//------------------------------// // 404. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 8. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Velvet- “So quite frankly the long term magical implications are not good, the short term is fine.” Kuril reassured me with Dr. Bones next to her as I laid on my side with my body warming up from the shifting inside of me. “So long as we don’t overdo it on the magical potions or for cross species capable mating or the same sex mating, then the world won’t collapse. That and I can keep the recipe of how to even make the potions on the down low. I’m not going to be responsible for dooming the world, unlike my kitten if anything happened to Silvers. Saddle Arabia would be the first to go too in that instance, since Jaded would actually start trying.” “Well that’s nice to know.” The fluff clone of Paprika patted me on the back and cuddled up to me slightly, Paprika still wouldn’t go within twenty feet of Arizona or Me, Arizona still wouldn’t hit me back and it’s becoming quite a strain on the relationship with my insides being kicked about that I couldn’t get the snot beaten out of me. “Their daughters are about to have some cousins soon and Paprika has been getting the same feelings. Her parents and big brother are helping her out a lot… wonder what the rest of their family is doing?” “That lot? Still traveling around like the love happy nomads they are, they are nomadic precisely because it lets them meet all kinds of interesting people to fall in love with… among other reasons.” Dr. Bones watched as a hoof poked at my belly from the inside. “The wee one is really given you quite an internal beating huh?” “Yes… it’s definitely Arizonas… she’s a fighter already and that’s playing havoc on my insides.” I groaned out, as I continued to rub at my belly and hoped the life in me didn’t turn out like Arizona in being highly volatile… at least not while they were still inside of me. “I’m not having any more kids after this one unless it’s Paprika carrying them. Given what her mother and father are like... well I’ll be making sure to not be touching Arizona during conception to be safe if we ever want more children.” “Aye, magic is being a rather iffy subject when it comes to conception, its little wonder unicorns tend to have more neurological problems than Earth Ponies or Pegasus Ponies. The magical surges of a baby unicorn in the womb is less pleasant than this I tell you that as a certainty.” The red furred diamond dog sighed and took out a bottle of what smelled like wine and drank some. “As far as things are going, they are looking good for your next of kin, just keep avoiding using any magic until your bundle of joy comes along. You might experience a few fevers, if that’s the case, then come to me immediately to make sure that your body isn’t overheating and is naturally staying cool, otherwise whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye’.” “Thank you Dr. Bones.” It was nice that she was considered my family. “Don’t ever be taking me for an unkind vagabond, I’m going to be looking into your little brother Gallus’s lovely lass when cherries start popping onto that sundae.” Dr. Bones was always a little weird for a diamond dog, sometimes a little grumpy, but overall she’s been a good doctor and one of the best Cruise Liner Hospital has to offer. Some Unicorns and a variety of other doctors, especially the great sage Mage Meadowbrook, were rising in notoriety around Airship Mauled. The doctors always had patients whenever an airship crashed, but never has the injuries been above a minor fracture… unless it was Jackie Blackcap Chickadee La Perm, she sometimes needed more than an entire crew specialized in medical practices just to stay alive. Jackie was not only a notoriously cursed pirate, but she was also known in the medical field as being the best practice patient in the world one can have for learning the ins and outs of medical emergencies. -Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Castle Alexander, Rokusho- “If there’s an Eater underground tell them to not go anywhere near it and to get the word to Pom and the others down there.” I was wary of the eaters showing up again, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad… not like what happened during a previous invasion of them in Yggdrasil.sys realms. “How are we even getting a signal from down there anyway?” “They’ve taken enough territories for it apparently.” Responded Krosserdog as he continued to snipe the numerous enemies. Who was I kidding, whenever they showed up and weren’t dealt with quickly things get really bad quickly when they start multiplying. “Also tell them to not engage it in close combat if possible, Eaters effect all beings, biological, digital, robots, it doesn’t matter to them… they can eat just about anything! At least they’ll attempt to eat your mind first, before your body… less painful turn out that way at least.” I wonder how many Commandramon were eaten in the line of duty when that digital world was falling to the Eaters? At least Yggdrasil.sys successfully sent out the system heroes in that realm to find help to prevent the full destruction from the eater invasion of that digital world at that time; I wonder if Alphamon still has that odd obsession with making horrible tasting coffee that only true weirdoes like Metabee would accept? Not like Metabee ever drank it, it really does look like it makes for a good lubricant though. “It is sufficient to say they aren’t normal, they are in fact eldritch in nature as much as appearance.” “Heed our words well, if those things are not in their more benign state and their more active destructive state… we soon may found ourselves fighting to save Moon Cell as much as destroying it from within to save far more worlds as the Eaters can become an unceasing problem if the cause of them being here is not found swiftly.” I added a second later as I looked out over the battlefield and saw a bandaged Shanty that seemed to be made of water among all the exploding mines and gekko falling into pitfalls dug out by the Gazimon that also had the cycling mines. “Hopefully they can deal with the problem down there, I would rather stay as far away from Eaters as I feasibly can get away with doing.” Sami always seemed so cheerful before, she now seemed particularly worried. “Got the prototype Skein Flyer working and Welch is working on the design some more. Still need to work out the kinks in the energy weapons system, it’s not firing energy pucks correctly, but I’m ready to get back into it with some air support!” Canard stated as he flew a hovering V shaped motorcycle with tiltrotor propeller wings to hovering above the wall and fired off a burst of its weapons. The lasers tore into the armor on the Gekko like hot butter in a barrage of baseball shaped shots He seemed fairly disappointed that the lasers it was firing were not puck shaped. Was hockey really that big a religion on his home world that it had to be in every aspect of his life? What he had right now worked perfectly fine. -Underground Region, Forest, Dolly- We weren’t here to save this place, but it really seemed like we were doing Bloody Backside a solid here. Even as our machine was mildly melted by several jets of flames from the mooing menaces “Dolly it’s called Moon Cell! Also how are you holding up?” Perfectly fine Pom, controlling this machine through you wasn’t easy. Tossing out a repair or two to our friends wasn’t too bad on our magic and it wasn’t like it was breaking me physically to keep shooting at things like this was a video game. A very dangerous realistic one where if I messed up, we’d suffer the consequence or die. I’m glad that I’m working so well under pressure at the moment, then again a few thousand rounds of gun will take the nerves off. I can see why people liked firing things like this and the armor itself was cool. “Isn’t that exactly what I thought?” I saw no difference in what I called Bum Jail and what she just said… the actual name that is. “Also what are we doing here?” I mean aside from gunning down a lot of gekkos, dodging attacks coming from every which way and clawing down dinosaurs when they got too close. Like right now! Bringing the right arm to left across the machine’s torso, I then jammed it outwards with the nails straight into the head of a large yellow raptor with black stripes and spun it bodily around by the impaled head before pulling it free by stopping the momentum and sent it launching into a lizard robot that had one of our guys down and was attacking his canopy with those three tentacles. The machine toppled as the head of it was snapped off by the raptor projectile with added momentum, this mangle wreck platemail machine boosted any magic we’re already capable of on top of having that healing beam thing that can heal and repair us too. If it could boost my momentum manipulating ability, then I can channel that through the machine to be absolutely devastating… maybe I was as strong as Dormarch is getting. “Thanks for the save Doll!” The Militia Monster stated and I raised the machines left claw in acknowledgement, as I attempted to gun a flying squirrel panther out of the air with the right arm I just used to launch the raptor. Managed to stop the monster from swoop down on us, didn’t manage to stop the damage to left arm as a flightless yellow dragon bit at us and I quickly used it to block the creature’s mouth from getting the entire shoulder of our machine. “It’s a Wyvern Dolly, dragons have front legs or arms and not just legs and wings.” Whatever you say Pom, sure thing! “You’re not really paying attention are you?” “Oh I’m totally paying attention, we’d be taking on more damage if I wasn’t!” That’s when I was proven wrong a second later as we were slammed through a tree knocking it over and then against the ground as the creature gripping onto the machine shook us about violently while trying to rip the arm off the machine. Pom was paying attention to the positions of the other Commandramon dealing with more zombie tentacles geckos, raving raptors, what looked like a nasty mix between a cheetah, a porcupine and an armadillo, plus more weird terrors like a flying spaghetti monster… but I think that was just a hallucination. It wasn’t all bad, there were wild creatures fighting the zombies as much as we were, like Enemy for instance, the white furred guy that still stalked Pom was ripping anything that challenged him apart… and he was clearly enjoying himself. Don’t know where Hack Hound was, but we weren’t currently in a position to worry about him at the moment as we the canopy cracked when we were slammed into a boulder. I was pouring shot after shot into the yellow winged lizard, but he wasn’t putting us down, it was like he couldn’t feel pain or… oh right, zombie, heh… yeah… probably wasn’t paying that much attention. “Dolly we’re getting used as hammer here, focus!” And do what Pom?! The gun wasn’t exactly working on it! “Uh, use the healing function to repair the current damage to the arm and shoulder at least before the left arm gets ripped off the armor?” Okay activating the heal, cure, antidote, poisona, shell, barrier or whatever function this machine had. Pom and I felt magic get drained from us to activate that one function, didn’t know what other functions this machine had, but instant repairs could only be a… what the? As the green field of energy encompassed our machine, it touched the yellow undead monster with the scary white eyes and… it up and turned into dust on the wind. I always just thought that was a metaphor in that one song about how short our lives are in comparison to the universe around us and that we’d all eventually become dust with time. Eh, can’t exactly use ‘Aero’ to make lethal dust devils now can I? Wonder if DJ can send a copy of that song to Dormarch’s Digivice… “Dolly, I sometimes can’t honestly tell if you’re getting smarter or not.” Pom stated blandly. “Why thank you!” I stated pleasantly while wagging my tail, me being even considered to be remotely smart was nice. I’m well aware that I wasn’t exactly the smartest top dog in the Dalmatian family, heck half my siblings were smarter than me in a variety of ways… but I was the most fun and wanted to at least be recognized for some intelligence. “That wasn’t a compliment.” Oh… uh… well then, machine’s repaired itself and most of the nearby monsters are gone and our companions over there are getting attacked from all sides. “Get us back to the group before we lose someone Dolly.” Right, I steered us into walking back towards our friends while firing on anything attacking them, while wondering what just happened to big bad and brutal that was just slamming us around like a roasted ham during the Christmas holidays at the Dalmatian house. All the Puppies always got some ham and we roughed it up quite a bit as we fought over it. Why do I keep thinking of my family? “You’re homesick like me and I’m thinking of my family too, we’re kind of getting emotional bleed over from each other through our constant bonding being as tightly put together as it currently is. While we’re combining our brain power and reflexes in a powerful symbiosis that wouldn’t be possible if you weren’t my familiar otherwise Dolly.” Well that all sounded very complicated and wordy. “Also, yes, I’m wondering how we just dissolved that zombie wyvern like that. One second it was on us and being a powerful undead nightmare if we didn’t have this armor and the next poof, pile of dust after… wait… what happens when you heal a zombie?” “Dylan would say something like, a cleric healing what was already dead would render it gone because of a pair of dogs.” There was a pause as Pom took control of her body back from me, confusing me a bit as it stopped us entirely in place. “Don’t know any pair of dogs that would eat a zombie though, sure we dogs love a good bone, but zombie’s eugh… probably tastes nasty. Fresh meat or no eat for this dog.” I missed the taste of that bacon, that Circle bird harpy person that turned into a pig tasted pretty nice. “All Commandramon gather quickly round us, don’t worry about fighting the enemy zombies for the moment, Just draw them right to us!” What, do you have in mind Pom? What suddenly changed and why did you take control away from me like that? “Dolly just said something that gave me a very good idea of how to deal with the majority of these zombies in one fell swoop!” “Huh?” My confusion made Pom smile, it wasn’t a happy smile, but it was at least a good one. “You said healing a dead thing causes a paradox… therefore, if this armor does what I think it can…” Pom stated as all the Commandramon surrounded us quickly as ten or so yellow bipedal machines leapt for us along with a lot of yellow and black striped weird animals or creature. “Activating the function of the armor that we already know how to use, but spread it over a widespread range and…” A green pulse erupted from our machine and repaired the Commandramon’s machines, any recent damage to ours and our mild bruises from being slammed around by the big lizard. The green wave then struck the… there were no more zombies anywhere near us now. “Huh… neat…” I said with a grin as dust slowly floated to the ground. Ah yeah, we just wiped an entire plagues worth of undead in seconds. “We needed that Big Boss Lady, but what did you just do?” One of the militia monsters asked. “I think she just used the inverse healing law most RPGs are coded to have, where zombies heal when poisoned or hit with darkness… but healing them damages them instead of mending their flesh.” Looking around that seemed to be the case with the zombies as they had evaporate from the given area. “The only things left near us are the gekko that are ‘technically’ alive and not ‘technically’ zombies yet until defeated. How much of your magic did that exactly use Pom?” “A lot, I’m a little lightheaded, but I’m fine. Didn’t overexert myself.” Pom what were you looking… oh… you’re left leg started showing signs of gold wool, just a few hairs and you’re right leg wasn’t even entirely filled up yet. That was very bad wasn’t it? The slight flinch Pom did showed me how much that that wasn’t a good thing. “Don’t worry about it Dolly… just… get back to controlling this thing.” Like heck I’m not going to worry about you, is that the reason you’re so reluctant to use too much magic yourself? Well alright then, we only use the healing thing for emergencies from now on. Pom relinquished control of her body to me and with that the machine overall, I gladly took over again as more cow noise making two legged armless, tailless, machine lizards jumped at us. We focused them down as we stood around the burning forest and trees that were suddenly cleared of numerous incoming zombies. “Was it a tactical RPG at least?” Driver asked his comrades a second later as he and the others started firing on them with us helping out as well. “As far as the digital gaming scene is concerned, I did not eat the data of Soldier B on the third campaign map of that one particular game system.” That sounded like specific denial of the suspicious kind commando boy! “Soldier B never existed in the games data at all, nope, I had nothing to do with it as a code eating virus.” Couldn’t really focused on that as we were all concentrating our guns on the bipedal flamethrower turret heads hopping at us until there wouldn’t be enough left of them to even fill a living room. “Seismic activity, look alive people!” Driver called out as the ground rumbled underneath us, Pom was tensing up and I was glad I was in control as I prepared to move us. “Wait for it… move!” Everyone ran away from each other in an outwards circle as a pair of drills popped up in our midst and the five dragon privates immediately tossed glowing grenades on them as soon as their domes were down. I added some damage by shooting at the less damaged drill with our guns. “I still hate using stickys.” One of the Commandramon groused out as I pummeled holes into the side of the drill, the other Commandramon opened fire too as their grenade exploded and the two drills got wrecked before they could pull back underground entirely. “As far as we know the machines only has two drills, but once they are gone it’ll be forced to be above ground!” “Then once we’re done with it, the actual fighting starts.” Pom stated sadly with a slight hint of a whine in her voice. She wasn’t wrong, Adversary and Lack were going to both be attacking us if not each other and the Metal Hound was going to be destroyed by them. “I’m so glad we all got in that bathroom break.” Those two coming after Pom don’t need machines to fight on equal ground and I wasn’t nearly as strong as Dormarch in being able to stop at least one of them by myself. One of them was basically a machine butler with chainsaws, flaming knives and a ridiculously sharp blade that can cut up things and recover from any damage, the other was nigh impervious monster that gets stronger the more you fight it according to Pom. The two could easily beat the snot out of Pom if they worked together, even when she had the strange metal umbrella and wasn’t entirely on the defensive at the time. It was a good thing that they couldn’t work together. The drills tried to sink back into the ground while Pom, I and our two buddies continued to damage them, the others were busy with more of those leaping lizards, but after a moment under the ground… Several powerful blasts went off and a second later the ground was rumbling and some smoke started to pour out. “I think that last round of explosions finally did it, we destroyed its ability to burrow anywhere everyone retreat to a safe distance, that thing is coming up and it’s not going to be very happy about it!” Following Pilot and the other four guys we quickly ran for it as the ground started to erupt beneath us as the large machine started to pull itself out. We continued to run and as I looked us back at it, I hadn’t exactly realized how big it was... it was huge. Well, with drills bigger than our machines of course it was going to be huge. It was slowly rising up, toppling trees send rocks, mud and dirt everywhere and we were narrowly getting out of range of it when a pack of blue raptors tried to descend on us, I just simply mowed them down after I swerved us around a tree while we were still on the move to get out from above the machine pulling itself from the ground. The raptors weren’t very threatening at all while we still had the armor. I turned us around and started at the large mantis thing as it raised its two small front arms and then with a flicked doubled their length and made them started glowing with a lethal amount of energy. I gulped loudly, as it held them up threateningly while raising its six legs out of the ground on which two of those legs were the badly damaged drills on the back legs that no longer worked. -Pom- Here, we… “There you are, Blade Mode!” Saber Jack Wolf showed up to leap up at it and attack with his high speed cutting attacks. Much to his surprise and ours, it deflected all his high speed swings with ever faster movements of its two larger front arms with extending energy blades and then nearly cut the poor guy in half as he was sent flying when he blocked the long energy blades with his sword. “Open fire and don’t stop until you have to cycle ammunition!” I shouted and we started shooting, I had Dolly focus on damaged the barrels of its head guns further. I didn’t trust them to not be able to fire at least some energy after some of the previous damage we did to the thing. “I don’t think the Magitek Armors guns can do enough damage to that thing… we might have to actually climb onto it to attach bombs personally, but that seems like a suicidal idea at best.” Driver suggested as Saber Jack Wolf came running back. “That won’t be necessary I’ve defeated this thing before and…” Saber Jack was going to attack the middle right side leg. Unfortunately for him he was almost hit with a wall of fire that erupted along the legs protecting them from being approached, much less being anywhere beneath the thing as the conflagration spread out along the ground making Jack back up a lot as one of his arms partially melted in the heat that turn a tree full of life into a stump in seconds. “That wasn’t a defense mechanism of the original Excelsus that I defeated!” “See, told you, definitely suicidal to approach that thing to plant bombs.” Driver Commandramon commented with an amused sounding voice. “I honestly don’t think it cares Jack.” The second voice from Jack’s body stated. “It seems whatever modifications have been made to it has given it defenses specifically with us in mind, the fusing the two realms have altered it quite nastily. Also its damaged drills are starting to repair themselves, though very slowly as are the two plasma cannons, so good on you for noticing temporary ally ewe. If we don’t destroy it here, it may have the capacity to full recover if it digs itself underground and stays there. Also it thankfully can only generate Gekko while above ground.” “Did you really have to say all of that Blade?” Groused out Jack Wolf as six Gekko appeared from out of nowhere, slowly forming from the legs up and he was immediately on them. “Yes, we have temporary allies we’re going to kill afterwards after all.” Wow, that wasn’t even subtle on Blade’s part… or was it on purpose? Hard to tell because it sounded like. “You’re death will be a beautiful one Doggy Messiah, we’ll be sure of it!” Oh my gods and goddesses… REALLY?! We kept our guns focused on the large machine as we backed away from it and that’s when a gekko, an entire one, was thrown at it and the Excelsus easily slashed it apart with an outwards scissoring swipe of its front energy blades. Dolly turned us to see Fou with an excited growl coming from him as he looked at the Excelsus, he howled loudly. Yeah, this was likely right up Fou’s ally, he enjoys fighting too much to ignore that thing. I was just quite tired of all this chaos and it didn’t help that when Fou’s howl brought a ton of NPs down on us, also enemy EPs were rushing the combat area while trying to draw the incoming zombie’s ire. They were specifically targeting the zombies, so we were leaving them to it, we didn’t have the numbers and we couldn’t really take any losses. There were very few Asssassin Caerbannog APs around showing up to assist us, but they were mostly sticking with us in a support manner, we were definitely outnumbered, outgunned and on the smaller side of things here. At least everything wasn’t focused on killing us as a mostly three way war started in the general area of the forest that was quickly getting leveled by everything in it going nuts. In fact the forest was almost entirely flattened thanks to all the fighting and the environmental damage was spreading to the jungle surroundings. “Guys, focus on the bigger problem and while defending ourselves from the smaller ones where necessary. We do have some Caerbannog assistance.” I called out and received back five affirmatives, as we started focusing on the chaos around us for a bit to fight of the enemy before turning twelve streams of shots onto the largest machine around doing minimal damage, but it was still damage. “We’re going to chip damage this things main body to death with a million paper cuts aren’t we?” One of the Commandramon commented dryly, considering how little damage we were doing to it overall. “Also we are definitely not approaching that thing from the front any closer than we already are if it can move its arms that fast.” The guy had a good point, a reason why is I watched as an NP get stabbed by the mantis like glowing arm blade and immediately turn into a zombie with a requisite scorched hole in it from the energy. Did not want that to happen to my Commandramon friends. Leg flamethrowers, blazingly fast energy blade arms and more… seriously, what is my life that I’m not yet dead from all of this insanity? At least it didn’t have fast repairing systems or it would be functionally impossible to take down. -Nearby the chaotic battle, Dormarch- Yeah, that… I don’t know how anyone would want to go near that thing after seeing it zombie something on contact and that was just with the energy blades. I’m not sure touching the rest of it was safe without a buffer either. I at least saw mom among the Commandramon, but it felt like Dolly was piloting that armor… at least it was visibly different from the rest and not hard to track. “Um… excuse me…” I freaked out and jumped, bashing my head against a tree branch and was caught from falling to the ground by a pair of gently paws that pulled me into a hug. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” It was that odd winged Caerbannog I saw on the way here, in fact the candy ponies and little green gummy bear like gators were also really odd. “That’s… okay… you scared me more than that hurt.” You’d be scared too if a cute giant bipedal angelic bunny snuck up on you. I rubbed at my head with a paw, oddly my blue scarf felt like it absorbed most of the force of the impact for me. So that’s how a Defense Scarf works. “What did you need? It’s kind of dangerous for you to be around here.” “Oh I know, but um… wow that is getting really violent… anyway, I came to warn you about the thing called an Eater slowly destroying everything. If you see a black and white checkered thing that looks like a cephalopod or gastropods, don’t touch it or go near it. It doesn’t matter what you are, it will eat you, it can even eat biologicals from what I’ve been told and digital critters like you have seen these things before.” Well that was some news to be getting from a beautiful pink haired bunny that was likely born of an assassination program… I wonder if she was the femme fatale setting of Assassin Caerbannog. “Oh, where are my manners, I’m Cuddlestare.exe. I was born and come from within Dodo’s head.” “Wha…?” That was more confusing to hear than anything. In any case I told Pom to ask the Commandramon about what an ‘Eater’ was and how bad were they on a scale of one to ten. -In Mare Melum proper, Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Ocellus- In the distance across the city a large thing rose up from the ground and was clearly visible from Castle Alexander on the other side of the city in the warped farmlands region. “Okay, so… that is a problem…” A large two legged, one red eyed robot reared up out of the shrine region on the other side of the city with what looked like featherless wings and a large whipping tail. It looked like a wyvern? At least it wasn’t yellow, but it was firing on us. “Can someone tell me if Alexander will be capable of doing that heavenly judgement thing soon? We got incoming missiles fired by what looks like a huge enemy Gekko.” “We’ve got it, switching to the anti-air fire mode.” One of the Commandramon said as two of the towers on Castle Alexander, from what I was seeing on a screen, switched away from artillery and started firing tons of smaller projectiles at the incoming missiles that blew up before they could reach us. The explosions toppled a few tree infested buildings. “It’s not going to be able to get any missiles by us! Though we kind of need to be in artillery mode to protect our ground forces from the numerous problems around Castle Alexander.” “Negative on the Alexander’s special attack little miss, we don’t have the power for it. We can enter walking combat mode though and fight with its paws while keeping the towers active if we have to for a limited time. That’s not something I’d recommend though.” That was Cid Highwind, nice to know we had some capability of taking Castle Alexander on the offensive instead of just being a massive stone turtle. “We’re still not running a fully repaired and fully powered ship here, I would love to see what this thing is like in it’s prime though… and flying!” The Six Harmony Programs would at least be taking care of the underground territories to the best of their abilities. Though we were worried about the Eater running around down there, especially Sami. Nice to know the power of friendship was somewhat infectious. “Ocellus why is an injured Shanty fighting out here without a headset?” Jeanne asked and I responded. “That’s a water clone of Shanty, it’s kind of autonomous. Shanty can only make one though, she can make two clones while actively in a fight herself. She has no idea what it’s doing aside from helping. “If it be doing what I be wanting it to do, then it will be doing that as long as it doesn’t be getting hit too hard. Learned how to finally be making a fully working clone from watching Quetal enough.” Shanty stated from beside me as she tapped her headset. “Smolder you might want to be looking out to your left.” “I see it!” Smolder responded and an EP was blown apart by the resulting fireball on one of the screens. Our mine field just couldn’t cycle explosives fast enough for all the enemies sieging our surroundings, but our territories were still holding strong. The bipedal machine that started launching missiles at us was a new wrinkle, but we were still okay. “That underground team better finish off the problem fast, I’d rather just deal with the EPs than all of these Nopes and Yellow Zombies.” “I’d rather we not deal with the Eaters presence getting worse, but it obviously will, then you’ll really start to see some horrible stuff Smolder.” After that the battle continued as normal with Sami, currently as Hi-Commandramon, firing a whole slew of grenades with her ‘Stampede XM’ attack that cleared a huge swath of the field as if a stampede of animals just flattened everything. “Eaters are considered eldritch for a reason, even if they aren’t necessarily supposed to be monsters.” -Somewhere in the underground region of Mare Melum, Program Pony Gaiden, Purpsmart.exe- “Okay, why am I a lavender and dark blue highlighted feathered raptor?” I said as I transmitted from Dodo to the coordinates that Pinkpie.exe gave me after Flarity.exe disappeared and after a bright light I popped out in a carnivorous ground bird’s body. The coordinates were different the last two times, but the location code was the same random string of weirdness Pinkpie.exe called out. So that’s why I waited to see what’s going on. “Why is Flarity.exe a marshmallow tiger? Why is Applelove.exe a muscular blue cow? Where is Cuddlestare.exe? I thought she was the first one to come here!” “I’m a cougar darling… oh darn you Pinkpie.exe I just realized the pun with my current species after what I just said, I’m the same age as you darn it!” Stated the marshmallow cougar angrily. The snickering taffy pony grinned weakly and leaned away from the marshmallow cougar’s candy cane claws, which were as tough as titanium with the way they were coded, with large globules of candy syrup dripping off of her head in fright. “In order and for most of those, we’re just working with what we have Purpsmart! It was either this blade horned raptor or a uniceratops… which would you have preferred? Cuddlestare is busy with warning our other friends down here about the Eaters.” Pinkpie stated. “Also we just took a territory that had strong raptor data in it and the PLANT that formed was already set for intelligent raptors.” “Don’t you mean Eater?” Applelove.exe stated. “Nope, look over that way!” There were three black and white checkered whelks floating around consuming all the code within the general area of themselves, the only thing they weren’t consuming entirely was the ground, but they did leave patches of foggy glitches in their wake. “Hmm… I do prefer being a raptor, but I’m still upset with you!” I crossed my arms and turned my head away from Pinkpie.exe and huffed, while glancing at the horrifying Eaters gnawing their way through the coding at an ever exponentially increasing pace. “Also, maybe you should have done Rainbow.exe first, she could be going a little stir crazy and leaving her alone in Dodo’s head might have consequences we won’t want to deal with later.” “Like leaving those Eater things to run amuck and multiply like they currently are?” Applelove pointed out, at least they weren’t coming in our direction and apparently Pinkpie had built up a lot of territory. The other taffy ponies with the ‘exe’ markings on their flanks were hitting the eaters with jawbreaker cannonballs, but not doing much to the eaters aside from minimal damage. Those Eater things looked to be stupidly tough and they were quite alien even to our odd existences as harmony based entities in the form of programs. There were now seven Eaters out there eating everything. Make that eight… yeah, the taffy Ponies could barely deal with one let alone more and the cannonballs they were firing weren’t exactly made of cotton candy fluff like Pinkpie’s hair. “Fair.” Pinkpie.exe and Flarity.exe stated flatly. Don’t know if that was about the Eaters or Rainbow.exe. Knowing what Rainbow.exe was like, sure she was loyal to a fault, but if we left her alone for too long… I shudder to think what she’ll do. She was denser and nuttier than the fruitcake we were originally going to use, before Dodo came up with the highly carbonize high velocity bread loaves himself as a viable projectile alternative for combat. The highly carbonized bread loaves were faster to produce than the fruitcake bricks and almost efficiently the same in damage potential, it’s just that the carbonized bread loaves couldn’t be used as building material afterwards.