-???, Oleander-
“Honestly now…” I grumbled as I stared at the giant four legged machine starting to aim a railgun at me.
I just got in close and brought my wanzers giant keyblade around and ‘open’ a hole in its weapon magazine and quickly skated backwards. The ammo soon cooked off and exploded when Buttina fired an insanely accurate missile into it. The entire rail gun arm on the machine was rendered a mulched pile of scrap.
“Oleander, you’re probably better fighting without a mech, let’s do this Iron Mantis WOOO, THE IRON BEAR MODEL HAS NOTHING ON THIS THING!” Announced Buttina, who was in a large green four legged, two armed, walker and was wielding two high powered 'Mech Sized' submachine guns and two rocket launchers to constantly destroy everything around her under a hail of non-stop fire.
Nothing in the area was safe from Buttina, who was going to need to reload in the next five seconds… again.
“Oh come on Ollie, THIS IS FUN!” As he said that Fred piloted his own machine into firing a pile bunker off into another machine, felt a little sorry for the poor soul in that one instantly dying.
“Fred that huge pile bunker is extremely overcompensating.” Despite my bland tone I heard Fred laughing happily. “Also I’m the only one with a reload pack here, so please go easy on the ammunition guys. I only have about three reloads left and we started with twenty packs of ammunition… two minutes ago.”
“So?” Fred returned as his walking tank with one weapon walked into a hail of fire, he of course had a skull painted on his machine… his skull to be specific. “YOU WILL BEWARE THE NAME OF FRED!”
Did Fred just forget his actual name or was he trying to make Fred a terrifying name in and of itself?
“*Bark Bark*” Yes, Overlord Song Ender, you are a good boy… still don’t know how you were effectively driving a rocket artillery though. A few tanks just went up in powerful explosions, apparently he figured out a way to increase the power of the rockets with his ‘noise’ energy.
“Why don’t we have things like this in my universe, aside from those crappy AI driven hunks of junk!” Why did Wrex get bored and started following us around again? He was driving a mech with a shield and shotgun slowly beginning to charge forward. I could already feel his grin as he was about to ram into a much smaller mech.
“Guys we’re being paid in resources for the Front Mission here, goodness knows if the Armored Core of these things hadn’t been found to be rigged with explosives by Buttina we would all have moderate injuries right now.” This world was actively making us use the shields from Buttina’s home dimension of Planet Pandora. “In any case, large walking machines are not my specialty.”
“Well excuse me for not being able to use my ride armor here and taking out a loan to buy all this cool stuff.” Buttina was lucky that the ring floating off my world had at least fifty hangars on it or else we wouldn’t have a place to even store these things after we were done on this world. “All enemy forces, we are the Mech Warriors supporting team, please retreat or else you’ll receive a rocket enema. I’m not waxing poetic here, I will inevitably get one up your backsides just to prove a point!”
These machines would definitely be decent for Kaiju worlds at least, space capable, ocean certified and could take quite a pounding. Sure magically reinforcing the armor was cheating everyone else here on the battlefield quite a bit, but I wasn’t about to die in a nuclear fire.
"Kityan here, bringing extra ammo to the battlefront!" Our ever helpful bipedal cat android announced as she drove a truck forward.
-Pokémon Realm, Ransei Region, Illusio, Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Psychic Prison Compound, Sleepless Cellblock, Dazzle-
I sighed, it wouldn’t be long before they tried to force me to go to sleep again. I was being forcefully resilient, but I wasn’t going to hold out forever. Thankfully something important apparently drew the warden’s attention away from me, because even he was impressed by my resilience even if I was taken out by Psychic Type attacks to be caught in the first place.
Certainly didn’t want to end up like Dolly in getting cut up and or tortured in my sleep.
The sound of shrieking metal drew my attention to the nearby wall and I defensively backed up while flaring the vents on my body as a strip of the wall was pulled revealing…
“Dodo?” He warbled in a friendly tone and he didn’t even seem to be in poor spirits, Shanty, Pom and the others must have come for us immediately after we got caught. He was in the process of eating the walls… that didn’t… actually… “Keep going Dodo, eat us a way out!”
Dodo didn’t seem to have anything better to be doing at this moment as he tore out another strip of metal from the wall in a loud agonizing screech as it tore and buckled under the force of his beak, it makes me wonder when the guards would actually move to do something about this.
I then heard similar screeching and wailing from another nearby cell… it sounded like a Chimecho was trying to mimic the noise? Oh… interesting, we had some help here and they were going to pretend it was them causing all the noise.
After a guards checked on us they quickly left after giving the Chimecho a warning.
As soon as I was free I would start working on free the others on my way out of this cellblock, I’d be making a few friends on the way since I couldn’t handle Psychic Types very well without Frizzle to cover me.
Hopefully Frizzle was doing okay.
-Beyond the Gates of Babylon, Frizzle-
By my dilated anime sized pupils! The bread here was so magical, it helped me gain a metric ton of energy… also my body condensed to the point that I didn’t need digital energy to really fight.
Though I was having problems trying to figure out how to expand the space in my Digivice Home to keep it all.
The bread here was of an impossibly ethereal quality… wait… what was I supposed to be doing again?
Oh right, I’m supposed to be finding that device stolen from Pom and preventing Gilgamesh from using the most powerful weapons here against them!
I quickly got up and scrambled to go do what I was supposed to be doing before I got distracted by all the perfectly preserved treasures that is bread!
-Cerebrum City, Upper Tier, Psychic Prison Compound, Reception Entrance, Dolly-
Sitting behind the desk with the out cold and upside down warden hanging from a web. Lit wasn’t doing anything to the guy, but he looked like he wanted to.
Aside from that I was concentrating on my paw, trying to get it to glow with energy so I could hover off the ground, lash out with blades of wind or shoot wind bullets on a moment’s notice.
Wasn’t even going to think of the wind chains or portals thing yet, didn’t seem probable to me outside the dream. Not that Pom and I were doing much to that Gilgamesh guy before my half alive little bro really let it rip into him.
We’ll make sure to make you fully alive again Dormarch…. somehow…
“Why can’t I just have this ability, possibly without saying ‘Aero’? I can glide, jump ridiculously high, run on any surface and do incredibly crazy things with momentum without needing to shout a magic word, why not this one thing?” I also had that thing where I can evade with a flowing motion or do really weird things if I see a triangle. Didn’t even know what the triangle represented, but it always reeked of a single moment to do something.
Where did the ability of ‘Aero’ even come from? I close my eyes and tried to recall the feeling… taking up a meditative position like what Deepak would do.
‘The sound of ninety nine puppies running for the park, the breeze on the air, the smell of nature and civilization together, the feeling of little paws crawling on ones back, cuddling, hugging, a whirlwind of love that never leaves one alone no matter separated by distance. It was a blowing breeze before the veritable…’
A squeaking sound made me open my eyes and look to Lit who was staring at me for some reason.
“I’m okay buddy, just trying to figure something out while we’re waiting for anything to happen.” Now how did I learn ‘Haste’ again and what did it mean to me?
‘The rush of freedom, the need to move quickly to protect those you love, the need to never be left behind, the need to faster or else something bad will happens, the need to react to how things quickly change around you at the drop of a hat. Our battle with that strange clock eyed bipedal bull, I think I learned how to do haste from watching it, time… dogs usually don’t have much of that. Since I met Pom my lifespan is apparently going to be expanded so… I have all the time in the world, but I still need to make ‘Haste’ when the moments warrants me to take action. Aggression, the need to be proactive, the need to take action, a need for speed.’
‘Haste’ and ‘Aero’ seem so much like a part of me. I was always running around like the wind trying to make sure puppies were happy. Considering how miserable I was before the family grew, I didn’t like seeing others feeling down. I’m not exactly being the big sister for a lot of puppies anymore. I can still do ‘Aero’, despite having ‘Aerora’… what don’t I have here? Well at least I knew I couldn’t use magic that required me to bark out loud, because when that psycho cat got me by the throat, I couldn’t use my magic.
My magic is definitely related to my heart and my voice, I know that’s a part of it. Maybe I would have more spells if I broadened my horizons somehow. Maybe lightning, because I liked to move lightning fast? Maybe I can learn that from Lit.
A panicked squeak, brought me out of my thinking. I heard something coming from the entrance and were going through the entryway and could lock the passageway out of the prison.
Hey Pom, permission to take care of an incoming problem? They are coming through the entryway and might lock it up with we don’t take them out.
I was quickly given the go ahead to do as I see fit as long as it wasn’t too much trouble.
Okay Dolly, you and Lit have this, you didn’t recently nearly die getting the life choked out of you because you couldn’t do anything to a powerful psycho cat.
What came through the entrance was a Sigil things, its eye sweeping about as Lit and I stayed behind the desk.
“I’ll draw its attention, remember attacking from a distance on these guys doesn’t work Lit.” I still liked be loud, but the opportunities to shout haven’t come as often as they used to.
The Sigil-snitch came in through the entrance on the right from the desk and I was going to try and leap at it.
Preparing myself, I leapt onto the desk and then lunged at the floating spherical bodied monster and swung for its head with the bone in my right paw. It floated out of the way and I certainly had its attention as I entered a hover state and prepared to throw the bone, Lit looked to be waiting for an opening to blindside it and the little fuzzy guy really liked doing that.
The one top eye of the monster glowed and so did the two eye like markings on its belly and I saw a circle of darkness and purple build up around me.
“What the?!” I immediately slammed into the floor a second later, my chin was bleeding slightly and I was hurting. The tips of my ears were positively glued to the floor.
“AGhhh…” I yelped out as my ability to hover was suddenly taken away from me, my body was now under crushing pressure and I tried to jump, but simply couldn’t everything just became so heavy all the sudden.
I saw the eyes on it glow as it prepared to do something when Lit slammed into its side, hurting it a lot and drawing its attention entirely to him.
Lit fired an electrified web and the Sigil thing didn’t get hurt at all when its body glowed, however the glare from the flashing strength of the attack from it blinded it for a few seconds.
As Lit engage the Sigil thing, I was trying to move.
Trying being a keyword because my body felt like lead and I was being crushed under the weight of my skateboard across my back and my helmet, not to mention the stone bone was crushing my right paw against the floor.
I gritted my teeth and managed to slowly slide my right paw out from under the bone, why was everything so heavy… was my body really this weak?!
Well yeah, my body was still that of a normal Dalmatian. So of course I was going to have problems of size and strength, but come on!
Lit only had one move that was effective against the Sigil thing and it was avoiding his fast lunging attacks by flying up towards the ceiling and then I saw something, when Lit tried to lunge at the Sigil while glowing a green color he suddenly slapped against the floor when the Sigil’s eye glowed and a familiar circle of black and purple entrapped him too.
What was this move that the Sigil thing using, think Dolly… Pom often asks about what these monsters are capable of… oh right… POM!
…
While Pom seemed really kind of busy at the moment, she still managed to give me a reminder and was currently in a fairly stressful situation. She believed in me and that the two of us could handle one monster.
The move was called ‘Gravity’ that Cot-on and the Pony Panthers told us about? Apparently it wasn’t an attack move, but then again it might not be an attack move to the monsters of this world, but I wasn’t a monster of this world.
Lit was prevented from jumping at the Sigil and was quickly spraying the monsters body and eye stalk with webbing while scuttling around on the floor as quickly as he could while drawing fire when I couldn’t move. I could barely move, how was he doing that under all this pressure when he was smaller than I was?
“Aero!” A green swirling wind kicked up around the Sigil thing, did absolutely nothing to it aside from make it blink from the dust in its eye or eyes… couldn’t tell if the belly eyes were real or not. Right my ranged attacks, even my magic apparently, didn’t work. “Come on… not like this Dolly… Pom and everyone else is counting on us to hold the entrance.”
This ‘gravity’ was a crushing me, no matter how incredible my magical abilities ‘gRaViTy’ has always brought me back down to the ground and my body was always under its effects.
“Wait…” Why is whenever I thought the word ‘Gravity’, it seems to pulse in my head like… also did it just become uppercase all of the sudden?
I could feel a broad grin building on my face.
What did I think of ‘GRavity’ and how does it relate to my heart?
‘What goes up, must eventually come down. There’s a gravity in the bonds of family and I was pulled towards Pom when I felt her constant downer nature. I had been a downer when I lost my mother, been there plenty of times. Trying to keep a constant positive attitude is rough. ‘GrAvity’ is the stuff that pulls us together or slings us apart… like…. stars…
Swirling, sea of stars, so much life… ninety eight stars and one floating slightly away to join another group of other stars, no matter how distant, those stars remained connected. I might have been pulled into Pom’s ‘GraVITy’, but she was also pulled into mine. ‘GRavItY’…. connections… stars… bonds… pulling… twisting… all intertwined… all connected.
My brother was a space case, but I was about to become one myself as I thought of him, I was always gravitating towards Dylan because he needed to loosen up, like a lot, and I wanted Pom to loosen up too. Couldn’t do that if we were dead, I could feel a slight surge in my heart.
Like Dormarch, I would always keep those in my heart from drifting away with its pull even if my memories are completely scorched. My heart would never let those memories be forgotten if my body forgot.
I could see the stars…
I could once again feel them reflecting in my eyes, sparkling in the dark and the feeling of the moon as me and Pom howled to it. The image called to me, I felt an echo of that howl coming back to me.
There were SO many stars around my heart and one among them started glowing brighter than the others.
That one star, the one a little separate from the other ninety eight… that one… it was me.
“GRAVITY!” My eyes narrowed as I felt most of the magic in my body drain and ignite something, suddenly the crushing weight disappeared from me and Lit as I followed my instincts.
Lit was looking to me as I raised my right paw towards the ceiling and aimed my sight at the Sigil monster.
I instinctively clenched my paw, as purple and black colors swirled in it, while drawing it towards my body.
Like the swirls of darkness that appeared around me when the Sigil thing used Gravity against me, the purple and black aura wrapped the Sigil and it didn’t seem worried. At least it wasn’t worried up until the energy condensed and it smashed into the floor with a thunderous force that shook the reception area while leaving a massive crater in the middle of it.
“We are all affected by it…” I breathed out in relief, it really took quite a bit of magic out of me to even do that. Yet my version of ‘Gravity’ versus it’s version of ‘gravity’ seemed to be entirely different somehow… mine was better.
Sigil thing taken care of, Lit scuttled up to me and squeaked worriedly while raising his front legs.
“I’m… hurt… but I’ll be okay.” I gasped out as I tried to stand up and flopped over… okay that took a lot of out of me, far more than I previously thought.
Now that I know how to do it…. it seemed it wouldn’t be as hard as my first use of it. I couldn’t feel how to use this spell any differently than the way I just did, but I’m still hopeful for more from it. It was definitely a straight out crushing force attack, given said attack just created a large crater in the floor.
I felt something gently pressing itself against my chin and I hissed at the pain and then my eyes focused on Lit being next to me and he was carefully wrapping my chin up with his little legs and webbing. He squeaked when he noticed that I was paying attention to him.
“Heh… you’re an awesome little dude. I’ll be fine, just give me some time to get back to a hundred alright.” I got a merry little squeak as his bandage stopped the bleeding, my tail started wagging. “Way to stay in the fight, until I figured something out Lit. Also we can’t rest yet… there might be more like that incoming.”
Hmm… Skateboard, Trampoline, Rubber Chicken… maybe...
-Dark Type Cellblock, Shanty-
The evolved Woobat with visible eyes are being a bigger problem to sneak around, they be hanging upside down on the railings along the walkways of the three floors containing the Dark Types.
Most of the patrolling guards are being towards the entrance, so I could start freeing up some of the guys from the back and slowly build up enough free Pokémon to be taking down all the guards and be causing a major problem.
None of them be looking up though, which is being a good thing for me. Most beings don’t be doing that nearly enough. At least I was being fine crawling slowly along the ceiling with no sudden movements.
Having reached the far back wall, I be sliding down to the bottom row of cells silently, Dodo seemed to have found Dazzle and was slowly working on a prison break from his side of things. So that was being one less thing to worry about here as I pulled my cane scythe from my back and looked at the various doors.
I quickly be placing the end of the hook into one of the locks and started to quietly work it, the being in the cell suddenly be looking up at me as my tongue stuck out the side of my mouth.
Psychic Types apparently be having brain melting locks to deal with. There was a certainly difficult to it, but after having felt it out… I am finding a few issues with the lock.
The issues were that the locks on these doors were being far too easy to open, I am of the current belief that there was being no keys for these locks from what I was gathering as I wiggled the edge of the blade I wielded up and down a bit.
There were a few things about the locks that be making them too entirely easy to pick if you be knowing what was up with them.
Holding some of the insides of the lock open with the tip of the blade, I drew some water from one of the canteens I be carrying and shoved that water into the lock.
Afterwards a bit of work, I be pulling the water back out and stowing it back in my canteen and there was barely a clicking noise to signify that anything happened. I slowly removed the blade to not be making much noise.
Now that I be knowing how to open these locks, this would be going really fast. Since these Psychic types be using their minds to manipulate the locks, they need to at least be able to see somewhat into them and could not entirely close them off entirely. However the lock would not open for a key, but one could make a makeshift key with energy or something else, like Pom or I could, to open them.
Looking over my shoulder I saw the Psychic Types were watching the areas around the entrance, so none of them noticed the first door being slid open and out of it be coming a creature with a bipedal wolf like appearance.
Its eyes were sharp and it looked to me and then motioned to the other cells as it faded into the nearby shadows and out of view, it seems I just be freeing a trickster and making a friend given how he be grinning at me in a friendly manner as he disappeared.
I immediately set out for the another cell while being careful not to make noise, in this cell there seemed to be a quadrupedal black wolf who smirked when he saw me open the cell in a quarter of the time that it took me to do the previous one.
All the locks the Psychic Types had here were being the same, they would require some form of energy and the ability to manipulate the insides in a specific way to open them. Were it anyone else other than Pom or me, they’d be having a lot more trouble with this unless they were also being a Psychic Type and one would be wondering what Psychic Type would want to free Dark Types?
I be thinking the rebels for one, but they never be getting this far with how many guards be in the way.
-Hallway between Dark Type Cellblock and Reception, Pom-
After I had lost track of Shanty’s movement we decided to check on the Golducks to make sure they were still out of it and out of the way. Shanty had managed to get beyond the front loaded guards and I was currently glad Woobats and their evolved forms were more all-nose than all-ears like Zubats seemed to be.
If Shanty were in trouble we would be hearing at least a commotion. So far it seemed like Shanty was doing fine.
My ears, which were tied up at the back of my head by my wool, twitched as I felt a gentle shifting in the air, I suddenly was on high alert when a figure floated around the corner to look at us with something like dull surprise.
“Well, well, it looks like there actually was a serious problem here… or else I wouldn’t feel the voids in this area of our humble asylum stirring. Now where is the warden you’ve likely dealt with already hm?” This was another Meowstic, however her demeanor seemed more provocative and far more malicious than the previous warden. Also her appearance was vastly different from the male Meowstic, being more feminine for one, she was mostly of white fur with blue hair on her head, along with blue around her neck like a scarf and at the end of her limbs and the base of her otherwise white fluffy curled tails. “Hope you’re not here to free the Espurr warden of the sleepers, he refused to work for Gilgamesh and so we stuffed him in several of the Dark Types in our high security section to suffer. It would be quite unfortunate if you troublemakers somehow freed him. The both of you simply look ever so delicious… please, let me put you to sleep so I can enjoy your bodies.”
Okay, Bentley didn’t account for multiple wardens, but it sounded like one of them was someone we should really set free if we wanted help with the sleepers. So we were still on the right track if we could defeat this Meowstic.
If this one was as strong as the last one, then Favela and I were going to need to coordinate a bit as this was going to be a major issue.
Where was Lit when we needed him? With Dolly and actively dealing with a Sigilyph at the moment… okay couldn’t rely on them to come help us.
Also I know some Pokémon were predatory, but this one seemed to definitely be exceptionally ‘Predatory’ with the way she was eyeing us. I obviously didn’t think that means she wanted to eat our flesh, I shuddered with revulsion at the implications.
I was slowly inhaling, but I could only hope Favela could think of something if this doesn’t work like last time… in fact.
“Are you okay?” I asked towards Meowstic and Favela knew where this was going the moment I asked this given the bush goat nodded.
“Why would you…” The Meowstic
“Buster Wolf…” I spun and launched forward and struck a barrier.
“Quick Guard.” The female Meowstic laughed airily, I had slung both my hooves forward only to find them blocked.
“Cross!” Two explosions erupted inwards sending the Meowstic flying backwards, this was followed by Bomb Seed Barrage from Favela.
“You’ve definitely pissed off the wrong Meowstic and you made my makeup run.” What little mascara or lipstick there was on the Female Meowstic Warden to even ruin in the first place.
“Oh she did far more than that…” Favela commented dryly and that’s when the Meowstic noticed the claw marks on her body and that she was bleeding.
“OH YOU, HOW DARE YOU RUIN MY DELICIOUSLY PERFECT FORM!” This fight was inevitably going to draw the guards of the Dark Type Cellblock as both of the Female Meowstic’s curled tip ears raised up fully.
I was slammed into the wall to my left, my wool along the left side of my body reflexively inflated taking the entire brunt of the impact.
I retaliated by firing off a Thousand Spears from my right leg and was dropped to the floor when the blast of air struck the Meowstic in the head and forcefully caused her ears to fold.
After a second of being hit with some Seed Bombs, the Meowstic managed to shake herself back into attacking me with a huge blast of mental energy.
I quickly rolled to my right as a mass of energy blasted my way and scorched a fairly large hole into the wall.
Yeah, this one seemed much more aggressive and just as powerful.
“Favela… watch our backs!” I was quickly standing and went into a Cow Kempo stance, I really needed to hit this Meowstic hard and a flying buck to the head would do it.
I just needed an opening.
-Sleeper Cellblock, ???-
“Come on, come on…” Something thankfully drew the warden away and there weren’t actually any guards in this cellblock, but what she had been doing to some of the sleeping bodies was rather quite reprehensible in my eyes. At least Changelings didn’t do that kind of stuff when we had captives who couldn’t fight back. “Yes!”
I had managed to get at least one of them free from the dream prison, the Araquanid slowly blinked its eyes dazedly as it sat up.
It suddenly became alert and was about to attack, when I quickly transformed back from being a red lipped Wobbuffet to being just myself.
“Wait, wait, it’s me, Ocellus!” At seeing that it was me, the Araquanid immediately calmed down and looked around, he quickly encased his head in a bubble of water and then got up while looking to me. “Watch that entrance for our allies or enemies. I’ll try to wake up some of the others!”
Nodding, the Araquanid set off to do just that as I started on trying to wake up another Pokémon.
Mind powers were a little hard to use, but I had enough Psychic potential to wake up a few Pokémon and was using my magic as a guideline for psychic powers. Magic and psychic abilities were definitely two vastly different things entirely, but my ingenuity made up for the gap. I hoped that I never became Chrysalis and used mind manipulation, much less outright control.
This prison compound was about to become one hectic center of a massive fight. I already knew Pom was likely here, I could feel her anxiety skyrocketing from here and it was actually kind of soothing and calming.
It was unfortunate news that I had to tell Pom that Gilgamesh took Smolder. I already had an idea as to what Gilgamesh was going to do with Smolder too… and as her girlfriend I didn’t like it one bit.