-???, Buttina Stalliona-
“Hehehe, I hope you squeal really good…” Suddenly the covers were ripped from my body and I aimed my Boomacorn shotgun at the wrinkly guy with the claw gloves, a sweater and a fedora.
“Squeal how?” I asked in consideration.
“Why you’re in my realm now little diamond pony, a realm of nightmares where I will torture horribly to…” I raised a hoof stopping the raisin guy from talking.
“Are you a demon?!” I asked excitedly, I’ve always wanted a pet nightmare monster! “This is awesome!”
“Uh, what… I don’t think you quite understand the situation here, I’m going to hunt you down in your dreams and kill you in real life through them.” Said my new pet demon.
“Give me thirty minutes to eat an entire jar of peanut butter while fighting you...” I said with confidence and the entity glared at me and raised a pair of claws at me in a threatening gesture.
I put away my Boomacorn and pulled out my seldom used ‘Unicornsplosion’ shotgun... for when I want to make things extra glittery in as painful a manner as possible.
I loaded two shells and pumped it with a hoof to get a satisfying clacking noise.
-Thirty one minutes later-
“This can’t be happening to me!” The dream monster Freddy, which barely rated as a demon to Fred, had been turned into a tiny raisin with limbs. He was beating his tiny fists against the inside of the plastic peanut butter jar. I even poked holes in the jar lid to make sure they could breathe. “I’m the one that does the torturing, not the one that gets tortured! I’m supposed to hear your screams of torment, let me out of here so I can violently stab you!”
“Can I please keep him Ollie… please?!” I gave Oleander a watery eyed look and biggest cute Pandoran Bicorn look I could manage, of course my species was about as dangerous as everything else on the planet of Pandora so… you’d have to be an idiot to fall for it or friendly enough that the Bicorn wouldn’t gut you with their diamond horns.
“I have no idea why you would want a runt of a monster like that, but I can at least help keep him contained. As for keeping him… well….” Oleander tapped her chin with a hoof while thinking about it. “We’ll do a trial run at least. Just remember to feed him a bagel every other week and maybe parts of the souls of your enemies if they did something to upset you gravely. Never give him full souls and or souls of the innocent, they become idiots very quickly that way. First things first though, we’ll have to make sure he’s not a cenobite. Those guys are a bit annoying to tame and can get a little bit uppity if they think they have any kind of power over you.”
“Yeah, but they taste quite delicious!” Fred said as picked his grinning skulls teeth with a pin and belched out something that sounded vaguely like a documentary on how to cook pan fried bacon.
“This is exactly why we can’t have pets Fred.” Oleander said flatly in a dull tone.
“Yeah, because they are not awesome enough, LIKE OVERLORD SONG ENDER!” I rolled my eyes at Fred, then smiled at the two of them. “Also the guy Fred in his name and thinks he’s scary… he might have an ‘ACCIDENT’ soon.”
“I can hear the obvious air quotes Fred, is this going to be like what happened with the animatronics in that one pizzeria?” Oleander asked dully while giving Fred a searching look as he looked away while whistling.
-Digital Realm, Third Floor, Sami-
We can’t fight that thing, we don’t have the skills to fight that thing, but how were we going to avoid it?!
Was I hyperventilating, also it could detect noises at a distance… I tried to make my breathing shallower and slower to not be as loud.
I made my way to the door way over the light scorched desk and looked at Canard poking out of another room and he looked as worried as I did when the Black Widow started moving to us attack in melee or with its machine cannon. We both ducked back into the rooms we were taking cover in.
Pom may have jokingly stated she could use her Thousand Spears: Huo on it, but the machine would probably survive the attack if she avoided aiming at the pilot… I don’t think she has the nerve to hope that the Backspace System activates before she kills Hi-Vis Monitamon with a flaming spear of pure destruction. Also the repairs system would keep a Black Widow going even if I could constantly hammer it with rockets.
Pom was decent fighter, but kind of reluctant to hurt anyone seriously or else she’d be using those magical claws of hers constantly. Frizzle had the aggressiveness needed, but her turning into Growlmon wasn’t likely as she was as afraid of her evolution as much as I was of the possibility of becoming Sealsdramon. I liked my emotions where they were and Rookies could get strong enough to beat Ultimates without going through evolution, but it was exceedingly hard to pull off and requires ZIP compression file at the very least to hold all the extra data that evolution would create.
That Black Widow took on Hi-Andromon and managed to make him retreat. The only thing we had to compete with were numbers… another explosion went off and the toppled desk next to me took the brunt of the blast. We couldn’t stay in these rooms even if the IP wood was very good for a defensive position against explosives. The blade arms or gun on that machine would chew through the wood in short order, that or the Hi-Vis was going to keep hammering us with grenades until the structural integrity gives out on us and the floor collapses.
Is this why Digi-vices are given to kids? Was it that they were immature enough to run into danger and the Digimon has to protect them from absolutely everything, the kids in return will give the Digimon strength to digitally evolve from the partnership. We didn’t exactly have that kind of symbiosis here…
Pom and Dolly lost their Digimon partner to a virus specifically geared to destroying him should he break free of his collar. I’m Canards partner and he almost wanted nothing to do with me until a short while ago where he might have started seeing me as a friend or comrade. Frizzle and Dazzle are having some issues coming to terms with the whole ‘berserk abnormal Growlmon incident’ and have barely worked it out, they otherwise have a number of similarities as lizards that are both equally hazardous in nature with nice, if slightly different, personalities.
Also Dazzle’s Toxic was fast acting and I knew it needed to hit something living. I still wondered why hitting something alive was a requirement and why would something like that work on Digimon anyway?
-Origin Space, Arceus-
The answer to Sami’s thoughts was that Toxic works on bio data as well because Porygon exists, Toxic can affect digital beings and Porygon is a good choice as a go between for our worlds… as was a Rotom who could administrate just about any device and thus making it impossible for the Digimon to manipulate the local coding.
The only beings who can have complete immunity are Zangoose, some Snorlax or very rarely a Gligar, also if the poison affected everything else other than a living being… well my Pokémon worlds would be run entirely by just poison types now wouldn’t they? The existence of Pecha Berries and Suicune being able to cleanse large sources of water were backups, just in case something like that happened.
Balance is certainly a key to creating good worlds that won’t suddenly destroy themselves immediately due to some minor lack of foresight of an inexorably small detail that snowballs completely out of control to being a complete universal problem…
What could cause an imbalance like that, but would be cool to implement?
Hmm… paradoxical motorcycle lizards!
-Digital Realm, Server City, Fury Clan High School third floor, Sami-
The Black Widow skidded sideways pointing into my room and I could hear the whirring of the gun building up to fire.
I quickly got up and started running from my cover, bullets started shredding the desk and everything behind me and silently deciding that looking back any further would be a poor idea.
I hopped onto and across the desks at a frantic pace and shards of the classroom flew everywhere.
Quickly lunging for a nearby window, I threw my left shoulder into it and smashed through as round after round of heavy machine gun tore through the air after me for a few seconds. I felt one rip into my coding at my side as I twisted while falling out of the sight of the window.
“Backfire!” Hopefully I didn’t misaim this or the fall would definitely make me hurt even worse.
-Pom-
My right ear twitched it sounded like Sami just ejected herself out a nearby window. The following explosion, among all the glass and other materials breaking under a hailstorm of projectiles, sounded like her using her bazookas ‘backfire’ thing.
Hope she was alright.
“I don’t know about you, but going out the nearest window sounds like a good idea right about now Pom.” Yeah, there were three problems with that, Dazzle, Canard and Frizzle. Dazzle might be able to climb around on walls, but Frizzle and Canard? They’d be sitting… well metaphorical ducks aside from Canard and we couldn’t abandon them and Dazzle certainly wouldn’t abandon a friend.
“Dolly, I want you and Lit to get behind that machine or at least try to get behind it, also Lit… don’t climb around on it and stay with Dolly.” Though my words seemed to have confused Lit, he still nodded with a tiny determined look in four small blue eyes. “I’ll distract it for a bit and then run, you just need to get behind it and figure out something to do from there.”
I took a breath and then ran out into the hall as the machine was about to go for Frizzle or Dazzle, I loosed a quick bark buster beneath it and exploded it under the front of the machine. The machine rocked slightly and it immediately turned on me with a whirring noise starting up.
I inhaled and then jumped straight up and flipped to plant my hooves the ceiling, looking down I saw hundreds of projectiles passing by below and tried to raise up slightly to track me. I had noted that the front gun couldn’t aim up very well.
The slightly dark machine, as Sami had noted, was made for attacking things head on with lethal amounts of force. Its long range gun wasn’t exactly great at firing upwards beyond a certain angle as the machine was designed to fight things on the ground or possibly in the water given it was at the beach. The exploding orbs from the spinnerets could still reach me, so I would have to blow them up early if they were fired at me.
It raised on its hind legs and the front claws suddenly extended large glowing blades of energy. It swung its right claw and then it’s left upwards at me, forcing me to trot backwards along the ceiling as two slash marks formed in front of me.
I think I was getting used to evading in an inverted manner, also Thousand Spear: Huo was not a likelihood or even possibility here.
I trotted back a few more steps trying to make sure I had at least two hooves planted against the ceiling as I veered away from the blades of energy that slashed at me several more times.
Dolly chose that moment to burst out and forward, I saw a swirl of green wind boost her and the machine tried to stab its front right leg down on her. She swerved past it and managed to get behind the machine that suddenly blasted flames out all around it, thankfully Lit had stayed with Dolly as the machines outer shell became hazy with heat. Likely a defensive measure with Lit in mind to stop him from just gnawing at whatever energy sources this thing had.
A Fireball and Dragon Pulse rocked the machine backwards and instead of falling over, it toppled forwards onto all four legs and started firing hundreds of projectiles at Frizzle and Dazzle who immediately took cover in the same room.
I noted Canard pop out and fire a few pucks at the machine doing some light damage drawing fire his way, he was actively giving me time to backpedal some more and out of sight.
The machine was hit by a blast of lightning and a burst of wind from behind. Instead of turning around, its spinnerets rotated about and fired two grenades behind it. After a yelp, I heard an explosion and felt out for Dolly to get an idea of her position and health as I clambered through the upper part of a door into a different classroom. Dolly returned the feeling that she and Lit were okay.
Were all the doors in this school just open? Nobody bothered to close them at all? Still not the most important thing to be concerned about right now. Even if we could beat this machine, the pilot was still apparently a champion level Digimon and that was going to be as big a problem as they already were being with their vehicle.
I leaned out from the upper frame of the door and spat a Bark Buster in its direction, the liquid magic landed beneath the machine. I held off and on actually detonating it for the moment and ducked back as a spray of projectiles tore up the doorway.
I silently gave Dolly an idea of what I wanted, but did she have the energy for it?
“Aerora!” Dolly barked immediately, I could feel it drained her pretty badly and sent some energy her way to make up for the cost. The hallway was soon filled with powerful whipping winds that knocked the front of the machine upwards as the tornado erupted from beneath it forcing it onto its hind legs.
I detonated the Bark Buster into the bottom half of the machine, forcing it straight up as the wind continued to buffet and push it threatening to put it on its back. It started to lean forward slightly then several flaming pucks, a Dragon Pulse and two fireballs finished knocking it entirely over onto its back.
“Did that do it?” I asked, then I found out how it made the leap to the third story of this building.
Jets of flame erupted out of two of the legs and the machine flipped itself half way into a wall and then used its four legs to finish righting itself into standing right side up. All that effort to knock it upside down and do some damage… and it was already doing the fog thing and repairing.
“Any other ideas Pom?!” Shouted Dazzle as she ducked back and away from another spray of projectiles that tore through the doorway.
“That was the best I had. Aside from using my Thousand Spear: Huo technique and I can’t do that with any speed to save our live unless given the time to set up for it.” The machine was fully repaired by the time I finished that sentence. I had to wonder who built this thing and why, because someone definitely got their money’s worth out of it. “Does anybody else have any better ideas aside from hit it a lot to the point we overload its ability to repair itself? Now would be the time for them… because I doubt any of you want to pull out when we’re so close to getting at Etemon.”
“No, I’m not leaving without access to some way out of the digital realms!” Of course Canard was angry, I understood the sentiment of not being able to go home because of so many obstructive problems getting in the way. “Not this time, I’m not going to fail to get out of these realms again!”
It was a dream come true that Arceus even offered my group a surefire way home, only the caveat of our helping him was becoming much more convoluted. I even expected this when he asked us to just help out Aurora.
I’m sure Arceus had something to do with the way the digital realms continent was shaped given it connected to one of his worlds. Arceus could even get Canard home to his team, but what would it cost him to ask for that help?
“I can understand your frustrations Canard, I’m living them, but keep your head in the game and don’t cause any fouls the team can’t take!” I knew a few things about hockey, anyone who was Velvet’s friend or at least had a reindeer friend in general would. “We don’t want to lose anyone here due to impatience.”
-Canard-
I had checked the Digivice after Sami was blown out a window, it was keeping track of her health and she took a bad hit and was still in the fight. Didn’t know where she ended up though or what she was doing, but it was good to know she was alright at least. She was a soldier, she knows the dangers, yet her positivity was strangely common among all the Commandramon. Hearing Pom say that made me check the device again.
Pom was right I couldn’t afford doing something lethally stupid here. Another spray of bullets blew through the wall and got stuck in the desk I was ducking behind. I couldn’t stay stuck behind this thing or I could get cornered like what happened to Sami, I was going to suggest she make a few grappling hooks later even if she had an idea of other things she needed to work on. I could maybe even draw up some Puckian tech she could recreate.
I wouldn’t likely survive the three story fall unless digital world physics suddenly glitches entirely in my favor. Unlikely, the worlds I’ve been through haven’t exactly been the kindest to me and the puck pistol was the only physical object I still had one me and it was using regenerating digital ammo. It wouldn’t have anything to shoot once we leave the digital realms… another spray of bullets struck my cover.
If we could even get out, I’m going to die trying at least. I got out from my cover, picked up a chair and then moved near the entrance of the classroom I was in. I quickly heaved it out and it drew the fire from the machine which practically turned the chair into confetti. That thing was not going to run out of ammunition if it’s anything like what I’m using with my puck pistol, but… the grenade launcher was a vulnerable point.
“Pom, can you get Dolly or Lit to hit that explosives launcher as its launching explosives!” It was an idea at least. I’m starting to have a post-traumatic stress episode of having to fight through tons of Hunter Drones back on Puckworld here.
“Good idea as any, until the launcher repairs itself!” Pom answered
-Dazzle-
Still didn’t like using Dragon Pulse, but it was my most powerful attack. Frizzle wasn’t having much luck with her Pyro Sphere in doing a lot of damage either. We heard as much as saw Canard throwing the chair, we both leaned out and fired on the machine doing some negligible damage while it was busy blasting the chair into small chunks. Negligible in the fact that anything we did would be fixed.
My dimensional energy stores for specific attacks were going to run dry eventually, wished I could do a Z-move, grow giant or even had a mega evolution.
“Daz…” Frizzle’s high pitched voice startled me, I looked to her and she looked back at me and pointed at the Digivice with her right claw as her left settled on my right shoulder.
“Can you keep control of yourself?” I believed she could do it and well… that thing was not something I would want to face up close and personal and it was already encroaching on where Pom was. “I know you can do it, but I need to hear it from you.”
Hearing that machine skid to a stop and start firing, I looked to see it was aimed into the room Pom was in across the hall and two doorways down and then stopped after a second as Pom landing on top of the machine itself and then launched up to the ceiling before it could burn her when it blasted flames out of itself, she quickly started moving along the ceiling in the direction of Dolly and Lit. I noticed her turn to bark out a blob of energy that stuck itself fast to where the explosives launchers were as she moved.
Okay that was good, we had the machine in a pincer now… now if only we could actually capitalize on that. I turned back to Frizzle and she notice I was paying attention to her, she tilted her right claw left and right with a grimace. She was willing to digi-volve again, but didn’t want to and I wasn’t going to force her to.
“We’ll think of something Frizzle, you don’t have to.” She seemed almost relieved to hear me say that, almost because the machine turned and started firing on us making us duck back into the room. “Also Growlmon is a bit big for the space we’re currently occupying currently and I worry we won’t even get to the fourth floor if this floor ceased to exist at the rate we’re going.”
I quickly moved around the desk and shoved it in the way of the projectiles with Frizzle’s help, as they tore open the doorway and wall between us. The desk wouldn’t last much longer under the concentrated attack, Canard fired some pucks but that wasn’t distracting it from us. We’re the most dangerous, to the machine without Sami so it’s fair to focus us down first.
“Mmm…” Frizzle looked at me worriedly, we heard the sounded of lightning striking the machine again wonder why Lit would do…
What followed was two explosions in quick succession. She got up and looked out into the hallway and I followed to see the back end of the machine was heavily damage and it had flopped onto the floor. What followed was a third explosion that toppled it to the side reveling Sami was with Dolly and Lit.
Lit continued to blast focused lightning bolts at the machine.
“M-Loader… Okay… hit it with everything… you’ve got… because it’s not going to be down for too long!” Wonder what happened with Sami? She didn’t sound too healthy and was out of breathe as she fired another explosive into the back end. “We need to keep it… down… everyone… move to this side of it… quickly!”
Canard didn’t even hesitate to start firing pucks, Frizzle started firing Pyro Spheres into it and I followed up with Dragon Pulses. This wasn’t slowing down the rapidly repairing machine that lost a portion of its back end that was already quickly reforming, but we were making sure it stayed down longer. Hammering it wasn’t exactly going to work when it was fixing itself faster than we could break it.
I noticed Pom wasn’t around. Ah… I think we were doing the Thousand Spears: Huo plan.
Frizzle nodded to me in understanding as I blasted another dragon shaped wad of energy into the machine, what was that thing made of that it could take such a pounding?! A Metagross would have been knocked out by now if I was using fire.
Canard was able to move faster than us, because he didn’t have to focus energy through his mouth to attack. We carefully made it by the repairing machine that was quickly working on standing up and then kept hitting it from behind as Sami started fired again once we were clear of the blasts her attacks caused.
As we all grouped up, there were things I had to know.
“Are you okay and where’s Pom and Dolly?” I didn’t see them out here with us, but Lit was here.
-Sami-
“Setting up… and no. I’ll be okay though… not the first time I’ve been injured jumping out and… reentering a building… I was doing that with a rope the last time this happened though. Could have done without blasting myself… through a brick wall… on the second floor.” Yeah, that didn’t help my projectile wound in my code and I’m glad we Commandramon came with decent helmets, because I missed the window I had been aiming for. I planted my weapon against the floor. “B-loader.”
“B-loader, why would you do that and not another M-loader?” Canard knew how upset I was that it took me forever to retool my weapon to allow for M-loader again, B-loader was a confusing thing to do in this situation if not for one particular reason I would be using it.
“In room opposite… the Black… Widow came through.” As for Pom, well she was preparing her attack and we needed to stall for five minutes. We didn’t even know if she could move once she started building up for it. Hopefully he understood the meaning of next words. “Five minutes.”
“Ah… Dazzle get the desk from that room. We just need to distract, lure and survive the outcome! I would rather be fighting Rex Hunters right now.” Canard grumbled, yet he still entered a nearby room and dragged a desk out into the hallway and Dazzle stacked the other desk on top of that one. It was around this time that the machine was standing on its legs and quickly turning around, Lit, Canard, Dazzle and Frizzle kept hitting it.
I carefully propped my bazooka up on my shoulder and leaned out, I began waiting until I had a good shot… then depressed the trigger with all I had. The bread flew out in a less than solidified glob, fun thing to figure out that I didn’t always have to fire fully baked loaves.
The bread glob splattered into the machines sights and it immediately started blindly firing in our direction. Thankfully Canard thought to bring the IP Wood desks out or we wouldn’t be standing here as they soaked up a massive amount of projectile fire.
Looking out from behind the desks, I saw the machine flare with flames and that just baked the bread into the visual ability of the Black Widow. It was going to take more flames than that to finally clear its sight.
I heard Frizzle hum in appreciation at the sudden smell, probably remembering the tastes of tranquilizer laced bread I blast her mouth with when she was a Growlmon. Technically… I couldn’t remove the tranquilizer from the bread mix, I’m still wondering how it became hard coded.
The armor on the Black Widow might have been taking amounts of damage, but it kept repairing. I already had an idea what it was made from, but it couldn’t repair forever if we did massive enough damage to the composite digizoid in one attack. To that end Dolly and Pom would be getting a combined assault ready.
“I can’t believe this is a sentence I would ever need to say in my life, but… don’t hit that bread!” Canard shouted as the machine came blindly stomping for us on four legs and ignited two energy blades from its front claws.
“That’s far easier said than done Canard!” By the end of this Dazzle, this floor will probably be totally and utterly wrecked if we fail to bring the Black Widow down before needing Frizzle to evolve.
Dazzle aimed a Dragon Pulse at the front left leg and made it trip to stall its forward movement, Frizzle having blasted the front right at the same time.
Another burst of flames and the bread was slightly blackened, still hadn’t cleared its vision, but it was blindly slashing its blades forward while encroaching on us.
“M-loader.” I raised my bazooka and fired a rocket into its front right leg from my position right of the the desks. Dazzle and Frizzle were on the left.
Understandably Canard was quickly dragging more desks out of rooms behind us as the two in front of us soaked up the volley of projectiles, his puck pistol could only do so much to help and he needed something like an indestructible hockey stick to really help here.
Beneath me was Lit who followed up by blasting it with as much electrical energy as he could put into the attack, poor little guy had to be getting tired by now… because that was a lot of power he was putting out. I was beginning to wonder how many lightning bolts the little bug could make with that amount of raw power.
The Black Widow stood up and was charging for our position.
“Move!” I ran and vaulted over the desks behind us, noting Lit clinging to the top of my right booted foot as I did. Bits of desk went flying as they were swiftly shredded by the energy blade producing claws. Another burst of flames from the machine blackened the bread blocking its vision completely. “It’s going to burn through the bread entirely in the next burn or two!”
“Can’t you just add more and keep it blind?” Still not used to hearing Frizzle’s high pitched squeaky voice, but good question.
“I lowered the cycle rate on it while reinstalling my M-loader function, I didn’t think I’d need it as much!” Which means I wasn’t going to use it as often, but it was still handy to have for situations where I needed to blast something with liquefied bread or a fully cooked bread loaf. I was doing an M-loader right now and I fired a rocket into the machine dead center, it was about to get its vision back anyway.
-Canard-
Okay this was getting ridiculous, how much more did that thing need to be hit with before it would stop fixing the damage? Well Pom’s trump move could certainly do it, but I had some reasonable doubts.
To that end I started moving things into the path of that machine to slow it down, Lit and the girls were hammering it with everything they had and then some as they fell back.
Not really a good vote of confidence that it wasn’t slowing down that thing one bit. I just hoped Pom would be ready by the time we got to them.
-Dolly-
I looked out the window at the falcon guys and that metal raptor bird thing versus our guys out there, yeah… things weren’t going so well there. That metal bird looked more terrifying than the Camden Park giant goose. Don’t know where Oni guy was or what was exactly stalling him and I saw one of the Skate Scamps out there helping the fight, but we didn’t see any of them up here with us so Abobo might be coming soon and that’s a terrifying thought.
I turned to look at Pom who was trying to concentrate on the little ball of flame and she kept her breathing in a cycle as who hooves danced in circles around it. She was intently focused on what she was doing and I moved to looked out in the hallway. Ignoring the large ripped open hole across from us to look to my right.
I saw Canard trying to put things in the path that might slow the four legged death spider thing, the others were hitting that machine with a lot of attacks.
To think my part was the easy part in all this, I was just going to sync with Pom and support her attack. She already topped my magic up with a few strong hoof slaps to my board. Still didn’t know why I couldn’t do the impact thing to restore magic just by myself.
-Sami-
I quickly hopped over the barricade and ran, one last blast of flames and the machine could see again. I ducked behind a desk as projectiles sprayed forward and it continued to stomp forward towards our cover.
Canard was behind the doorway at the staircase going down and popping out to fire a few puck pistol shots, as was Frizzle shooting Pyro Spheres from the other side of the doorway. Dazzle had taken to the ceiling above the machine and was staying still so that she couldn’t be heard.
It knew where we were with its sound sensors before clearing its vision, if he’s relying on vision now then Dazzle could find a moment to get the drop on Hi-Vis when he lost his vehicle.
I shifted to the left popped up and fired a rocket, the machine quickly blew it out of the air under a hail of projectiles as I ducked back down behind cover.
Lit took the opportunity to blast lightning in a brilliant flash that stopped it from spraying my position with hundreds of projectiles. He hopped onto me and pointed to the room Pom was preparing her surprise for the Black Widow.
I quickly ran for the doorway and dove through it as hundreds of rounds ripped through the air behind me.
“Why won’t any of you just die, most of you are biologicals and a few rookie levels!” We’re all survivors and too attached to living Hi-Vis.
I got up from my prone position and looked to Pom whose focus snapped to me for a half second before returning to swirling the ball of fire and she started sweating, she couldn’t hasten up the pace of her attack looked understandably freaked out. Dolly was holding a paw out next to her and waiting, as Frizzle and Canard held Black Widow’s attention with constant fire and pucks.
“It’ll hopefully…. be enough… M-loader.” It’s always a good idea to have a rocket prepped, yeah I needed a good medic. Hopefully Hea-Gatomon was close enough to put me back together again after what I was about to pull. “After Pom hits…. It… we blast it… with whatever we have! If that still isn’t enough... and it starts repairing just book it for the fourth floor.”
“You’d think Etemon would at least come to see what’s going on with all the noise we’re making!” Yeah, it made one wonder Canard.
-Fourth Floor Principal’s Office, Etemon-
“Zzzzz….” Open mouthed, snoring loudly and still sleeping with dreams about being famous despite everything happening outside and one floor down.
-Third floor, Sami-
I shoulder my bazooka and slung my rifle about into my arms. Time to help draw some attention… and lure Hi-Vis into position. Suicide missions had always been my bread and butter even if I already was hurting pretty bad. Never been on a mission where I wasn’t hurt, so used to pain emotional and physical… it makes being alive feel more special to me when I could appreciate the danger I was about to put myself in.
I ran out of the doorway and sprayed the machine with pointless rounds from my Digital Infantry Rifle, to little effect of course, I ran to the left and leapt over the stream of projectiles as they swept towards me and continued firing back. I felt my tail get clipped once or twice.
“Come on, if you can’t deal with a common Commandramon, then you’re really bad at your job and I doubt you could really be Ultros’s number two in anything other than a toilet!” I taunted and then rolled into the gaping torn open hole the Black Widow made coming into the school and made for the back right corner of the and sat down exhausted.
This room had seen better days, before the large four legged robotic tank tore through here. I propped my rifle up at my side as I sat in the corner breathing roughly and calmly brought my bazooka up. Come on Pom, have it ready in time…
“Hmph… just for that you’ll be the first one to be taken out!” Yes, my lure was successful in getting Hi-Vis to focus on me! The machine appeared in the gaping hole and turned about to the right to take aim at me. I fired a rocket into its front left leg toppling it slightly to lock it in place. “Really, that’s the last thing you’re going to do? Stumble me? You obviously aren’t using that Backspace System you bought, hope you enjoy the loss of everything that makes you, you.”
“Oh… I wouldn’t know about that…” Fireballs and pucks continued to dent or damage the armor that just fixed itself constantly. Its little wonder Hi-Andromon had trouble with this thing, his kind of Digimon were a bit one note in combat tactics… not a very hi-tier Mega if you lose to a champion in a self-repairing tank with good tactical ability.
A grin passed my lips as I heard the heavy machine gun revving up to start firing.
“Thousand Spears… Huo!” I heard a bark that sounded like ‘aero’ sound off along with the word ‘Huo’ and the world lit up and became incredibly hot as I reflexively closed my eyes and felt a lot of pain. It felt like the sun was in the room with me for a few seconds.
Weakly opening them again I saw the back half of the machine had been totaled and I felt myself being lifted from the floor.
Canard?
The hole in the classroom was much bigger now and slightly melted from what I could see.
“Can you hear me, come on Sami, focus on me... it shot her several times before your attack hit Pom!” Yeah… I can hear you Canard… ow… okay world back in focus and several holes in my torso’s coding. So much for bullet proof vests… then again they weren’t rated for cannon fire from vehicles only fire from other Commandramon, which it was admittedly good for because we did accidentally shoot each other a lot starting out. “She needs help.”
“Well she’s not going to…WAAHHHH!” Hi-Vis stated as he landed from ejecting out of his vehicle and wielding his lightning jutte, only to be blindsided by a Dragon Pulse and blown out the third story hole in the room by Dazzle.
Dazzle dropped from the ceiling and stared out the hole for a few seconds. That had been an excellently timed sneak attack.
“We should get moving, he’ll be back soon. I seriously doubt that was enough to take him out.” Then Pom looked towards the machine and I started wondering what she was staring at. “Are you kidding me, it can still fix itself from that kind of damage?!”
The Black Widow was repairing itself despite missing its back legs, even rebuilding the portion of its rear that had been melted entirely into slag… so once its pilot got back...
“I suggest… running for… the Fourth Floor…” I saw a bit of loose coding float out of my mouth when I coughed.
Okay… that wasn’t good. This hurts so much…
“Canard… we’ll go after Etemon, you take Sami and find her help.” Yeah, like Canard was going to give up on…
“Right, come on Sami, Hea-Gatomon was supposed to show up out front to help the Skate Park Scamps if things went south right? I’ll get you to her!” I was cradled in Canard’s arms… what? “Shock… blacking…”
-Pom-
Okay Canard was running down the nearby stairs with Sami, the machine was repairing itself and the pilot could have hopefully been blown far enough away that he wouldn’t be back in a timely manner. Our collective lucks wasn’t anywhere near that good.
Which is why the rest of us were moving full tilt for the fourth floor stairway as Canard went to get Sami taken care of.
It wasn’t a victory, because once that Hi-Vis guy got back, we’d be looking at the business end of that machine again once it’s fully functional.
I stepped one hoof onto the fourth floor and knew nothing should be in our way aside from Etemon now, the top floor was empty too.
-Principal’s Office, Etemon-
“Huh? What’s going on…? We must be under attack, I’ll mosey on up to the roof and see what is happening around here.” I woke up to a bunch of noise and someone setting off my alarm at the top of the fourth floor stairs. The Kamemon probably have it handled.