-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underneath Upper District, Underground Mountain, Dolly-
These machines were kind of awesome, it’s just too bad Pom really couldn’t pilot ours. Sure we had the magic to make it special or something, but it apparently didn’t do anything more or at least I didn’t think it did so far.
I chalk that up to Pom’s bad piloting as we tried to slowly walk down the slope after our soldier lizard guys.
“Huge hostile incoming, condor, it’s a condor!” One of the lizard guy’s machines was snatched up by a massive right claw and I thought the Camden Town’s pond owner, Mr. Swan, was a massive bird. It then continued to swoop forward with our friend’s machine in its claw and then its left claw wrapped around us and started squeezing as it lifted us off the ground. “It’s got two of us, help!”
I could hear the groaning of metal as Pom and I sat here wide eyed unsure of what to do, the bird was massive. Getting out of the machine to deal with it sounded like a bad idea, we could still open our dome canopy and get out of this, but soldier dude friend couldn’t. It was a bad idea to get out as the beak smacked into the dome and tried to poke a hole to get at us, it was starting to crack.
Pom was currently reliving being stuck in the serpent’s mouth and how she had to golden claw her way out of that situation, she was panicking as much as I was. She started to wildly try and wiggle us free of the things massive talons, but it wasn’t working. We had a free right arm, we could use that to get free, but Pom wasn’t that great at using this Magic Trek machine.
Rolling my eyes, I pulled myself free of the seat belt and climbed up to Pom’s back and got my hind legs around her neck, then started using my front paws to massage her forehead gently. Deepak method of calming a puppy down, Pom wasn’t a puppy, but she certainly needed this. Bean pad paws do your stuff!
I swear Dylan would be having all kinds of geeking out moments as much as panicking like I was known to do too. He’d be happy to see all this sci-fi stuff we’re doing now, with the killer robot canine and the large weird legged machines. While here I am trying to keep my partners head on straight darn near constantly as a job, I was sadly a responsible teenage adult now.
“Calm down Pom, listen to my barking, breathe… let me in, I’ll get us out of this.” I’ve become a lot braver since I’ve met Pom, but I still felt quite inadequate next to Dormarch’s impressive abilities. I still had my talents, never forgot the name of a family member yet. Probably why I can’t remember names beyond the one hundred and twenty or so I counted as family back in Camden Town. “Let me get my sheep dog on and guide you to safety Pom. I’ve saved your frantic backside multiple times, I’m going to do it again right now, trust me. We need to work as one and we can easily do that as you very well know.”
Pom did trust me, like a lot. It warmed my heart to feel wanted, because frankly I felt like I was falling behind compared to everyone else. Even with magic my abilities were all mostly supportive… which I was great at. It’s just that… I wanted to be a better hero to Pom as much as I wanted to protect her and help her get home.
I calmly rested my chin on top of her head, her heartbeat slowed down as mine sped up, they met in the middle and I closed my eyes to calm us both down and she closed hers. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale… let me take off some of the burden, we can do this together.
Come on Pom, I’m your Dalmatian, let’s make this happen.
Two sets of eyes snapped open, I could see out both mine and Pom’s below me we both narrowed our eyes at the same time and I now had some control of the situation.
Pom act as the brains, I’m the reflexes, let’s make this happen!
-Outside the one magically piloted Magitek Armor-
The condor was poking at the other armor when the pink and white armor suddenly gained a lot of black spots to go with its pink highlights.
The right arm of the machine came up and blasted the bird’s neck in the spot Pom identified as being an artery, the hole the shots from between the two nail blades on the right arm was quite painfully large and the bird immediately dropped both the armors reflexively.
Both of them landed on the ground upright with impressively loud impacts on a part of the mountain side.
While the two freed machines were suddenly reorienting themselves, their sudden freedom opened up the massive Condor to fire from the other four Commandramon piloted armors that riddle its body with hundreds of rotary barrel blasting shots ripping into its exposed chest and belly. The APs were busy dealing with the nearby EPs and other large NPs.
The Condor soon slammed into the mountain dead and full of enough bleeding holes to give a trypophobic person nightmares as it started dissolving. Dropping the two Ride Armors it was blocking shots at its body with was the worst thing it could have done.
Several floating orbs known as Moon Cell’s watchers flew from somewhere out of the false sky, they had showed up when the two realms collided fused and started causing massive glitches. Instead of dealing with all of those problems currently, they tried to fire lasers at white, pink and black spotted armor Pom was in and it took several steps back avoiding the lasers.
Pom and Dolly’s Armor brought up both its arms and fired a spray of rounds from both aiming at the four Watchers and blew them out of the air under a salvo of well-aimed shots.
“Aw, yeah, I’m getting pretty heady from this!” Dolly stated using Pom’s mouth as she nuzzled her chin into Pom’s wool.
“Ma’am are you okay?” Even as he asked this the Commandramon next to them still sprayed some shots into the nearby PLANT that was in the process of creating another condor which was slowly forming in the air, the PLANTs blew apart immediately and practically imploded from the focused double salvo.
“Oh we’re fine!” Dolly and Pom answered as one duel voice, which was followed by Pom’s voice. “Dolly’s kind of better at controlling this thing than I am. We’re kind of combining our efforts to make this thing work.”
“Thanks for getting us out of that by the way, got any orders or do we just continue take the mountain territory?” The Commandramon asked as fifty large falcons the size of horses started diving at them, he easily blasted them out of the air with help from the four Commandramon armors from above assisting.
There was far more falcons, vultures and condors attacking the APs further down the mountain, since they too had stolen armor they didn’t have too much trouble.
“We need to head in that direction and take out a machine called… MG Excelsus, according to Dormarch, it’s the thing making those Archer Gekkos.” Pom stated as their machine pointed across the now patchy landscape that looked more like jigsaw puzzle of terrains and environments now than any natural formation. “Also we have to worry about two threats, one is Saber Jack Wolf of course. The other is an abhorrent stalker that keeps attacking me by the name of Fou, he’s dangerous, do not engage him in a fight! I have an idea as to how he works and I think he gets exceptionally stronger the more aggression that is aimed at him. He’s white, like a bipedal canine, pink tipped hair, red welts and all kinds of dangerous… I think he might even be responsible for what’s happening here. We’ll take territories on the way to our target, but we can’t or shouldn’t stop moving. All APs need to weaken the area in our path and secure all PLANTs on the way there to slow our enemies that will inevitably hit us from behind before we can get to the target.”
“This is Driver. That’s a big ask Big Boss lady, we got what looks like a lot of FUBAR terrain between us and where we need to go. How are the seven of us going to move out? The APs can mostly take care of themselves.” Driver was including Dolly in their number. “Also can I just say it’s a little weird to be able to hear Dolly’s voice?”
“Yeah, sorry, I’m using Pom as a mouthpiece.” Dolly stated while waving a left arm at the four up the ridge. Then Pom spoke up with a notable change in voice. “Driver take two and push forward, two with me. We’re sticking in two groups of three and will have to watch each other’s backs, just note that I’m not entirely in control of this thing. I’m leaving the footwork to Dolly while I do the thinking.”
The Dalmatian spotted, pink highlighted machine then rocked forward and started to run like a dog down the slope and hopped over an open section that would have been a fifty foot drop to a ledge below. No panicking was seen in its motion.
“If it works…” Driver said.
“It works!” The other Commandramon stated as two moved to catch up with Pom’s armor slowly navigating the treacherous slope down towards a patches of random terrain below. Unlike Dolly piloting the armor Pom was in, they kept their armors bipedal though.
-Exiting a central city elevator to the central underground region, Saber Jack Wolf-
“Ugh these giant beasts are everywhere… but at least its bloody good fun!” Having said this I entered a Blade Mode, and performed five slashes at the rhino that was charging me. The sudden onset of Berserkers was destabilizing Mare Melum and ruining the attempt to siege our enemy’s stronghold.
It was pandemonium as Moon Cell programs were being torn apart by the wild monsters and watchers were sent to try and alleviate all the system trauma of the two realms smashing together and distorting everything.
I sheathed my sword and the rhino I had flashed by suddenly flopped to the ground as all four of its legs fell away, its horn toppled forward and off its face while its head went rolling off to the side. I was grinning like a madman as it suddenly became a mass of slices and at all the digital blood I was covered in. I was building up to one extremely powerful Ripper Mode and these berserkers had nothing on what I could do when I went into a controlled berserk frenzy.
Now I just needed to find where my target was down here, a giant hippo roared at me and opened its massive powerful jaw. It really chose the wrong person to mess with.
“MG Excelsus has gone rogue, incoming rogue Berserker Gekko, every last one of them is more heavily armed than before. All equipped with grenade launchers and flamethrowers on top of their general combat tendril and twin machine cannons.” Well that checks Blade Wolf, it would certainly explain the incoming yellow colored Archer Gekko. “Berserker Class and not Archer Class, has been emphasized no less than five times.”
“This is going to be some bloody fun!” I yelled as I readied my blade and my knife firing hips… whoever designed my cyborg body was a pervert, why else would I end up with combat heels and a big butt? Well the butt was extra armor and helped with bipedal movement, but still!
He had a good guess that his target was going to deal with Excelsus to stop him from healing and then fight him personally. Even he had orders from Moon Cell to deal with the rogue Excelsus PLANT as its systems were starting to distort out of control due to the overload of Berserker Class programs it was now producing at a dangerous rate that was spreading Gekkos throughout the underground region of Mare Melum like a nasty viral infection.
-A newly made entrance to the underground dug from near the AP controlled valley, Fou-
Fou slammed into the ground and looked around, he sniffed the air, he could already smell the Chrysomallus. His hunting target couldn’t evade him, he would get another fight out of them and if someone else was hunting his target he’d tear them to shreds, because he could instinctually feel someone encroaching on the territory that was his prey.
A NP T-Rex roared in Fou’s face and he grinned in a feral manner as he leapt directly at the opened jaw full of teeth with a toothy grin. He was smaller than it, but he was far, far stronger than it could ever be.
There would be nothing except a pile of digital bones after Fou was done with it and Fou wasn’t sure if he wanted to fill up on said bones yet.
-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit on the move-
Driver and two Commandramon were in front, Pom was behind them with two Commandramon next to her walking armor.
They were firing on several watchers, they seemed intent on attacking Pom’s armor, but Dolly was making them work for every hit they managed to scrape through the wall of fire that came their way as soon as they were spotted coming at them.
The six units were followed by on foot Caerbannogs, a few Saber Knights with Tower Shields and whatever Caerbannogs that could pilot the vehicles that were in the garage.
They had pummeled their way through a pack of large iguanas and raptors and had just taken down a PLANT when a humongous snake rose up in front of the three forward armors. They quickly backed up and avoid the large mouth snapping at their armors and all six armors opened up on the snake as they spread out and continued to back away while getting assistance from the other armors in firepower.
The snake’s scales just soaked up shot after shot poured into it from more than twenty sources at once, the damage being slow to really punch through at it lashed out with fangs and mouth that could swallow the Magitek Armors whole.
“I’m not going to let you end up in its mouth like what happened in Cape.” As Dolly said this, popped their armor onto all fours and then bounced it to the left as the snake bit down on where they were, it caught nothing but air. One of the Commandramon split off with Pom’s armor and the other one joined the other three. Many shots were aiming at the things eyes, but despite the damage it just kept coming and ignoring the damage.
“Keep aiming for the eyes, Dolly move in!” Pom’s voice stated as its left eye finally blew out under the onslaught making thrash about. The four Commandramon tried to circle around to get the other one and the large snake’s tail slapped into one of the armors to send it skidding until it smashed into a tree where it stopped moving.
The tail whipped entirely around as Dolly got the armor running on all fours to pounce upwards over the massive swing while crossing its arms so that the two nail blades sunk into its neck below its head. Planting the feet of the machine against its neck, Dolly started forcefully pulling the two arms outwards.
Its skin resisted the tearing of the two claws at the end of the machine’s arms digging deeply into its flesh, up until Dolly unloaded the guns between the nails on full auto into its insides as they pulled. Two streams of shots started spraying out the back of its neck at two point and moved inwards before going outwards as the arms felt less and less pull until the entire head was cleaved off by claws and the guns firing underneath its tough scales.
“Aw yeah, my music bro DJ would think this would make a good metal album cover!” Dolly stated as she managed to land the machine upright and hopped backwards before the flailing torso slammed down on their armor.
“Get that PLANT, I do not want us to fight another one of those. Dolly check our fallen.” The four of Commandramon immediately did as asked by Pom and focused fire on the PLANT which apparently was more armored than some of the previous ones they’ve dealt with as it took quite a while to go down under the tirade of shots being fired by the machines.
Dolly got the armor moving over to the damaged one under the tree.
“Are you alright?” Pom called out.
“Sure am Big Boss lady, but systems are offline.” The Commandramon answered from inside, his voice muffle by the dome. “I’m stuck.”
“I’m sure we’ll come up with something, we’re not leaving you here. Can it repair itself or will we have to carry you?” Pom asked.
“Repair functions are limited, these things were meant to have a magic user in the seats Pom.” The Commandramon responded.
“If we had a repair function we’d certainly…” As soon as Dolly said it, a green beam fired out and hit the armor and slowly the damage started fixing the armor until it was able to get standing on its own. “Okay, that’s useful.”
“Odd, not only did it repair my armor, it also healed my injuries from the impact.” The Commandramon stated as he worked out the armors arms and legs before moving forward. “Let’s get moving!”
“Right, we go to Big Boss lady for in field repairs!” Driver stated before motioning them back into the two sets of three formation and they continued forward as a block shockwave took over the small patch of territory.
“Don’t do it too often though. That really drained some magic from both of us.” Pom stated clearly, while inside the armor her eyes flicked to the golden wool taking up half of her right leg with some fear before Dolly tamped down on it. The golden wool hadn’t moved an inch since the battle with Leviathan, but it still made Pom shiver that it was as bad as it was.
“Maybe it’s a spell I could learn?” Dolly wanted to be more useful to Pom and the ability to heal would really help with a lot of the injuries Pom ended up with. “Would be pretty helpful if I could cure illnesses or heal you on command Pom… don’t think it’ll do anything about the gold wool though.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about ‘that’ even if you could heal all the deadliest diseases from any world.” Pom responded. “There’s just delaying the inevitable to making sure ‘it’ just doesn’t happen within my remaining lifespan…”
Pom wasn’t exactly explaining what ‘it’ was to Dolly or anyone, but the dog felt that the 'it' Pom was mentioning was not the wings growing out her back thing meaning her imminent demise.
In the grand scheme of things the small patches of territories taken wasn’t important, since there were hundreds of territories around them and giant monsters engaging anything that was even remotely near them regardless of how powerful said thing was.
The raptors and iguanas had been on the smaller end and nothing more than a footnote for the rapid fire cannons of the Magitek Armors. As they plowed another territory into tossing away threats in a blue shockwave.
As they continued forward across the grass into some swamp land, something slowly rose from the water and it was… a large pink alligator with blue eyes? It roared at them and was trying to gesture something with its front legs, but it wasn’t attacking them despite the six armors aiming their guns at it immediately.
The only reason why the six armors didn’t attack was because the APs were ignoring the pink alligator entirely in favor of the other surrounding alligators or swamp creatures. Said pink gator was trying to appear to be as unaggressive as possible despite its size, much to the confusion after seeing so many monsters running around attacking everything.
“Uh… is it trying to tell us something?” Dolly was kept from firing on it by Pom and the Commandramon were wary.
Another green alligator rose up from the swamp and attacked it and it started floundering in defending itself from the large snapping jaws.
“Should we… maybe help it?” Dolly asked and the pink alligator nodded pleadingly as it looked to be in trouble and teary eyed.
“… yes, fire on the green alligator attacking the pink one!” Pom came to a quick decision not sure if it was the right one, but something was quite off about the pink alligator compared to all the other highly aggressive monsters around.
Twelve arms raised and started firing shots into the green skinned, yellow eyed, violent alligator trying to kill the pink one. Eventually its skin gave and it was quickly chewed to pieces and the pink alligator pushed it off and quickly scrambled away while whining and whimpering about something.
“We’ll take the territory quickly, but we can’t stay here for too long. We’re starting to run our APs thin here and we’re barely a quarter of the way to the target.” Pom wasn’t wrong having passed over several patches of grassland and desert, they were avoiding the thick batches of jungle, any deep swamps when they could and any suspiciously shifting sand as they had seen giant worms come out of the patches of desert. Anywhere that had absolutely dangerous large monsters and places where monsters could feasibly hide from their line of sight was to be avoided. “Where’s the PLANT for this territory?”
Every giant monster territory taken was soon being protected by much smaller and weaker APs of the Caerbannogs and Saber Knights variety.
“There, I’ve spotted it, it’s actually in the swamp waters.” Seeing the humming device barely just below the surface was annoying to Pom as the water would slow their shots down and it would take more time to…
The large pink alligator surged into the water and quickly swam for the PLANT.
“What is it…” Dolly questioned as it soon opened its mouth and bit down on it as hard as it could and started to force it out of the water as several surrounding mega gators started swimming towards it, it was a small alligator compared to the others in the water with it. “It’s helping us?”
“Help it again!” Pom ordered and suddenly twelve streams of rapid fire digital tracers were trying to keep the alligators of their one friend among the many.
-Pinkiepie.exe-
This was not what I was expecting when I decided to use the glitch code to get out of Dodo! Why is everything so scary?!
I whimpered as shots sprayed around me as I lifted the making thing and tried to crush it in my jaw. Why did I think the random transmission destination would make me a Pinkazoid?!
I didn’t want to be an alligator, I was a pony harmony program!
As soon as I crushed the bad thing my jaw, I received a message.
Huh, reformat? Yes please!
-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit-
A sudden crunching noise was heard and instead of the requisite blue shockwave, a pink shockwave erupted. It didn’t touch any of the APs or six armors and sent all the NPs flying out of the swamp, which suddenly started having clear water.
The pink alligator disappeared as a pink PLANT appeared with three pixelated balloons on it. The six armors were looking at it curiously.
“Well we didn’t get ejected out of the area, but what’s happening?” Dolly watch as the humming device floated into the air and eventually produced a few small green toothless gators with purple eyes, then they started popping up everywhere in massive numbers and were idling about cutely. “Yeah, this is getting pretty weird, as if all the large monsters wasn’t bad enough already. I’m going to feel horrible leaving these little guys behind to be snapped up by the giant monsters going everywhere.”
That’s when aside from producing the small gators, it started producing pink earth ponies with the pixelated balloons on all of their flanks all with a large ‘.EXE’ in print next to them. When it produced one that didn’t have the ‘.EXE’ symbol on it, she sighed with relief and wiped her forehead then looked at all the copies and they looked back and started idly swimming around in the clear waters just acting playfully.
“Hi there, sorry if I scared you, I was a bit out of place. I’m Pink pie dot E X E and I’ve been with you on your adventure since Dodo got infected with harmony magic from Shanty being a being of Equus!” There was a long pause. “I can’t wait to help out my five friends and get them out of his head too! No… wait… I’m in a really bad place aren’t I? Oh fudge…”
The armors and combat capable APs all turned to fire or attack all the incoming giant cougars coming from the other territories, one of which was surprisingly taken down by a small green gator with purple eyes actively lodging itself in the cougar’s throat until it apparently choked to death on it. Despite the cougar being a digital entity that likely didn’t need to breathe air. The little gator proceeded to crawl out of the large cat’s mouth.
Pom was exasperating to see the gator had a similar problem to a specific well-known Spheal from the Fontaine Navy Spheals unit.
“And that’s why you always chew your food even if it’s Candy Gummy folks, nyuk-nyuk~!” The smiling pink pony grinned as she licked the candy gators the PLANT was spawning alongside the strawberry taffy ponies that just resembled earth ponies.
“Is all of that even really possible?” Pom was a clear skeptic on what was happening, things were just getting too weird at this point. “I think I’ve seen several impossible things within the last minute that my brain is starting to… OW, thanks Dolly.”
“You’re welcome.” Dolly said a second later and made sure Pom was focused.
“Well we’re possible.” The five Commandramon stated as they turned the white and black spotted Magitek Armor that had pink highlights.
“Right, can we just keep moving, we need to keep moving!” Pom really didn’t want to deal with this right now and Dolly agreed as she started their armor moving across the swamp. “Some APs stay and protect this area, consider it an allied zone. We can’t stay here and deal with this right now!”
The six armors quickly started stomping off, leaving behind a slightly deflated Pinkpie.exe
-Pinkpie.exe, the evolving taffy pony progam-
“That’s okay, I’ll be fine, I’ll find a good way to help you out for saving me, just you wait! There will be a party waiting for you if you can managed to deal with Moon Cell!” I stated as I waved at the armors continuing onwards with a small contingent of Caerbannogs. I looked at the shield guys with the swords and they looked at me, was it because I was made of digital candy now? “I wonder if Cuddlestare.exe would want to be a rabbit like one of those? Hmm… PLANT send this cupcake-gram message I’m preparing to… D O D O @ Location Code: …”
-Pom’s Magitek Armor unit-
They were quite low on APs support now, not even a quarter of the way and they were doing quite poorly resource wise, not that they had many resources to begin with. They didn’t know how well the territories behind them were holding, but that didn’t matter if they were quick enough to stay ahead of the problems.
“Are we going to talk about…” One of the Commandramon started.
“No.” Pom vetoed thinking about whatever the Equus Earth Pony magic strangeness that just occurred was and was quickly trying to erase it from her near photographic mind. It wasn’t exactly important long term at the moment and she wished whatever that was well… if it could survive in this chaos as they exited the clean waters swamp land and entered a dry desert spot where the heat oddly increased by quite a bit.
The desert rumbled underneath the six armors and they all froze from continuing their frantic pace forward.
“One of those worms, but bigger?” One of the Commandramon whispered and then he jumped his armor to the right as said monstrosity erupted out of the ground at the back of his machine before diving back into the sand. “Called i… WHOA!”
The Commandramon avoided a second lunge from the worm by diving his machine forward and quickly got it up and running. Their armor was heading in the same direction they had all been originally travel, coils of the worm rose above the ground and gave chase.
“Move and shoot, move and shoot! Spread out a little and make sure it can’t get more than one of us in a pass!” Pom called out as Dolly took aim at the bit of worm that was above ground and started firing both machine cannons at it, painting the relatively large desert patch green in its blood.
The worm rose up and roared at Pom and the other armors that opened fire on it and the second worm that popped up from the sands, their mouths full of teeth and tentacles with their own beaked snake like heads.
“Nnnnhhh…” Whined Pom inside the armor Dolly was controlling.
“Let’s get out of this place or destroy the PLANT quickly, I don’t think Pom’s sanity can take much more of this!” Dolly announced as she started blowing apart the quickly regenerating tentacles that reached out from the worm’s mouth for their armor.
“Agreed!” All five Commandramon shouted as they followed Pom’s prior order to run and gun and Dolly was doing it too.
“Huh? Right… Float!” Dolly called out and the spotted magitek armor suddenly lifted into the air and sped up as it ran along the air much to the worm’s sudden confusion that it lost track of its target. “Thanks for the suggestion Pom.”
“Yeah… no worries right? Heh heh… sanity quickly slipping.” Pom sounded like a twitching mess right about now. “The worm can only tell if we’re moving on the sand, shoot the left side of it and keep moving right Dolly.”
Dolly following Pom’s command the worm dove to their left and missed them entirely, the other worm wasn’t as lucky as its head was constantly being blown apart under a siege of bullets before it could get close.
“Dolly, shoot that mound.” Dolly seeing the mound that Pom was pointing out with her eyes making Dolly’s eyes focus on them, a single salvo from the right arm and a hidden PLANT for the small desert zone popped up out of the ground. “Everyone destroy it, destroy it!”
The six armors continued moving and started pouring as much fire at it as they could manage as a third giant undamaged sand worm started coming at them. The Caerbannogs started to throw rope darts and stab the worms trying to keep them from attacking the much more important armors.
The shadow of a lunging worm coming down on Pom’s floating armor was soon blasted back by a blue shockwave as they took the territory and the three giant sand worms finally started disappearing.
“Is it me or are things getting bigger the closer we get to where we need to be?” Dolly silently noted that they couldn’t avoid a jungle that was coming up and a large red wyvern with blue scales highlighting their body roared, it was bigger than the worms collectively.
“Let’s call that a confirmation that things are getting worse.” Pom sounded quite upset as she saw the next territory was a large section of jungle and they had to go through it. “Ugh… let’s do it then, forward let’s go fight a bunch of wyverns!”
A fireball flew by the floating armor to the left.
“Fireball breathing flying lizards with spikes all over their bodies… joy.” Dolly stated dully and with no surprise that she just had to bring it up that things were getting more dangerous. “Well we’ve done fine so far, let’s get in there and fight our way through them!”