-Moon Cell Realm, Outer Layer, Dike Land, Far Side of Cape City, Pom-
I just sat here on the docks listening to the sound of the waves lapping against them and was happy to take my three hour break away from everyone, even Dolly and Dormarch weren’t here.
The only one here was Dodo and he was just sitting there quietly watching me take in the fresh breeze at the docks.
The dike was fixed, the water has been receded and most importantly we did find the NPCs that could fix all the damage. They were in the sections of the city that were entirely flooded over with ocean earlier in the battle before we could even reach the territory. Said NPCS had been trying to contact Moon Cell about performing their functions, but the problem is that Moon Cell told them to wait for the intrusion to be dealt with. The exact wording is why we were able to utilize their services, Moby Dick did intrude and cause the issued as much as we were an intrusion ourselves.
Things were dealt with, we survived the experience, with some good logic we restored Cape to its former glory before we started our Counter Invasion. Now we had control of the place, but I really doubted we could hold it if we were attacked now.
…
Why hadn’t we been attacked immediately after taking Cape?
The program Moby Dick escaped us and Dormarch mentioned something about hunting a white whale leading to a lot of death and destruction in the form of a story involving a captain hunting said named whale and it was considered a force of nature. Apparently we just saw that whale come to life and it was one we’d have to face again eventually.
To that end we had the APs working repairs on Castle Alexander. The castle had a variety of problems, it drained energy like a sieve, it couldn’t run all of its artillery towers all at once and they were manual operation, the damage the serpent did meant we couldn’t use the flying option until the white feathered wings were fixed, the dog shaped fortress overwhelmingly slow and the only real thing it had going for it was overwhelming territorial dominance field. Said dominance field for our territory was at the great cost of multiple PLANTs we acquired through exceedingly dangerous sea salvaging efforts inside the enemy’s side of the field.
The Holy Judgment attack, while powerful, almost drained the mobile fortress to uselessness. Apparently it had an upgrade to said attack called Divine Judgement and it couldn’t even use it because of the power drain from just doing Holy Judgement was bad enough.
Alexander was thirty percent operational, which meant the castle can walk and perform melee attacks at best, maybe send power to operate one or two towers for artillery support. Ammo wasn’t the issue as apparently the rabbit called Welch had us entirely covered on the side of manufacturing things. Cid had engineering and wanted to get the castle flying again. Patch Cabbage apparently had our limited food supplies situation handled… never saw someone wielding a hoe so fervently before.
I idly popped a bit of cabbage into my mouth and quietly chewed through it.
As for Torneko Taloon… don’t know what to think of the guy, but he thought we needed a merchant who can procure some rather ‘esoteric’ stuff as he put it. The NPCs we brought onto our side were definitively with us, but him… he stayed neutral to us. Which was worrying when he had all of those Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries inside the castle and had set up shop… a literal shop in the middle of our mobile fortress.
I wondered how useful such a ship would be, given I don’t understand some things about how Moon Cell works or why such a merchant guy would exist, my question was met with a jovial laugh and I’ll see the merits of his being on board with us eventually even if we didn’t know how we would exactly be paying him.
I made a mental note to get back to that later, my three hour break was almost up.
“Dodo… do you think I’m the one people should look to for leadership?” I knew how to lead a pack of dogs, I know how to raise a pack of dogs… basically all canine related things were quite simple to me what with the Canine Division of Huoshan thriving under my watch. It’s been a while since I thought of Huoshan, the three tiered stone city.
I didn’t know anything about leading a castle load of people aside from try to keep everyone fed, sheltered and listen to what everyone is telling you to get all views on things. Hopefully Jeanne would be back up and capable of taking the pressure off of me soon.
Dodo moved over to me and nuzzled me gently while warbling in a chipper tone, well that was a vote of confidence I currently didn’t have. Dodo now had the ability to create a field of fire and multiple explosions, which had been fairly terrifying against all the sea based EPs… but the set up took a bit to do.
I was once afraid of the mechanical ostrich, but since he became Shanty’s familiar he’s been a big softy and was a loving being. Sure he was mostly metal and had a weird ability to survive having ninety percent of his body melted, but he was a stalwart companion… probably the perfect one for Shanty.
Clambering up onto Dodo’s back, I pointed towards the castle lowered onto its belly and its canine mouth is a wide open entrance into the castle. Having taken over Cape, we were at least getting some resources for the repairs from the local NPCs that ran this particular realm. Even with the repairs they offered, we’d only be at about fifty percent capability and could barely get our power situation under control.
“Come on, I know you want to watch over Shanty and I need to see about what else we need to do and how are we going to move onto the next part of Moon Cell.” Again, why wasn’t Moon Cell flooding at least some of its resources at us? Was it just that busy with invading the other two realms that it would rather I come to it then it coming after me?
Dodo warbled, and once I was properly seated, he took off like a flash on foot. His large size carrying me across the city in less than a minute, his flying ability was slower than he could run and I think Dodo was working on that.
“If you need our help, we’ll figure out how to get out of Dodo’s head and lend some assistance, he already knows how to friendship without us and you might need Harmony OS to help you.” Huh? Who said that?
I looked at Dodo and wondered what was going on with him, that voice sounded somewhat familiar… like Princess Twilight Sparkle. Couldn’t be her, she was still back on Equus.
-Five minutes later, Castle Alexander, throne room-
“Okay, report, how bad is it Dormarch?” I asked and he grimaced, yeah I didn’t need the answer. “Don’t tell me then… how are we getting to the next section of Moon Cell and do we even know where we are going if we do?”
“Come look at this mom.” Dormarch patted an empty space on the throne next to him and I sat down at his side, I ran my left hoof over his head gently making him blush as he brought up a screen. I saw on it a moonlit city compared to our current perpetual day, various buildings that looked like more modern ones you’d see in Neighpon or some of the ones I saw in Dolly’s world and it was apparently constantly nighttime there. “That’s our next probable destination and major battle, City of Lost Destiny, Mare Melum… enemy activity is fairly high there. Moon Cell is practically waiting for us to run into whatever it setting up in our path. Can’t get us any actual visuals on the threats until we actually go there, but things are bound to be worse than what we faced here… can I just say that we were quite lucky to be underestimated with the Caster servant to start things off? Also her body makes for some pretty good Bacon, I would offer you some but… yeah… you don’t want to eat any more flesh than you already have.”
I could eat meat now, there were no questions about it and nobody was saying anything about it much less thinking on it. I was going to try avoiding doing so personally, but my stomach could handle it if necessary and I kind of wish I didn’t have the capacity for it. It meant I could now actually enjoy the fish based dishes my Tenko enjoys when I cooked for it.
Given that he emphasized the ‘B’, he wasn’t talking about ‘Haycon’ the vegetarian and pony friendly version of the pan sizzled strip food. I wasn’t going to comment on us using the pig body that was left behind by the servant we incidentally took out at the start of our invasion, I’m not the one eating it… also Dolly was noticeably happily chewing on something between her paws and I’d rather not ask.
“What are our other options?” If we had any was what I wanted to say.
“Arena Labyrinth…” Putting it up on the screen I saw a long winding route around to where we wanted to be… we were going to target Moon Cell’s core after all.
“Yeah, I can see why we’re avoiding that… though it might be a little easier to prevent surprise attacks given we can see everything and could even bottleneck a few locations, we’d have to slowly push through hordes of EPs to get across it though, which will be far too slow given how far out of the way we’ll be taken.” It was a thing we needed to do, we had to threaten Moon Cell directly and really ramp up the pressure to deal with us and earn its focus.
“School and Colosseum route.” Dormarch brought it up on the screen, this seemed… better than the other two.
“That… both those areas combined seemed shorter than going through Mare Melum.” Where was the downside?
“Yeah, but we won’t be able to move Castle Alexander through the school area, we’d be functionally moving with half our current supplies and minimal combat ability.” What Dormarch meant is that we’d have to go through the small school region, then entire a large region with heavy defensive ability and our meager Allied Program forces.
We could hold the school realm indefinitely at the very least as a choke point and a supply base, but we couldn’t move Castle Alexander along that route and said castle was our best bet with dealing with larger problems like the serpent. Also we could only have so many APs active with us entering the Colosseum realm and it was going to be heavily fortified given how big it is, so the school realm was as much a chokepoint to us as it was for them. We really needed Castle Alexander to come with us, despite some concerns on my part that it’s a giant dog with a castle on its back.
“What was the name of that serpent?” I asked idly as I considered something about the best route being the one Moon Cell knew we’d want to take and would prepare accordingly.
“Leviathan, thankfully it’s life was tied to that of the servants… don’t know how that is going to mentally effect Shanty when she wakes up to find out she had to basically kill someone to save us all.” Yeah, that was a rather iffy area of discussion that was bound to come up Dormarch, unless we avoided the subject entirely as we’re going to do that several times before this is over with.
We were currently at war and this time we couldn’t be on the sidelines or a simple courier team… well nothing was simple about the White Knight Couriers, but this was different as we were directly involved and required to be in the thick of the fighting this time.
“Where would we be entering Mare Melum at exactly?” I finally said, any invasion from the Arena Labyrinth path would be easily stopped if we left a contingent of APs to protect our backs from enemies hitting us from both the routes we can’t take.
I’ve been trying to avoid killing and the only time I can say that I did so was probably mostly machines that could function all have been alive or not. That panther one from Dodo’s world was one that came to mind. There’s also the monster that attacked that airplane on the way to Zootopia, not sure if its death was my fault or not, I never stopped to think about that thing too deeply.
“We have three points of entry.” From What Dormarch was showing me, wide open field, in the middle of the city with very little room to maneuver and… an irregular position inside a valley leading into the city. Yeah, the valley one was too on the nose for me given I’ve seen enough valleys on this adventure to really want to settle down there.
“Wide open space and fields, regardless of the lack of funneling for the valley or the tight confined spaces of the city proper…. I’d like to actually see our enemies coming at us and any possible surprises too. Plus the open space would be good for our tower guns. With hitting something, as the valley walls curve preventing direct fire from us given how much of a problem that was with Moby Dick.” I commented dryly as I was tired of ending up in valleys, even if it was technically the best option for our starting point in Mare Melum than out in the open fields. We couldn’t get surrounded and we had a safe path of retreat in the valley. “Fortunately we’re not going there first. If we have access to the school realm, but didn’t try to move through it, but still took it... would we be able to field a new type of AP?”
“Technically yes, we could also scrounge up data to upgrade the ones we already have.” Which as Dormarch knew were Lancer Guardians and Saber Knights, we needed more capabilities. The Lancer Guardians were good defense, the Saber Knights were great generic all-purpose units, but we really needed something special before we try to push Mare Melum.
“Then we need to attack the school realm first… how soon can we do that? Also is there any chance that we can acquire any useful NPCs from there?” It was a school, there would be something useful there.
“Maybe… we’re certainly not getting any more offers of support from the NPCs here in Cape.” So the four NPCs we gained was all we could feasibly pull into helping us from Moon Cell.
“Why would Moon Cell allow NPCs to be able to turn on it so easily?” My question was met with a blank look from Dormarch, until he gasped and realized something.
“Oh right, you’re not computer literate. You are very brilliant, smart and capable of a large amount of information retention, but are still not from a technologically advanced world.” Aw Dormarch, you’re making me self-conscious… I’m already bad enough as it is! “To put it into perspective, we can’t recruit unwilling NPCs, but the ones we did recruit are able to work with us since we took the systems they were in. We’re quite literally taking control of things from Moon Cell who might have the issue of not being able to act against us directly until we get into its core directly. I don’t think we can take territory when we get to the inner core region and will have to just start destroying things outright as territory will stop being a factor there.”
“So the NPCS are only capable of free thought when it’s not under Moon Cell’s strict regulations?” My question made Dormarch pause.
“No, they have free thought at all times, unless Moon Cell needs them to do something specific and provided they’re in a territory that Moon Cell controls they’ll do it. Basically NPCs for us are auxiliary and can’t exactly take the field of combat outside territories we control. Before you ask the APs can because they run off of PLANTs and not Moon Cell directly. Otherwise Moon Cell wouldn’t even be capable of its current invasion.” That led to two last questions from me Dormarch. “So really, we can’t use the NPCs in Moon Cell owned territories and if a territory belonging to us falls, if any of our NPC friends are in that territory they will switch over to Moon Cell’s control immediately.”
“So the free will thing would be like Torneko?” Even if we gain a territory an NPC may remain neutral to us, but at least they couldn’t be hostile which was nice to know.
“Yes, he’s technically a PLANT, given he’s able to summon those mercenaries. Also he can leave at any time, but he can’t directly harm us… his Berserker Minotaur Mercenaries sure can though.” Well that confirmed some suspicions Dormarch. “I’d feel somewhat better if he sided with us fully like the other three have, but we should just be glad he’s willing to assist even if he’s not full commitment Allied NPC.”
“How do servants factor into this and what exactly are they?” I barely understood the concept of NPCs and their help being related to the territories that were taken, idle or belonging to the enemy. NPCs would be entirely neutral unless Moon Cell told them to do something that might aid it in a battle against us, they are ‘mostly’ noncombatants, but Welch could fire a tower gun without any problem.
“They are being the souls that Moon Cell be holding captive inside of itself, Rider Totsugeki be basically telling me to not die here or else I’ll be being a servant too.” Jolting at the sound of Shanty’s voice, I looked up and saw her munching on something. She was positively wrapped in bandages, yet she was already up and moving around again so soon after that battle. “Moon Cell be having a lot of souls and those souls really be knowing how to fight. I think it is only because the pirates soul be resonating with me that I even be getting that much information.”
“Well… it’s more than that… they are more like masses of magic mixed data and what might be any kind of soul brought to a form of life. I… technically count as a servant, but my contract is entirely to you mom… also my spirit core suddenly says I’m a… Shielder Saber Beast?” Okay, that was mildly concerning, but Dormarch still seemed perfectly okay in our familiar bond and nothing seems shaky about it. “Why does my status keep changing like that and why is this particular designation interacting with my digital core?! So much for having Territory Creation EX it’s back to D Plus. ‘Ultimate evolutionary function’ fixed, what does that even mean?”
“Next level evolution will not be able to be altered to anything else, aside from whatever it will be when you achieve Ultimate level.” Yggdrasil System chimed in. “Your ultimate form is locked in for one given evolution, afterwards you may change to that form as you wish or try for an alternative ultimate form however this ultimate form will always be available after it is acquired. It is currently unknown what the ultimate form will be, but scans suggest ancient data has somehow been accrued via spirit core and transferred over to the digital core. Ninety nine point nine percent chance a previously known rare ancient digimon evolution will occur, margin for error for unknown consequences of the two cores interacting.”
Okay so Dormarch has just been guaranteed to transform into something and we don’t know what it is aside from the fact that the words ‘ancient digimon evolution’ was used.
“So does that mean that Moon Cell can, for all intents and purposes, throw dead people at us with incredible combat capabilities?” Given the general classifications of Caster, Saber, Lancer, Berserker, Archer, Rider and Assassin when applied to things, we will at least know what the servants were capable of in theory. “Also should you even be walking Shanty?”
“No, it is being very painful to be being me right now.” Despite being honest, Shanty still took out a bottle of rum and downed its contents. I wonder how many of those she had and how many she would go through before we were done with Moon Cell.
“Yes to the dead people thing and they all have things known as Noble Phantasms that give them incredible attributes in battle as their ultimate expression of who they were in life. Riders are mostly about summoning things to ride and or pilot. Leviathan was the penultimate ability of that particular Rider.” So did that mean that you were constantly changing capabilities as a servant Dormarch? Shielder seemed kind of consistent, as was beast. “My status is… fairly unusual.”
“Maybe it’s because you didn’t ‘technically’ live very long and the ‘Crest of Miracles’ thing on top of that translates as having incredible potential, thus in life as Dalmamon your potential could have technically been anything and it wasn’t realized?” Technically Dormarch didn’t full die, but this was the best I had.
“… As good as anything I could come up with.” After a moment Dormarch looked to Shanty just drinking away. “Anything you need?”
“Her name was being May and that is to be freeing every pirate soul that Moon Cell be having.” Well that can be done over the course of what we were doing here Shanty. “Also I be needing a nap, but my body be wanting food more.”
“Should I be surprised?” I asked flatly, Shanty was like a hollow leg that led into a bottomless pit. She was a growing goat after all and making up for a lot of malnutrition, she’s grown quite a bit throughout this journey. “We’ll get you some food soon enough Shanty, don’t exacerbate your injuries.”
“Uh, Pom something just came up!” Yes, Dormarch, I can see that from where I’m sitting right next to you. “A request asking for permission to access? It looks to be coming from… Ransei? How?! Mom… should I let this through? It could be malware.”
“I don’t know what malware is… but I’m going to say, hesitatingly enough, to agree to the request?” If it was from Ransei, it could be something good. “I am the leader, so I guess it’s on me if something bad happens.”
“Giving access and placing access to right… there!” A bunch of Pokémon appeared with a floating long tailed cat. “Huh? How did they get here or know to ask for?”
“Big… dog…” The floating cat among the odd number of Pokémon just stared at the castle glaring down on them. “Thanks for letting us in, we were kind of stuck at the door wondering how we were going to get into Moon Cell.”
“Who are you?” Dormarch asked as more Pokémon came flooding in, there was something off about them though.
“I am Mirage Mew of the Mirage Collective, Arceus sends his regards and Calumon says ‘hi’.” Said the floating cat with a smile.
“Well they aren’t flesh and blood, they are… Digital Pokémon?” Dormarch seemed a little confused.
“Arceus sent them, so they must be here for us.” Maybe we could test how helpful they could be? “Say we could use your help with something immediately.”
“Sure, what is it, it looks like you have a pretty big…. dog… base thing going on here.” the Mirage Mew was still staring at the massive face in its face wondrously and possibly with a little fear.
“We need you take a territory of Moon Cell, small, shouldn’t take you too long really while we recuperate from our recent fight. If you can take it you can hold it.” Dormarch started up and did something with the screens. “Here’s some of the things we need you to do, get back to us about that after your done and do not go to Colloseum.”
“Uh huh… hmm… sure I’ll take the school. Just give us the rest of the day and the Mirage Collective will secure that area easily!” Well at least we wouldn’t have to do it as that was what I was going to suggest as our next course of action when we had enough people ready to go on the attack. “We have your backs, come on Mirage Collective, less than a minute here and we already have a job!”
The various Digital Pokémon made noises as a portal opened and on the other side I could see a school and a lot of EPs.
“Bansai!” This Mirage Collective suddenly started flooding into the school realm and in seconds started massacring everything that tried to stop them. The Assassin Reapers were being shredded quite badly and the rest of those poor EPs were immediately being picked up and thrown around violently.
“Well that’s one less thing we have to worry about.” Now to feed Shanty, probably should have accounted for her in the supplies rationing.
-An hour later-
I was acting leader and I had several people gather concerns of our current groups.
“So any questions or concerns about our next course of action?” I asked a Hakamo-o representing the Pokémon, Rookie from the Commandramon representing the digimon and Cid of the NPCs representing the locals.
“We’re going to need supplies for engineering, but Welch can’t manufacture the parts we need without materials.” Cid started off. “We’re quite low on that with most of what we’ve already scrounged going into repairs.”
“We already have a group working on acquiring the materials by the end of this day, we’ll get back to you tomorrow at the soonest since we’ll likely wait a day or two for our fighters to heal before setting out.” Seeing that had nothing else to say, I pointed to Rookie.
“We’re behind you one hundred percent ma’am, but we would really need a digital medic if the fighting is going to be this constantly horrible.” He was asking because Commandramon generally didn’t expect much of their commanders and I sounded like one that cares.
“Any suggestions on how to get one?” My question seemed to take Rookie aback, but he smiled afterwards.
“Right, we’re not working under those jerks… ahem… I think I can safely send an email out to a colleague who can feasibly get us extra supplies easily, he’s a specialist courier and he’s has a HEA-Gatomon…” I held up my right hoof, stopping him from going any further.
“Let me guess, his name is Black Tailmon Uver?” If we could get that guy to show up, we’d really be in business here. “If he can get here, we’ll gladly accept all the help we can get. He might come because he knows us.”
“Thank you! Never had a commander that didn’t seem to be trying to get us killed… feels really good.” Rookie stated cheerfully.
“We need more suggestions like that.” I commented dryly. “I don’t care if the message you send is loud or not, we already have Moon Cell’s attention, just as long as you can get it to him solidly. We’ll see if anything comes of it, from what I understand Uver can go anywhere?”
“If it’s connected to a digital realm and he has a route to it.” Rookie confirmed while throwing a salute, then left to see if he could summon Uver.
I turned my glance to the last one left in the room, the Hakamo-o.
“Not to question your leadership, Team Harmony leader Pom, but are we going to die?” Hakamo-o asked.
“We’ll all die eventually, but I’ll likely die before you will.” That somehow seemed comforting to him. “Any concerns or needs?”
“We’re good on food, water and supplies we brought with us, plus whatever Patch Cabbage can grow. We’ve given him a few Oran and Sitrus berries to see if he can grow us some fruit trees from them.” Okay, interesting, but I wanted actual problems that I can take care of. “I just wanted to say… thank you for taking charge. Jeanne is a decent at rallying and fighting, but she isn’t quite leader material outside of battle yet and she could learn a lot from you. When we looked to you for an idea of what we should be doing, you gave us all orders to eat, rest and support if we could. Just generalizations to start, but a good leader knows when to push and rest. We definitely needed a rest after that battle.”
I honestly didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Is there anything else any of you need?” My question wasn’t met with anything pressing except a raised claw from Rookie. “Yes?”
“The Gazimon want to take a more active role, they feel like they didn’t do enough in Cape.” That brought an interesting thought to mind Rookie.
“What exactly can Gazimon do?” I knew they were canine rabbit things, but I really didn’t see much from them.
“Let me go gather them so they can tell you themselves, after that I’ll send out my message to see if we can get in contact with Uver.” Rookie stated and exited.
-Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, ???-
Being summoned felt a little off, but I would carry out my mission to destroy the ultimately cute target.
I howled to the moon and waited for my opponent to show up, the one Moon Cell wanted dead above all else. For why else would they have summoned me forth?
Several large bipedal figures walked up and waited with me, they made mooing noises as I tipped my hat to them and checked over the red blade in hand before I sheathed it. I'm good to go and ready to make guacamole out of my enemies.
How much trouble could this one scrawny sheep really be? My Archer Gekko would be more than enough for them that I might not even have to do anything.
I could hardly wait to see if they were trouble. Now where would I set up an ambush, they were obviously coming through the valley according to Intel. The enemy ewe really likes valleys according to Moon Cell.
-
A bipedal silhouette swiftly changed to that of a wolf wearing a poncho and sombrero and it was seen leaping off into the night from a tall building.