//------------------------------// // 278. Server City Ransom Pt. 3. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -????, Oleander- I dodged to the side as a… was that the slide of a trombone?! Looking up as the bladed slide pulled back slightly, I glared at the one holding the trombone. The guy had long white hair, a dark coat and was wielding a trombone with a bladed slide. He had such a smug smile on his face too, because he was quite familiar to me. “You’re coming after me, me of all people, with a weaponized trombone?” Well two could play at that game, now where would one find an armored sousaphone tank... “WHAT A LUDICROUSLY DESIGNED TROMBONE, GIVEN IT ONLY LOOKS TO DESIGNED TO PLAY B-SHARP! Actually pretty clever considering who our foe is.” It seemed Fred was impressed by the sheer audacity of him coming after us with a Trombone, he dropped down onto the ground and started to slowly play it and walk towards us. “Is he doing his own theme song on that trombone? THAT IS SO AWESOME!” “Fred, he just tried to kill me, you know… the lovely dark unicorn you’re betrothed to.” I said flatly. “Yes and we’ll have to maul him for that, but you have to admit that’s got to be the classiest way to make an evil entrance and there’s the whole sheer audacity of trying to stab you with it!” It looks like we had a one winged angel to slay, again… because killing him doesn’t seem to stick no matter how many times we’ve tried before. -Digital Realm, Server City Shopping District, Pom- The Numemon, which had been fighting just about anything that moved, all jumped into the nearest sewer hole in fear. The Monitamon, Goblimon, Falcomon and Kamemon also retreated at the sight of the hulking mass of rippling muscle into the nearby alleyways, mostly out of fear and not wanting to have their skulls squished like sparrows eggs between the muscle monsters thighs. The bulky yellow lizard had a metal mask covering the top of his head and a zigzagging lightning bolt horn sticking through it from above the his nose. The only other accoutrements were the strange green pattern on his chest leading to lines going into all his limbs and then there were the two fingerless or clawless gloves on huge three clawed hands. I can understand running from the guy, he was terrifying and huge… far bigger and much more muscular than Canard was. ‘Abobo the Bulkmon’ didn’t waste any time before lighting up with lightning, he immediately lunged forward with insane speed and brought his right arm in an overhead swing and Canard narrowly avoided the blazingly fast fist that slammed into the street and cracked a large portion of it in a splash of lightning. Canard came out of his roll firing a puck. It did a little damage, but I don’t think it even bruised him. In fact the act of attacking him just made Abobo grin. Canard was farther away from Abobo than I was given how fast he was backing away with wide eyes from the electric lizard, Dolly was notably staying away too on her board wary of approaching something of that size. I finally spotted Sami shivering behind a trash can and tossed her the sack, she quickly caught it and poured the contents into her mouth and started chewing before swallowing happily with her lips covered in condiments. She even swallowed the sack too afterwards. Dazzle was the next to attack the large mountain of muscle, she tried a Toxic attack… Tried being the keyword, as in a flash the purple fluid was flash evaporated in a brilliant beam of lightning from the muscle monsters horn. Having avoided taking a direct hit that notably tore a burnt hole into the building to the point you can see through the hole to another hole. Dazzle’s body locked up when she was splashed by the attack puncturing the wall, this left her paralyzed and stuck clinging to the wall of a building. That’s when Abobo turned his attention to me, I swallowed hard as he studied me. “Heh, you seem like a good group of fighters in general. Don’t honestly see a reason to overpower all of you with lightning immediately, so take me in a close up and I’ll keep the lightning to a minimum… not that I’ll stop using it entirely mind you. Now make me feel alive by struggling!” Abobo charged for me, I went with my first instinct quickly went to spring high into the air to avoid him thrusting his right fist for my face almost before I could react. The guy was insanely fast… this proved to be a huge mistake on my part the second I did jump, having managed to get over his fist swinging down at me and my body would have cleared his right shoulder. Of the things I noticed immediately one was that this guy was strong given the damage to the street denoting an insane amount of toughness, two this guy was faster than Cu Chulainn and three was that he had an absurd reaction speed bordering on completely insane to impossible for something of his size and musculature. He grabbed my right hind leg in a painfully tight grip of his left fist that my suddenly locked up wool was barely holding up against. Time slowed down as I looked to the right into the guys eyes as his head turned to the right slightly to focus on me, that’s when I saw it. He apparently saw something he liked in that split second of grabbing my leg, because his grin went positively feral and the recognition that I was capable of keeping up with his speed was probably one of the worst things I could have done. The next second, my world blurred upwards and then my back slammed into the ground, my body functionally burrowed into the cement. My protective wool held up to the impact, but I was stunned and it only took another second before his huge right foot stomped down on my torso crunching me further into the street. I grunted as I felt the shockwave of his foot slamming down on me through my wool. I could already tell that was going to bruise and my wool was capable of taking a lot of blunt force trauma, but the amount of force put into it had bypassed that immediately. Was this the physics fudging thing Sami talked about? It hurt… a lot. “Come on, start fighting back against Abobo, I know you have a strong fighting spirit… I can feel it, don’t be a wimpy little turtle like those Kamemon!” A hurled, fully loaded, garbage can struck him in the side knocking him down and off of me. “Pom, can you move!” Canard shouted to me and I rolled out of the crater shaped like me and then fired off my coiled wool against the ground to spring high into the air, because the blazing flash muscle monster almost stabbed me with his claws or was he attempting to grab me with his left fist. Neither was a prospect I would welcome against this beast as he prepared to jump after me. Frizzle slammed her left clawed foot into the side of his mask barely rattling him as he changed his clawing for me into a nasty haymaker that rammed into her chest with the force of dragon crashing into the ground after one of its wings caught the wind wrong. Frizzle’s whole body flipped and she landed on her stomach and face. “Hey, lay off my new friend, unless you want some poison to be your end~!” Managing to sing that from her position, Dazzle launched the Round into Abobo. Forcefully making him stumble away from Frizzle before he could stomp on her spine. It was at this point that I finally landed behind the still standing behemoth, being floaty and lightweight wasn’t going to be very helpful right now when this guy could brute force me to death and had the intelligence to pull it off. “Now you see, the Guilmon gets it, she’s got the frenzy in her blood like I do!” Abobo grinned as Frizzle propped herself up and immediately spat a large fireball at him. Abobo blocked with his arms and was barely pushed back, he countered Frizzle with a lightning blast from his horn over his face blocking arms. Frizzle had already been motion to avoid the lightning and succeeded, she let out a growl and her wild eyes narrowed on Abobo. Abobo was about to charge forward with his lightning horn with an intent to rhino her. Canard came in from the monsters left side, swinging the hockey stick he found somewhere into Abobo’s belly with all he had. The hockey stick promptly snapped in half on that monsters abs and left a mild bruise. At least that would be a lasting bruise… maybe. Abobo turned and clamped his right hand on Canard’s left shoulder, squeezed slightly and then lifted him bodily off the ground in a show of his raw monstrous strength. The monstrous mass pulled back his left fist grinning. Despite his current predicament Canard glared at the monster defiantly. Okay think Pom, what do you do to stop that fist from breaking Canard’s beak straight off his face… “Are you okay?!” I shouted, a confused Abobo looked to me as I turned my side to him and gathered wool and energy around my right hoof. I think it’s become a bad habit to shout that before using the attack, but it’s how I practiced with Dolly so… I turned and surged forward firing off the coiled wool from my hind legs. In a forward burst impressive for me, my hoof connected with his left side. It felt like hitting a sold steel wall, I still continued the attack by bracing my right leg. “Buster Wolf!” The explosion of force erupting didn’t do much damage to Abobo personally, didn’t really think much could at this rate, but the explosion of rising energy did hit his arm hard enough to make him drop Canard. “Hah, knew you had something to you!” Abobo said as he swung his tail at me from the right as her turned my way, I had to perform a sideways rolling leap towards the buildings on the west side of the street and again jumping proved to be a bad idea as a bolt of lightning shot for my face blinding me. I felt a powerful gust and my body being pushed to the side by something. I landed and rolled while covering my eyes, really shouldn’t get close to the guy when his horn lights up. I wondered why I hadn’t been hit? I suddenly started receiving sight of myself in a crouch near the wall and the alleyway that the blue dog left the area through… oh of course Dolly used Aero on me! I saw myself about to be kicked. Planting my right hoof against the ground, I kicked off the ground into a full circle pivot with my hind legs and avoided taking the big three toed claw in the side. Watching myself from a third person perspective was weird, but it helped me scrunch up and time my next attack from the pivot. I landed a solid buck to the left leg that tried to kick me throwing Abobo off balance as he tried to lift his other leg off the ground to swing it at me, he stumbled. I had planted both my right legs on the ground I pushed up with my front right hoof, spread out and flexibly slung my left hind leg out and around straight into his spine. I even used swinging my front hooves upwards as I spun into a standing position to build moment to do that roundhouse buck. This helped aid his stumble forward and He slammed face first into the nearby brick wall, leaving an impression of himself in it. Having finished my roundhouse buck I rolled forward and to the left away from him and used my roll to twist about and put me in a standing position facing him. Frizzle was the closest one to him now in the middle of the street. She had taken the time to find that length of chain and wrap around her right forearm. My spotty vision finally returned to normal and I gave a nod to Dolly who was shivering in fright of that monster. Wait, where was Lit? He wasn’t on Dolly and he wasn’t on anyone else around here. I didn’t want to lose… was he even technically Dolly’s pet lightning tick? Was he smart enough to be considered a friend? We were acquainted with him and we couldn’t leave him behind at the very least. Abobo’s face, sadly enough, did more damage to the wall than the wall could ever hope to do to him. As he did more damage to the wall pulling himself from it looking as strong as he did a few seconds ago. Sami ran forward and chucked a square package that stuck fast to Bulkmon’s chest as he turned around and then immediately ran off back to where she came from. A second later the explosive device detonated sending Abobo back into the wall and straight through it with incredible force though the explosion didn’t look very powerful. I believe Sami said she specialized in shaped explosions? Well that put most of the force on Abobo and it didn’t even make him scream in pain. Once the dust cleared, aside from the scorched chest, Abobo stomped forward out of the hole in the building with a grin and roared in challenge. What was this guy made of again? “While I would normally appreciate a well-muscled behemoth, this one is going to kill us all!” Sami stated with a slightly hopeless lilt as she raised her DI-16 Rifle and fired a full burst of shots into Bulkmon. Most of Sami’s shots bounced off or became pitted into his flesh or whatever passed for flesh on informational beings like Digimon. Hauntingly enough, none of those shots even broke his skin and some were even currently falling out of his skin, they still must have stung at least… maybe that was just hopeful thinking from Dolly’s side of the bond. I know I didn’t have such positivity and haven’t had anything approaching overwhelming optimism like that in a while. He charged for Frizzle and she moved towards him and then feinted moving right and surged left to his right side where she raked her claws and he tried to swing his right arm forward to punch her and then back to knock her down with the back of his fist. She avoided it and lashed out with another fire ball that staggered him, notably Abobo was a bit singed but still wasn’t taking any serious damage. He thundered forward and Frizzle ran forward and looked prepared to jump, she instead went into a slide and went under the lunging Abobo whose masked face broke the street. I made a move forward as he picked himself up and he swung his left fist for me, I stopped short of his attack and fire a bark blast into his armpit flipping him onto his side and back. I leapt up above him and then started to rapidly trample him with thousand spears with each thrust of my legs pummeling his body doing slightly more damage to it. I managed to get off at least thirteen rapid fire stomps, but that still was not nearly enough to even bother this monster in the slightest as his tail flicked up striking me in the chin cracking like a whip as it did so. The blinding pain in my chin was agonizing and then, to my horror I felt something clasp onto my face. I started to wildly buck at the wrist of the massive clawed hand now on my face. “You know, your face is a very good weak point, I wonder how you’ll feel after I give you some free plastic surgery the hard way. You should have defended your pretty little face better.” Abobo had used the down ward slapping of his tail to quickly lift himself off the ground and onto his feet to catch me by the bleeding face with his right claws after I finished a single flip. His claws started clenching and my skull started making unhelpful creaking noises as the pain and pressure was starting to get to me. I heard Frizzle take a hit as Abobo shifted and heard as much as felt him punch her in the chest with his right fist. I could barely hear the sound of Canard firing his Puck Pistol as my skull was threatening to shatter. That’s when the pressure eased off entirely and the sight I saw was the stone bone club having just cracked his mask as I fell to the ground and staggering him greatly as it flew by. The club hit the wall of the building to my right and, defying all known sense of logic or physics to me, rebounded going double its speed. Abobo took a step for me as I tried to use some cheek wool to stitch my bloodied chin up before I lost anymore and went into anemic shock. It put the other side of his face into the path of the bone and knocked him off his feet with a supernatural amount of force as another crack formed in the mask that made up his face. I watched as the bone sailed back to a surprised Dolly who held up her paws and clenched her eyes shut, the bone’s momentum seemingly stopped the second it touched her paws and she didn’t even move from her spot. Also it didn’t seem like she used her momentum control to stop it either. Dolly blinked and then looked down at the bone and then looked up at me, I tilted my head in question to Dolly and she shrugged with thankful grin as she hugged the bone to herself. I don’t think either of us knew how the bone just did that, but I’m thankful Dolly threw it to save me. After a second Dolly pointed and sent me a image, I rolled to the side as Abobo stomped his left foot into and under the street, I could hear the vague sounds of screaming from below the hole in the street he just made as he ripped his foot from the pavement. I got onto my hooves and started backing away from him, his feral grin growing bigger as he saw I wasn’t running full tilt from this fight like I was about to die. I even inhaled through my nose as he pulled back his left fist, he was going for a lunging thrust and he was readying to fire his lighting. Horrified shivering, yep, frightened beyond belief, most definitely, my utter terror was like meeting an old friend that I hadn’t exactly forgotten. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion and kept inhaling. So what can we do? This Abobo guy was going to have too much fun mauling us and I really doubt we could outrun someone who is not only big and strong, but also ridiculously fast and mostly intelligent. We can’t hurt him, we can’t fight him, was this what it was like to fight a really well built brick wall head on? He then slung his left fist forward and… I exhaled and in a split second I managed to tackle Dolly out of the way of his lightning bolt by grabbing her with my front hooves as I passed her by. I flipped us so I would take the brunt of the impact on my wool and bounced off the street a few times before coming to a stop. “So you do have more in you… stop sandbagging already!” Thankfully, before Abobo could attack me or Dolly again, he was struck by two fireballs, an uncountable number of bullets, a few puck pistol shots and another bomb planted on his chest that knocked him onto his back again. He seemed to just ignore all that as he got up and lumbered forward with a grin, with a single flex any of the shots Sami fire popped from his flesh. “Hehahaha, this is a good day for a Bulkmon! People who have the will fight to the bitter end even with the kind of threat that Abobo presents!” Dazzle apparently go over her paralysis and had moved further up the building to the top of it. I noted Abobo aiming his horn for her and was about to shout a warning when the lightning on his horn winked out entirely as did any glowing on his electrified body. “What… where did all my electricity go, hey who’s doing that!” Abobo started to turn and looking around in a full circle, that’s when I barely spotted the little yellow dot that was Lit. “Who in the world is eating my power?! That’s my power, not yours!” Lit was at the base of Abobo’s neck, barely a speck of his blue legs could be seen under Abobo’s yellow spikes for hair and above the line of green spikes running up his back, blending in with the yellow skinned beasts coloring naturally. I could vaguely make out his tiny fangs digging right into the skin of that huge beast where said beast couldn’t reach him without running into an issue of flexibility. At some point the little tick had managed to jump onto Abobo, clambered up his back into a hard to reach position and then apparently bit into him to do something. They ate lightning energy right? Well at least we wouldn’t have to… was Abobo shrinking slightly or was that just my imagination playing tricks? In any case, bless Lit’s tiny little heart for trying to be helpful. “Urgh, if I can’t use my lightning I’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way, with my fists!” Abobo leapt and Canard had to stumble out of the way of his fist slamming down and then jump over the whipping of the tail into a roll. He continued to put flaming puck after flaming puck into the monster and I noted that the small bruises were starting to pile up from the impacts, unlike before when we weren’t having an effect… now we could and I believe Lit was to blame for that. “Dolly up the building, assist me and don’t get anywhere close to him.” I went onto my hind legs as Dolly fled up another building next to the one Dazzle was on and firing rounds off into Bulkmon actually causing moderately large bruising with each hit as she sang. “Keep hitting him, he’s being weakened greatly!” “Why is Abobo so weak all of the sudden?!” Abobo screeched, as he chose to target me, with a right haymaker. I brought up my left leg locked myself in place with my wool and immediately tore out a chunk of the street as I was bodily launched upwards from the impact coughing a bit from the force of the hit that had bypassed my wool. Yeah, trying to wobble counter him was a bad idea. He was immediately on me with his left fist coming straight on when a chain wrapped around his wrist and stopped him from smashing me in the face or sending me even further north up the street as I landed. Frizzle yanked him towards her and slashed up his arm with her left claw. With a flick of her right wrist managed to unwrap the chain and hop back to evade his left leg kicking out for her. She swung the chain and slapped him in the neck and that actually hurt and staggered him slightly. Now Sami’s bullets were actually digging into his flesh instead of bouncing or pitting it. “Dazzle, please don’t aim at his head, I need everyone to find a way to topple him!” I wasn’t about to give Abobo any clues as to Lit’s existence if I could help it. Even with Lit’s help, Abobo was still strong and fast, but not as big as he used to be as he shrunk down a full head in height. With his lightning powers nullified, a large chunk of Abobo’s strength was just simply missing, not that he didn’t have any to spare. -Sami- That large data dump gave me the energy and resources to generate bombs for days… just got to find another moment to do so when he was distracted. I’ve managed to stay mostly camouflaged so far, but I’m not going to test my luck by getting close to that lightning bruiser. -Dazzle- “…” I really don’t like using it, but we needed the fire power… also, it could give me an opportunity to land a Toxic on him if needed. I opened my mouth and prepared a Dragon Pulse. If he hurt Pom again... he’d know the fury of a dragon. -Canard- The pucks are starting to work now, that beast probably supercharges his muscular coding with electrical energy. Now I had to find something else to hit him with… the baseball bat? I picked it up and swung it… I was iffy on using a weapon from another sport, I believe the religion of baseball was the realm of the rats. Basically this would sacrilege if I was on Puck World and didn’t have a good excuse for wielding it, but I’m not on Puck World am I? I’m in a digital realm and no other Puckians are here to see this… I stowed my pistol. I took the handle of the bat into both hands and held it aloft, Frizzle had been wielding against those other Digimon early and swung it a few times to get an idea of its heft. I needed to trade this in for a hockey stick later, but otherwise it’d do the job. -Dolly- I stood on the roof looking on as Dazzle built up purple energy in her mouth, flicking the bone into the air and catching it. I watched as it sped up and no matter where I held my paw, the bone returned right to it as if by… didn’t the Kecleon guys say there were mystical objects and given where this was found… ah… I get it now. This bone is not only cool looking and attractive, it it’s a stone bone club that acts like a magical boomerang… that’s… actually pretty awesome! Not only that, but it actually sped up when thrown... I’m sure if you could hit it or knock it off course it wouldn’t return to the thrower, but otherwise it seems like it always will if nothing stops it from doing so and hitting a target doesn’t seem to do so. Which means… Now start building momentum in the bone experimentally, but give it no specific direction… and wind back like so to prepare to throw it. Ouch Pom just took a nasty hit, but it doesn’t seem as bad as could have bene like when she was hit in the chin. Is that Canard with the baseball bat Frizzle was using… idea! Here’s the wind up… -Pom- I ducked under massive fist, with a badly bruising right cheek and lashed my right hoof up into his chin and, surprisingly enough to me, staggered him back into Frizzle’s leaping counterclockwise tail slap that stumbled him further, but didn’t knock him over. Canard came in swinging his bat and the monster started to topple backwards, he managed to stomp the ground and sent us all flying back. Only seconds later did a large dragon shaped blast of purple energy slammed into his chest and actually put him onto his back with thunderous force. He started to sit up and that’s when something fast struck his face, I didn’t even see what it was that went flying at his face with how fast it had been going. He was going to get up again when one of Sami’s square bombs attached itself to his face and went off putting him on his back again and this time it didn’t look like he was getting up. One moment I could see cracks going through Abobo’s mask and it was coming close to shattering entirely from the explosion. The next was filled with a vortex opening up and Abobo disappearing into it, with a massive wave of Digi-credits coming off his form. Frizzle immediately began collecting the credits. “Darn it, I’ll be back, just you wait for me to find you lot again and we’ll settle this for real!” Abobo voice stated as the rest of his body disappeared into the vortex and left behind a sad looking Lit who had been happily and greedily sucking up all of Abobo’s lightning energy. I shivered at the thought of having to fight him again without having Lit on hoof to deal with the biggest issue of fighting him and sighed. Moving over to Lit, I picked him up and started to pet him gently. I even gave him a light loving hug and he squeaked adorable and cuddled against me too affectionately. If he wanted to be Dolly’s weird pet, then I was one hundred percent okay with that as long as she asked him first. -Dolly- The bone was smoking when it slapped back into my right paw, all momentum in the bone seemed to die when it did and I just blinked. “Whoa…” Huh, oh right, Pom wanted us to group up and was motioning to a store a few doors away from the fast food restaurant we entered! -Average looking shop, Pom- “Excuse me, but can we get one of those Backspace Systems?” I stated while glancing at Frizzle who nodded in agreement that she would pay for it. “Sure thing, don’t honestly know if I can trust it… it seems to be on the up and up though.” The frog with a musical brass horn wrapping around his neck said, I waited until he sat an object on the counter and Frizzle paid for it. “It doesn’t work on biologicals though, so really… it would probably be a good idea to have an exit strategy if you’re Digimon partner is having problems winning a fight.” I wasn’t going to correct him for his assumption… as I popped a Sitrus Berry into my mouth and chewed. My insides kind of needed it after that. “Now what?” I asked, I hadn’t really thought about where to go next from here. “We should check in with Jijimon to see if Bearmon made it okay.” Canard stated and took the object and started leading us back the way we came. The Digimon that ran off before were slowly starting to trickle back into the area to continue fighting. “We’re going to need more leads other than just owning one of these things, I’ll personally get a look at the coding and maybe get a second opinion on who could have possibly made this. We’ll plan our next move from there.”