-Ransei, Fontaine, Smolder-
“Do you be thinking Pom will be alright?” Shanty asked, likely knowing the answer already as well as any of us.
“She’s fine, she has Dolly and Dazzle went with her, what kind of trouble could they possibly… okay fine, I can’t say it with a straight face. No, she won’t be fine! We all know how much trouble Pom attracts and she is probably already in over her head!” I crossed my arms and specifically didn’t look at Ocellus when I paused and told the truth. “I’m sure she probably got the information she wanted at least, but how she got it will probably take her a while to get back to us about.”
“Wow, I didn’t expect you to go the brutally honest route Smolder.” Now you see Ocellus, if we all know the truth and it only take one of us to say it, then it may as well be me. Probably why Pom left me in charge, Ocellus has already had a turn and that went somewhat poorly. As long as I don’t see a wyvern or someone doesn’t endanger Ocellus, I think I can keep my head quite clear and will have to remember that not everyone can tank like an Ogres and Oubliettes character. “Now come on and help us out with the blankets, one of the healing Buizel is getting cold.”
Pom, whatever it is you are currently doing, you better not leave me as the leader for too long. I already had enough talks with Ember being heavily stressed out by her leadership as the Dragon Lord before I ended up at the friendship school, also some time after it too. Thankfully King Thorax balanced out Ember quite well.
-Network Connection Tubes, Pom-
We were inside the tube and generally hovering in the same positions we entered at, yet we were moving forward somehow… at least I could feel that we were moving forward. This all felt so strange... at least I wasn’t separated from Dolly and could still feel our strong connection.
Dazzle was looking around in slight fear and I wouldn’t let her or Dolly get into trouble without going after them, which is why I dropped myself in here with them. That and I didn’t want to lose Dolly.
“Network Connection route established, please avoid Chaosdramon X at all costs during transference. Movement within tube system should be intuitive, please practice now before and firewall defenses show up. Two minutes approximate time until first firewall response arrives.” We were looking to Dolly as the voice of Yggdrasil.sys was coming from the device she was wearing. “Also focus on forward movement as swiftly as possible, keep your bodies inside the data streams at all times and try not to die. It would be a very sad.”
“Pom… what I said about this day being good so far… I take it back.” Dolly stated with a slight unhappy blandness and I nodded to her in complete sympathy. It ‘was’ a good day, but we couldn’t have seen this coming and could only hope to get back to Shanty, Ocellus and Smolder. They could thankfully take care of themselves at least.
I tried to float towards Dolly and it… just seemed to happen. Dazzle already made it to her and we grouped up holding onto the sides of Dolly’s board as she was sitting on it. The sensation of movement was constant with all the shifting blinking squares.
“So… how do we go faster, do we just try to feel like going forward?” Well we were already going forward, it was like we were in a waterless river inside this tube and it was flowing in a given direction to an unknown destination. We were unfortunately going along for the ride.
“What’s going on?” Dazzle asked, looking visibly shaken up as she kept her front left claw on the side of Dolly’s skateboard with an iron grip as the many squares upon squares making up the tube we seemingly passed by at incredible speeds.
“Apparently we’ve stumbled into a situation I wasn’t prepared to run away from fast enough…” I let go of the board and floated up, ahead of Dolly and Dazzle, back behind them and around them in a circle. “We’re also possibly going to another world, one where a deceased friend.”
For some reason that relieved Dazzle more than it should have.
We had been in a town and I thought we were safe. Well we weren’t safe in Abora the first time we visited the place, but Voltsburg seemed so tame!
Something busted through the side of the tube behind us.
“Targets acquired, eliminating with Grenade Destroyer… lock-on, fire!” It was kind of roundish square with a mostly brownish color, looked like a walking tank that just burst through the wall and it aimed it’s opening forearms at us to fire what I assumed to be strange looking explosives at us. It looked to be made of iron and was quickly catching up to us on flaming jets.
What is it with me and robots?!
“Ugh… Robots again.” Whined Dolly before said robot fired a pair of missiles that were blowing whistles as they came at us. “With literal whistle blowing missiles, oh come on, those are killing my ears here!”
“I believe he just said they were grenades…” I was thankful the grenades were stopped by Dazzle firing a Flame Burst destroying both of the ones coming up behind us in a fiery explosion, close enough to where we could all feel the heat.
“Guardromon, Guard Robot Monster, network defensive program, can come in all attributes and is a machine type digimon. Caution advised, they fire grenades from their forearms with Grenade Destroyer attack program and lasers from their eyes with Warning Laser attack program. However they are weak in close range combat due to having slower reaction times at shorter range confrontations.” Informed the digivice or Yggdrasil.sys in a bland tone that almost sound worried for our safety, I couldn’t tell which it was giving us this information at this point and I wouldn’t be here to ask questions as I shifted my wool.
“Rear Drill!” Straightening out my body as all my wool shifted to the back half of my body. I twisted my body and pushed off Dolly’s skateboard with my front hooves and shot backwards while rapidly spinning and my rear hooves pressed together into a point.
My hooves hit and I dug into the metal monsters thickly armored chest twisting into and breaking its relatively moderate armoring, then scrunched up and use the increased amount of wool around my hind legs to launch two powerful point blank Thousand Spears from them to free me from all the twisted metal in a fountain of untwisting wool.
I rocketed forward, past Dolly and Dazzle, as the Guardromon fell behind into the distance. He looked to be quite pained and I was glad I didn’t hurt him too much as it looked like he wasn’t bleeding and he was still moving, the flailing robot disappeared into the distance and given that this was a straight tube, we were in a really, really long one. That poor thing was just doing its… his maybe… job and as a backup Huoshan guard I can relate to having problems with rough intruders, like a certain Abyssinian I haven’t seen for the most part of a year.
Dolly moved to catch up with me and shot past me at a blazing speed before slowing down, she was about three hoof balls lengths away before she realized she passed me.
“Whoa what is up with my momentum here?” Good question Dolly, she asked this as I once again took a hold of the board when she slowed down. “Whoa?!”
Dolly veered through three sets of parallel small beams crossing in front of us coming from outside the tube. Three more Guardromon were moving along the outside of the tunnel and were trying to match pace with us.
“Despite being nullified, it seems you are more capable than other digi-destined… at least on a level of being able to handle champion digimon with your natural capabilities. Also that sudden bandwidth increasing ability would be prudent to escaping danger at much quicker speeds.” The digivice was oddly informative and at times it says things I don’t understand, what was bandwidth and what did that have to do with Dolly getting insanely fast in here? “Please, I implore you to continue to using the bandwidth increasing ability, it is quite urgent that you do so to evade Chaosdramon X who is quickly approaching your network connection zone. Methods of slowing them down have proven to be… generally and highly ineffective.”
“You heard the device Dolly, break loose and momentum boost us like crazy as long and as safely as you can. Dazzle and I can deal with them at range.” Since I doubt we would get the time to fight close up with the repeated urgency from the Digivice… anything with ‘chaos’ in its name was bound to be dangerous. The Guardromon behind us were quickly catching up. I quickly wrapped a portion of the board strap around Dazzle’s left wrist and my own right hoof. “Quick question, what does a Chaosdramon X look like?”
“Bright red, death incarnate, mechanical dragon… is that enough information or do you need more about something that can reap an entire city into a hole in minutes?” The digivice stated almost flatly, though the tone registered with the decidedly fearful part of my brain that focused down on the words ‘reap’ and ‘entire city’ that came up in the same sentence. “Connection with ally digimon achieved, ally will find their way to you in approximately five minutes and can move faster than you can at increased bandwidth speeds and will be able to keep up with you. Help is on the way, but don’t stop or slow down for them.”
“Right, I’ll focus on things in front of us and keep us moving, got it. Now kicking this into high gear, let’s go… Bow-Whaka-Wahoo!” We all shot forward as the guardromon bursts into the tunnel behind us, we put a significant amount of distance between them and us immediately. They started speeding up to catch up to us.
The tunnel veered downwards sharply and Dolly quickly flipped us upside down before we hit the sharp curve, aside from a little discomfort there didn’t seem to be gravity here. So we wouldn’t exactly be bothered by orientation as we hit the corner of the tube.
As soon as the back end of Dolly’s board hit the squares, we were shooting down the tube at an insane rate. At least it seemed insane to me, I didn’t know how fast we were actually going as the squares blurred by. At least the squares didn’t seem to hurt us as Dazzle and I were being dragged along by Dolly’s board.
The Guardromon, unfortunately were keeping up and were actually gaining on us. Dolly went onto her hind legs and took on a surfer’s stance while sending a quick excited grin to us as the tips of her ears whipped in the nonexistent wind from beneath her helmet.
I looked to Dazzle and she looked back at me, we nodded and looked behind us as Dolly swept us into another curve into what should have been the right wall… actually… I can’t tell which way was up anymore. This place was like Gravity Gorge back on Elhorn all over again, except there were no places to hide this time!
-Network Surfing-
“Phhtweeeeeee-!” Pom turned her head and rolled her body back first down to the tunnel walls to fire a bark blast and the missile with a whistle in its mouth blew apart taking another with it as it was struck by the energy.
Dazzle fired a Flame burst that exploded and hit all three of the Guardromon behind them doing minimal damage and melted their thickly armored hides slightly. In retaliation their eyes started to glow.
“Right!” Called out Dazzle, Dolly didn’t think twice before veering right along the tunnel as three pairs of small parallel beams of energy passed by them to their left.
Pom loosed a bark and a wad of blob shaped energy flew down the tube behind them at an angle, there was no seemingly gravity as it closed in with the lead of the three guardromon following behind them in the center of the tube.
The guardromon tried to veer slightly to avoid the blob and it promptly exploded in the bipedal machines direction as it passed by, the Bark Buster sent it spiraling into another Guardromon sending them both tumbling and falling behind out of the tube as it curved sharply again.
“As dangerous as this truly is, we’re going to get through this, for spending time with you guys is like bliss~!” Sang Dazzle firing off a Round move that the last Guardromon behind them sent went flying out of control when the left thing where the jets were coming from dented inward under the concentrated sound attack sending them spiraling slightly out of control.
It fell behind and Pom looked down and Dolly looked up ahead of them, Dazzle was looking to the left and right.
“Above/below!” Dolly and Pom exclaimed as four Guardromon simultaneous erupted into the tube two behind them from below their current orientation. The other two burst through what was the ceiling ahead of them flying backwards and immediately fired four missiles at varying angles from above. The two behind the trio spread out to fire lasers while pivoted inwards to prevent them from sliding left or right along the tube bracketing them in.
It was a good thing Dolly knew they weren’t only stuck with left or right movements. With a single kick of her board she launched them across the tube to the opposite side while flipping through the missiles to land on what was the ceiling for them. The lasers hit nothing aside from the tubes walls and the missiles from above broke through the barriers of the tunnel and exploded outside in the nothingness beyond.
Dolly, clutching at her helmet due to the whistling noises the missiles made, veered them all into the sharp right in the curve and towards the rear Guardromons that had lost sight of their quarry. As the trio went past the one on the left behind them Dazzle fired a Flame Burst into a grenade before it could fire as it quickly aimed for them with its left arm.
The grenade did a lot of damage to the Guardromon by exploding in its face and sent it tumbling back.
The other Guardromon tried to turn and fire only for Pom to let loose a bark blast into its aiming forearms and causing another violent explosion as the two grenade blasts blew the bulky machine out of the tube entirely.
Dolly suddenly changed direction veering hard left that almost caused Dazzle to lose her death grip on the board as Dolly guided them between another volley of whistle blowing grenades that seemed to be glaring at them as they passed by. They exploded all around the three before they could leave their proximity and Dolly launched them into floating in the middle of the tube to escape getting injured in the blast.
Three more Guardromon dropped into the tube ahead of them.
“Quickly choose purple tube and you will not be hit with their next attack.” The digivice stated earning Dolly a quick glance as five sets of arms prepared to fill the tube full of whistling missiles ahead of them.
The tube suddenly became four different colors and deciding to trust the device on her neck Dolly swerved her board upwards and to the left to reorient to the part of the tube that had the purple coloration along it and not the green, blue or red that suddenly took up other parts of the tube.
Before the five Guardromon could fire, the tube split in four different directions and most of them ended up going down purple or green, one went down the red tube.
Dolly, Pom and Dazzle all ended up in a tube entirely alone. Until a large shadow passed by the tube beneath their current orientation.
“What the dog was that…” Dolly said looking back and seeing a large shadow swinging around and surging up behind and beneath them.
“More incoming Guardromon, your newest problem is Machinedramon. Estimated time of interception by Chaosdramon X, a massively worse problem than the Machinedramon that are about to attack you, is approximately two minutes.” The shadow was getting bigger beneath the three as the Digivice spoke. “I would suggest veering very fast off to the side.”
Dolly threw herself and her friend to the left with her momentum power and even threw in her flowing motion magic. She barely managed to kick the board up and out of the way of massive, dark, rounded square jaws rose up from where they were, said jaws turned and snapped at the three of them as they flipped up onto what was the left wall for them a second ago.
“There’s something worse than that coming for us?!” Pom went quite shrill given the horrors of the situation as two more large shadows and multiple smaller shadows started appearing around the tube they were in as the monster that tried to eat them rose up at their back.
It barely fit in the tube and was skidding along the tube behind them on its two legs which seemed to have skulls as knee caps. It was an already ridiculously intimidating monstrosity, did it really need that little bit of whimsy to feel less like a lifeless lethal machine entity in full?
The thing that popped up behind them was chrome grey colored it had lifeless glowing eyes, it’s right claw looked like it doubled as a cannon and the left were three blades the length of swords and on its back was two massive barrels that were glowing.
“Keep going Left!” Pom shouted as the barrels erupted and Dolly kept pushing further as a large portion of the tube was shredded, a quarter of the tube was just missing instantly after the twin beams lanced through the area lighting up the darkness for a quite a large distance. There was very little out there aside from other faintly visible tubes.
The large monstrous mechanical lizard seemed to slow down and was pushed backwards by the recoil of firing those devastatingly powerful beams and a fairly long distance ahead the tube returned to being fully cylindrical, outside the gap in the tube another Machinedramon and several Guardromon could be seen.
Another Machinedramon was sliding sideways through the black space and the two cannons on its back came up and started glowing as it aimed at the tube from the side.
“Out of the tube!” Screamed Dazzle.
Dolly, figuring Dazzle had the right idea, continued the leftward drift and slid them out of the open gap in the tube made by the previous pair of beams that tore a massive section of the tube open, they avoided a pair of beams where they would have been that tore a large section of it to shreds.
“Do not get too far from the network tube, you’ll slow down your transference!” The information was somewhat timely from the Digivice, because Dolly was veering wildly through the fields of whistling grenades and avoiding a third massive pair of beams from yet another Machinedramon.
There were so many grenades coming at them from all angles as the ten to sixteen Gaurdromon were spread out ahead and pummeling the three clinging to the skateboard with proximity based explosions trying to allow the soulless feeling Machinedramon time to close in and attack them.
The trio’s defense of bark blasts and Flame Bursts was fairly stunted against such a constant onslaught.
“This is getting quite ridiculous!” Stated Dolly as she jerk about in different directions trying to keep their forward momentum. They were buffeted by various explosions from the Guardromon from all sides and laser beams scraped at Pom’s wool and glanced off Dazzle’s heat resistant scales. The Dalmatian being the only reason they hadn’t taken a completely direct hit so far.
The three large Machinedramon were almost upon them like sharks with their mouths wide open.
The skateboard trio were slowing down as Dolly tried to veer them back for the tube before they lost their chance to get back inside. It was hard going because they had to avoid various explosions.
The Guardromon gathered in a circle and were about to create a hard to escape cone of fire when they were suddenly strafed by a series of flashes of something that came in from above and behind the trio on the skateboard.
This caused multiple primed grenades to go off prematurely and scattered the gathered Guardromon all into the black void as the trio continued towards the tube.
“Woohoo, now this looks like a real party line, grab on!” The least likely thing to see in this situation would be a biplane flying in out of nowhere being piloted by what looked like a guinea pig with bat wings for ears wearing a cap and goggles.
Said guinea pig monster swooped in close to the three as they were already heading back to the open portion of the tube.
Dolly reached up her right paw and got it around the support structure underneath the right wing, the skateboard bound trio were immediately pulled forward and dragged out of the way of the three snapping mechanical jaws of the Machinedramon.
“Those Machinedramon are terrifying aren’t they, woo this is quite a rush!” As the wing eared guinea pig made Dolly look back at Pom and Dazzle, the two shrugged at her and were probably thinking the same thing Dolly was. This was the ally that Yggdrasil.sys got to come save them? He didn’t look like much but he was at least keeping them ahead of the Machinedramon, said monsters cannons shifted outwards and looked like they were ready to fire again. “You’re lucky I’m an adrenaline junky, because no other digimon would be nearly this stupid about getting into this kind of situation with the network firewall brigade. Hold on!”
The small creature hit something and the biplane tripled in speed faster than what Dolly could push with her momentum control and a flash of six combined beams tore through the tube as they made it to a curve.
“We’re almost to your exit, you made it this far, so you’re doing pretty good considering that total death squad on all of your butts!” The guinea pig looked to the trio. “Hey, now would be a good time to climb on while they are still dealing with the recoil of their Giga Cannons. Less useful for them in network space when they have nothing to brace against.”
Pom reached up with her left hoof and clamped to the underside of the plane. She unbound her right hoof and carefully unwrapped Dazzles left claw and clamped onto it and pulled her up onto the plane first where she easily found a. Pom followed up by Getting Dolly up next and final herself.
“Almost there and we’ve still got Machinedramon on our butts, those guys are relentless!” The guinea pig had yet to introduce himself and looked behind them as he continued to fly his vehicle down the tube.
“Incoming Chaosdramon X, you are out of time.” The digivice announced. “Please try to reach your exit, Yggdrasil.sys will try to close it off before it can get through.”
The guinea pig’s eyes widened with at the news.
“Come on, come on, we need to reach the exit before…” Something large and red surged forward out of the darkness, blasting huge flames out of the cannons on its backside to propel itself forward. It looked similar to the Machinedramon, but was bigger and several times faster. The feeling of 'imminent death' permeating everything around it was worse than the relatively disturbing sense of lifelessness the Machinedramon’s gave off. “Ah, just so you know if it gets close enough to us, it’s going to pointblank annihilate us with its most well-known attack if it’s feeling generous for giving us a quick death! We can outrun the Machinedramon, but we can’t outrun or even fight ‘THAT’! I heard they were supposed to be slow, but stupidly powerful. Slow when compared to what, a Rinkmon?!”
The large red dragon monster flipped its thrusters, it slowed down immensely and the buildup of energy on it’s now forward pointing cannons caused static to fill the surrounding air. Six beams struck it and diverted its shot from the tube and an absolutely blinding massive wave of energy shot off into the surrounding nothingness.
The Chaosdramon X was entirely unscathed by the six Giga Cannon shots that slammed into it and had diverted its fire, the Machinedramon were thankfully focusing on the much bigger issue here.
“What… was that…?” Pom sat in front of Dazzle on the tail of the biplane and was staring wide eyed as Dolly clung to her chest whimpering.
“Huh, if we survive this, then I can seriously tell everyone that I saw what is known as Chaosdramon’s signature move, Genocide Attack, and survived to tell about!” The guinea pig was frightened, but he seemed to not be letting it get to him as the Chaosdramon X turned around and immediately interposed itself between them and the oncoming Machinedramon.
It rammed it’s right claw home tearing open the chest of the first Machinedramon to reach it, then the Machinedramon ceased to exist a second later in a glow of mushroom shaped fireball that used to be its body.
The other two Machinedramon took umbrage to that, they bit, they clawed and blasted energy from their right arms at Chaosdramon X.
“G-gen-genocide?!” Pom was still clearly stuck on the name of the attack as she clutched at a cowering Dolly and Dazzle just stared as one of the large, seemingly undefeatable Machinedramon monsters die in a single attack from Chaosdramon X and none of the Machinedramon so much as scratched it.
“Oh good the exit is coming up, we just might make it if those Machinedramon actually keep it busy long enough!” The guinea pig seemed to have a chipper personality.
Pom just turned back to stare as the other two remaining Machinedramon continued to fire their Giga Cannons and attack the red monstrosity pointlessly, the Chaosdramon X responded by firing it’s cannons in kind.
Even at this distance, the sudden evaporation of the tubes complete existence behind them was horrifying, as much as anything that used to vaguely live in that direction.
The Machinedramon were no more and the Chaosdramon X had already pushed itself back towards the biplane riders using the recoil from the attack that just killed two already terrifying monsters instantaneously.
Pom couldn’t even comprehend why something with this amount of power exists and swallowed hard.
It turned around and its eyes locked onto the biplane. They had managed to gain some distance, but that didn’t really matter much at the moment if they didn’t reach their destination before it caught up with them.
Chaosdramon X, the giant deadly robotic lizard that it was, turned its cannons around backwards and used the boosting flames to speed forward to catch up with them.
“Almost there… we’re so close!” The guinea pig said.
“Pom-…” Dolly said slowly as Pom held her close.
“I’m terrified beyond all reason Dolly, get back to me in the next life if we have one together.” Pom said with a blank tone.
“Network transference ninety nine point nine percent complete.” The Digivice unhelpfully stated as the monster closed in on them and whipped its jetpack slash cannons about to start charging them to fire.
“There, we’ll have to jump for it!” The guinea pig with wing ears stated. He even pointed his right ear at something, which drew Pom’s attention to what looked like a portal with the image of a city on it.
Pom immediately started to inhale.
Dazzle fire a blast of purple liquid into the red armored monstrosities face as it closed in and its armor started sizzling and wearing away.
“Whoa, that’s Red Digizoid, how did you’re friend manage to damage it with such a weak looking attack?!” The exceedingly odd guinea pig was way too excited about the oddity despite being seconds away from death. “That kind of Digizoid is some of the hardest stuff in the digital worlds!”
Pom continued to inhale as her wool shifted to wolf form of Sheep’s Clothing. She planted Dolly on her back, wrapped her left hoof around a shy looking Dazzle’s waist and her hoof grabbed up the guinea pig creature as she hopped onto and move along the right wing to the very edge of it.
Pom exhaled and the groups gathered forms flickered out of existence, seconds later the biplane had a critical existence failure.
For the biplane ceased to exist even before the beams from the Chaosdramon X even fired.
-???, Pom-
“Wake up, Pom, WAKE UP!” With a worried Dolly in my face, I came to and blinked dizzily as I felt my wool settle back into its default state. Wha… “Pom, think quick, focus, to the right, hoof out, use your wool, now!”
I… what?
The world blurred as my spinning head rolled to the right and I saw the ground approaching and saw something moving underneath us.
I reached out with my right hoof, snagged something and inflated my wool. All that in the following order as my senses slowly came back to me.
“Where did the strange that creature go?” Dazzle asked after a grunt when we slammed into something together, something that was moving at high speeds and my inflated wool kept me aloft and off the pavement passing by beneath me.
Dazzle was clinging to me quite tightly, I could feel her claws digging into my skin hard enough to draw blood.
“Don’t know, saw him fall away from us after passed through the portal thing, he has wings so he should be…. why am I answering you? You can’t understand me and Pom is still out of it!” Dolly slapped me in the face with her paws several times, admittedly this did focus me, as she looked behind us in a panic. “AHHHHH! Whatever you do Pom, keep holding on like this and don’t let go!”
“W-what…. why?” Sound came back and my vision cleared I was clinging on to a two wheeled vehicle blazing down a highway in a city full of tall buildings and tons of lights. Dazzle leapt off of me and grabbed on to the back of the vehicle while growling at a shadow behind us. “What’s going on?”
Had the Chaosdramon X thing followed us? No, but I did see what was a fairly large machine with a pink blade raising into the air at the end of its left limb.
“Huh, what the, who the… where did all of you come from!” I blinked at the being driving the bike.
“A Puckian?” I slurred slightly as Dazzled helped me get a better grip on the familiar looking rear portion of the bike and as I had noted there was a large bipedal duck driving it.
“Wait… if you recognize what I am, then… I have to keep you alive! That complicates things greatly as I‘m already in the middle of something else!” The Puckian raised a pistol and fired a flaming hockey puck into the large bipedal machine behind the relatively large vehicle to stop it from swinging its pink blade down on us. The blade turned out to be rapidly spinning set of three claws that were glowing with pink energy, the puck had slowed down the tentacle like digits spinning long enough to be seen when the arm had been knocked backwards. “If we can trust that lizard that’s with you and the barking black spotted creature to not do something dumb, then this just might be my lucky day!”
“Maybe yours, but it certainly hasn’t been mine!” I stated when my senses finally cleared up as we were going down a road at a much slower speed than we were going in the interconnected tubes place.
The thing chasing us was daunting, but far less scary and threatening than Chaosdramon X had been.
-Origin Space, Arceus-
“Wow multiple beings really want her dead if that’s the kind of fire power they are willing to spend on her.” I said lazily, the Moon Cell AI had played one its cards far too early with that red armored monster.
Still, this was an intriguing turn of events even I didn’t see coming.