The mecha was large and bulky, but still able to move quite fast in a charge. Thankfully, it took some time after each charge before it could reorient for another charge. The engine block was mounted on the back, so after Samus evaded the first charge, she was able to fire several charged Diffusion/Ice blasts to the engine, inflicting damage and eventually freezing the joint of the right manipulator arm. One missile shattered the joint, letting the limb fall to the ground and break apart. The mech attempted to fight back with laser blasts and other weapons, but Samus had too much practice against mechas to fail so easily. It wasn't long before she was able to take out the second manipulator arm.
At that point, the mecha deployed buzzsaw blades around its treads, attempting to shred Samus as it charged back and forth. Spike, watching from a safe distance, rolled his eyes. "This is getting ridiculous," he grumbled, gathering energy into his mouth. "Stay behind me!"
Nodding fearfully, the woman he was ordered to guard clung to his back near the base of his tail, below his wings. This nailed down to her even further that they were, in fact, clinging upside down to the ceiling, and it was only when his tail wrapped protectively around her that she felt safe again.
Watching carefully, Spike chose his moment...then unleashed a fully charged blast of electric breath, which slammed full force into the side of the mecha and sending it - and its pilot - flipping end over end to slam into the far wall as the top burst into flames.
"Spike!" Samus snapped. "I said not to assist me!"
"And Adam ordered me to hit any suspicious figure with my electric breath!" Spike called back innocently. "I'd say a mech designed for transporting crates equipped with lasers and buzzsaws is pretty suspicious!"
A clang echoed up to Spike, letting him know Samus had smacked her faceplate with her armored hand. He smirked as he heard the woman wrapped in his tail giggle girlishly.
"Ugh!" Twilight groaned as she brought her hoof to her face, despite the laughter around her. "Did you ever learn to turn your 'Swag' off, whatever that is? Am I going to have to watch out for that woman, whoever she is, showing up as a rival for Gandrayda?"
"Wait, what?" Gandrayda demanded, stunned.
"Mom, seriously, Melissa didn't see me that way!" Spike insisted.
"Just keep telling yourself that," Anthony offered with a wide smirk.
Samus rolled her eyes. "At any rate, Adam sent orders to change our priority to taking down the creature we know now was Ridley, since the wavelength of its cry was driving all creatures around it into a frenzy. If left unchecked, the creatures within the Bottleship would take down us and survivors."
"I told the woman we'd just saved - we didn't get her name just there, since we were in such a rush - to find somewhere safe and secure to hide, and to only open the door if it was me on the other side," Spike explained. "Since the Deleter android was humanoid, it was logical to assume it could only mimic humans or those with a humanoid structure."
"Logical and accurate," Adam agreed.
"So after that, we set course for Sector 3, in pursuit of 'the creature'," Samus continued. "Unfortunately, we found our way to a dead end based on the path Adam gave us. When we tried to backtrack us, we found ourselves trapped by more upgraded Zebesians in a glass cage. Our beams bounced off, and the glass was too thick for Spike to smash through without disabling his armor's limiter-"
"Which would have been a bad idea," Spike insisted, "since I'd have been able to smash through the walls of the station then, which wouldn't have been safe."
"-and the Zebesians had Wave Beams, which shot right through the clear walls," Samus finished.
"As soon as I got that information, I authorized Samus' own Wave Beam," Adam continued.
"In addition to letting my beam penetrate transparent or semi-transparent substances, it made it much more powerful," Samus explained. "It also opened the path forward, allowing us to actually make our way to Sector 3."
"If only it were so easy," Spike muttered.
Samus activated the elevator controls somewhat dubiously as Spike settled himself on the platform. The elevator immediately started shooting up the long lift towards the central elevator. Despite the seeming quiet, Spike paced the platform, his instincts and senses on high alert. Taking that as a cue, Samus scanned their surrounding, ready to fight at a moment's notice.
Both turned out to be right, as Wave Beam equipped enhanced Zebesians dropped onto the platform from above, immediately lunging for the attack. Samus focused on the first of the attacking trio while Spike took the second, knocking the third off the platform behind them with his tail, where it fell far behind them.
More Wave Beam Zebesians continued to drop down as the elevator platform rose, but Spike's strategy of knocking any beyond the two he and Samus were actively focusing on off the elevator - whether down to fall behind or up to be run over as the platform raced up the sloping shaft - continued to prove effective.
As the last of the Zebesians were dealt with, another creature swooped down. This creature somewhat resembled an oversize stag beetle with its giant horns, with a narrow body lined with spikes that were either teeth or flight assist fins, it was difficult to determine. It had two long arms ending in red claws, two small legs, and a large eye where its head should have been. It quickly proved to be cybernetic as it unleashed a wave of missiles that locked onto the pair as they dodged around them.
As soon as it landed on the platform, Spike closed to clash with the creature, clenching his teeth as he discovered it could match his present level of physical strength. He dug his hind claws into the platform to keep from being pushed back while Samus raced around, taking pot shots at the creature's eye as they became clear, not charging her beam to keep the Diffusion effect from injuring Spike.
After a time, the creature broke free of the grapple, its eye becoming a red hole as it began drawing in energy for some sort of attack. Samus quickly countered this by firing a missile into the hole, causing the creature to fall back, allowing Spike to charge in and knock it for a loop before Samus jammed her charged arm cannon into the eye and fired.
Despite the amassed assault, the creature recovered readily and continued the attack until the platform reached the end of the elevator shaft. It then unleashed a few more attacks to make the pair back off a bit before taking flight, diving down the shaft and away from the pair.
Spike and his hoard of female companions. Has a nice ring to it.
Awesome chapter, as always, can't wait for more!
Have a dog:
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Hrm. Considering their joking about it, I imagine the bit with Melissa ended differently than in canon.
And I'm imagining if it got the point it did in canon an 'It's got a Stun setting!?' moment. Which would be hilarious.
Sorry for posting a link, but I need to get this off my chest.
I don't care if I get banned, just please read this.
7048954 I find you taking the time to draw a dog in text is both amusing and frightening.
7049043 I can see how it was amusing, but can you explain what truly frightens you?
You've peaked my curiosity?
( ゚_ゝ゚)
7049032 Your link leads to a 404 error. Did your blog post get taken down or something?
7049081 I assume that the actual going about of drawing the dog in text takes quite a while. The fact that you actually spent that time and drew a dog that actually looks good. And the fact that it actually looks like a dog and is an actual good drawing is slightly freaking me out. The last time I saw something like this was in the Youtube comments section. And if you've ever looked at those comments, you would know that some are just frightening.
The drawing just brings some memories of those frightening comments.
7049150 Oh okay. I now see the frightening correlation.
Here's a Nyan cat or Nyan Bus (which ever you see) just for you:
____━━____┓━╭━━━━━━━╮
____━━____┗┓|:::::::::::::::::^━━^ |
____━━____━┗|::::::::::::|。◕‿‿◕。|
____━━____━━╰O----O-----O----O ╯
7048954
@Dog: Toby Fox, is that you?
7049244 Yay someone who recognizes Undertale!!
Clap..........Clap...............Clap
(ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚
7049286 I think half the internet recognizes UT.
It's one of the largest events to hit the internet since Homestuck.
Seriously.
I'm beginning to draw comparison between Spike and the Doctor.
It scares me.
This grammar bothers me, wouldn't it be easier to say it could charge quite fast?
Nice shot! Also, have you always double spaced?
Seriously?
Nice hit.
He's got a point. I mean, it's not meant to cut them open, it shoudl be unarmed.
Oooh! I got this one!24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m84xif7B7k1qzjz8ao1_400.jpg
Hope not.
Spike gets ALL the ladies.
Which would have been ever worse.
It wasn't so easy, was it?
Somehow I'm not surprised.
What is it with people anc putting missiles on robots/cyborgs?
Smart.
The HELL was that?
Nice chapter, can't wait to see how the next encounter with Melissa goes. I loved how Spike finished off the mecha, well done.
Ugh, I always hated my first run-in with the big bug...thing. It took me SOOOOOO long and so many tries to beat it.
7049679
What is Homestuck?
7051733 Check out "The Moon in the Dark", also by Tatsurou. That Will have all the info you need.
7052002
Moon in the Dark has nothing to do with Homestuck.
7052030 whoops, I misread that comment...
don't look at me...
7051733 Ahem. Let me tell you about Homestuck. (It should be telling then and there that the phrase 'Let me tell you about Homestuck' is considered a meme online).
Homestuck is a story told by Andrew Hussie via web media that could loosely be called a webcomic. Or an Epic. Or a catastrophe. They're all pretty apt descriptors, really.
It mixes long conversations, comic-style drawings, animations, interactive story based flash games, and music to tell the tale of a bunch of 13 year old kids who try to play a computer game together, only to have it turn out that the game will literally destroy the world, and will let them create a new one if they can beat it.
They fuck up a lot. And then there are aliens, who, it turns out, fucked up alot too.
Also sometimes there's the... puppet. Ugh.
Anyway, the first 3 or so parts are mediocre, but it really picks up once the kids actually enter Skaia for the first time.
Or just google the word 'Homestuck'.
Edit: Famously, during peak popularity, Homestuck's home page crashed after the upload of a particularly important animation due to the sheer amount of traffic the page was getting.
Then when the creator uploaded the page to Newgrounds, that site crashed too.
Then the update was released as a download on Megaupload. ... Which did not entirely crash, but was only intermittently available because of the traffic.
More recently, Hussie decided to make a Homestuck adventure game, and ran a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $700,000. The campaign ended up raising almost $2.5 Million, instead. ...
What I'm trying to get across here is that Homestuck is kind of a big deal.
Another enjoyable chapter. Good job.
LOL
8656350
Well in Spike's defense there he was following orders... Just not the ones Samus gave him