’s going on there or with Penny Forrester’s Power Pets group.
“Hey bro, we have a problem…” Nosedive called out on a communications device before standing up and blasting a puck through the chest of the robots coming from the north. “Yeah, no, we can’t… we don’t know where Chameleon is and we have an idea that he’s setting up an ambushes in that direction. Mallory is doing the most damage, but the Migrator is taking a seriously bad pummeling. There’s far too many of them and this party is between a rock and a hard place. We’re getting reinforced by two more heroes right about… now, but it’s going to be hard to hold up in this siege. At least you’re not having it easy up there either.”
When Nosedive said the word ‘now’ a grappling hook lashed out and caught one of the robots on the outer right edge of those approaching the Bueno Nacho counter.
Kim Possible, came in sliding low and wide on a pair of jet skates taking out the legs out from under multiple Hunter Drones with the wire knocking a good number of them down, she detached the grappling hook and quickly skated away from the one that started to fire on her.
That’s when her ferret friend shot through the area with rockets coming from his… shorts? Also didn’t he use to have pants? He was at least distracting the Hunter Drones while Mallory, whom I’ve yet to meet in person, Grin and Nosedive opened fire on them with Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin.
Fredzilla was behind the counter near me and I carried Dolly over to him.
“Is this worse or better than what usually happens around here?” Since this place required heroes like Big Hero Six, I thought it would be prudent to ask.
“Eh, not the worst thing, usually that would require Mega-Max, the power consumption from using him alone is excessive and we only need Mega-Max for an actual kaiju fight. Still pretty bad and up there.” Fredzilla waved at me and watched Kim Possible caught a blast of energy and sent it flying back at one of the Hunter Drones. The ferret guy was actually proving to be agile and able to dodge a lot of fire while taking out numerous Hunter Drones too.
“KP, yay!” Rufus announced brightly before gnawing on another cheese covered snack.
“Even with all the help, we’re barely putting a dent in them.” Grin muttered as I looked out over the heavily ripped up food court of destroyed tables, chairs and other kiosks.
“Told you that Bueno Nacho would take my armored building idea and run with it KP!” The ferret shouted as he joined us, by flopping over the counter and then he pulled out a pair of pants from somewhere and started to put them on.
“Ron, so not the time!” Kim was in the middle of kicking a robots arm to redirect its shot into taking another out by blasting a hole through its chest. “Wade, how long can my battle suit last under these conditions?!”
“Can we retreat past that tank thing, while it covers us?” Ron asked me, while Rufus took a perch on his should and patted his head.
“Bad idea, there’s possible an ambush expert in that direction, these Hunter Drones are actively trying to drive us to run in that particular direction.” I shot zipped past my nose making me yelp and cower in cover.
“This is troubling my ability to remain calm in the face of adversity.” Grin said in a strained voice and then took off the offending Hunter Drones head with a rifle weapon built for someone of his unusual size.
“More coming from above, can we try and break through them in a different direction?” Mallory asked as the vehicle launched another blast that took down ten to twenty drones. Not that it was going to help when we still had a good number coming at us and they were actively evading the vehicles fire.
Multiple dropped from above making Nosedive and Grin switch targets to the Migrator.
“Cover me, closing off the ceiling and setting up some walls.” Announced Bazooka Bunny before she fired a sphere that exploding into large blob that caught a Hunter Drones trying to drop down on the Migrator and the next few shots arced out around the kiosk creating a series of walls that impeded the Hunter Drones coming at us. “The chemicals in those walls can absorb a lot of heat and energy.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice!” Nosedive dove over the counter to being behind one of the chemical walls to the left and pulled out a second high speed puck spewing weapon. “Wonder what they are going to do now that they know we’re not going for fall for an ambush? Come on you ugly can openers!”
“There is anomalous energy detected in the vicinity to the west!” Mini-Max announced, the wester entrance to the food court suddenly became covered in a growing sphere of energy and a number of Hunter Drones stopped moving forward and started to fire at us. None of the shots from our side were getting through the energy barrier. “It appears that the western entrances to the mall have all been sealed off.”
“Wraith is most certainly the one responsible for that, his rupturing of the world’s normal flow creates an unnatural foul air.” Grin stated as he moved to a wall on the right as Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin took cover between him and Nosedive. The barrier was preventing our side from hitting the Hunter Drones that took up position behind it. “I am under no delusion that we are in a good situation here.”
“Coming forward, if we can’t go south or west, then we may as well just force our way through… rockets incoming!” The Migrator rolled forward and to the left and rammed through some Hunter Drones to avoid some rockets that took out large chunks of the floor to our left. “Lost the back right wheel, can I get someone in here to run the gun, I can’t do it and drive at the same time.”
“I think I can do it if I knew what the controls were, but I want you to back up to the counter first before I even think of moving.” I wasn’t moving from behind the Beuno Nacho counter until the distance was short enough that I wouldn't get hit by a stray shot. “They are getting to a point where they don’t care if they hit me!”
“Yeah, I can do that. Things are not going much better with The Raptor, it’s being defended by the larger Hunter Drones. Even one of those things is an anti-infantry nightmare!” Mallory stated as she backed the vehicle towards the chemical barriers while firing the weapons from the Migrator’s front. Another rocket landed and tore a chunk out of the floor where the Migrator had been. “Siege is here, once was possibly a well-armed Hunter Drone variant, but we don’t normally see these guy’s firing rockets. Twice was definitely their primary weapons maker... and we’re suddenly getting hammered harder from the north.”
“Tell her they are trying to push us to run south!” I shouted to Nosedive, he communicated that while ducking into cover.
“Well if we don’t move soon they are going to…” The front of the vehicle was blasted and smoking and Mallory screeched as the vehicle slid to a stop to the left of the chemical barriers and its back opened up. “Agh, that nearly took out the Migrator’s engine! Even if we don’t head south they are going to pin us here and wear us down! Get in here and I’ll show you how to work the cannon for however long it lasts, they won’t risk blowing the Migrator up with you onboard, they’ll probably try to disable it though!”
“I’ll cover you Abigail, go!” Kim Possible shouted as she stopped in front of the counter. “Can’t we do something about that barrier?”
Quickly lifting Dolly up with my right, paw I got onto the counter and bounded off it to the left and darted for the ramp as quickly as I could on three legs, Kim intercepted several shots that would have hit us both and sent them flying back into the drones behind the barrier.
Their shots could pass through, which proved useful for Kim who was somehow catching and throwing the blasts of energy back with what looked like a scoop that grew from her hand.
“We’re not magically inclined, but the best way to do that is to break Wraiths concentration. Our Aerowing is already on it!” I made it to the ramp and saw Mallory for the first time, she looked like an older Goaslyn Mallard, the resemblance was really quite uncanny. How long have these alien ducks been blending in on this planet for? “They are ditching attempts to board and bring down The Raptor, the Saurians have the entrances to their ship too well defended. Not that The Raptor or Dragaunus is going to let them attack Wraith.”
She quickly turned and looked at me and pointed the console to the right and I quickly made my way forward.
“Mallory McMallard, nice to meet you. Now take control of that console and start taking out the guys on our right, I’ve got our front! Stick for aiming, button for targeting zone calculations, trigger to fire.” I quickly sat down and the console and it looked easy enough to get a handle on, I grabbed the controls and turned the turret and fired on the encroaching drones from the north and took out a cluster. “Yeah, that’s it, ah crap… here he comes.”
“You ducks are about to go down with your new friends, let’s see how you deal with some real Siege engines when you’re trapped like scurrying rats!” Despite firing on him and barely doing any damage with the explosion of energy or the fact that both Nosedive and Grin focused fire, the large lizard forced his way forward regardless of what was hitting him. “Tiny was good enough for me to acquire the resources to make even more of him, aren’t you happy to be in for a real fight when you could barely handle even one!”
Behind the bulky lizard guy with the thagomizer, armor with hug shoulder pads and in general thick looking skin were several of those large Hunter Drones among a number of smaller drones.
“Did he just pun off his own name?” I asked quietly while horrified at how much fire the guy could take without showing any signs of injury. It was terrifying to watch the guy in motion.
“Yeah, that’s Siege for you, the guy can plow through anything you hit him with. The guy is carnage and weapons incarnate, focus down the Hunter Drones and don’t bother with him. Grin can take him in hand to hand, but he’s going to need some breathing space to do that and not get shot in the back, so we need to provide that space!” I saw through the forward windshield that Mallory was pumping out shot after shot into the barrier and any hunter drone that dare pass through it in the distance. I turned back to the console and continued to fire on the Hunter Drones coming from our right as Siege pushed forward at us. “Guys why haven’t you hit Wraith yet?! The Migrator is getting destroyed and we can’t break his barrier to destroy the drones behind it and Siege is basically on top of us with several of those big ones!”
“We’ve got our own problems Mal. If you think you have trouble, we’ve got a number of them trying to shoot us out of the sky!” A suave sounding masculine voice stated back. “We’re currently dealing with what amounts to artillery fire from them and are busy trying to keep the Aerowing in one piece. We could break out the Turbowing we have loaded to lend some aerial support, but whoever pilots it is going to get shot down pretty fast if enough of those Hunter Drones focus fire on it in an enclosed space.”
“Duke, we’ve got four of those walking tanks on us and they are backing up Siege, the local heroes and the supplementary ones that were called in aren’t going to be enough to stop them from pulling Abigail out of the Migrator if they have to rip it open with their bare hands!” Even as Mallory conversed with the rest of her team I didn't stop shooting. “We can’t run, we can barely even hold this position, we need ideas here to prevent them from getting the person we're protecting!”
I was hitting said walking tanks and doing some moderate damage, not enough to destroy them but enough to make sure they couldn’t fire rockets at least. As Dolly had apparently noticed their wrist and shoulder mounted rockets were mild vulnerabilities, but they still had their two chest cannons and ten finger guns.
“We’re trying to drop the barrier, then you can try to make a run for it through the west entrance.” Announced another more serious male voice. “We’ll send out the Turbowing to give you support fire when you break through the west entrance, turn north and try to break away.”
“Well you better hurry up on that Wildwing, we’re faltering badly here!” Mallory was understating the situation.
Ron, Kim and Fredzilla were protecting the ramp to the back of the vehicle and Grin was having problems getting close to the large lizard known as Siege because of the fire from the large Hunter Drones. Even Bazooka Bunny and Plasma Paladin weren’t doing nearly enough damage to slow them down.
The barrier at the far end of the western entrance to the food court suddenly dropped.
“Everyone get onboard or stay and get plastered!” Not having to be told twice by Mallory, everyone quickly piled into the Migrator, Grin was the last being blown inside by a rocket fired by Siege.
“You’re not getting away that easily!” Shouted Siege as he fired rockets to chase after the Migrator as we surged forward, one made it through the defending shots and slapped the back half of the vehicle to the side as it closed it's ramp and surged towards the mall’s western entrance. “We'll grab that key to our empires return!”