A Rather Large Adventure

by BradyBunch

Chapter Seven: Diversionary tactic #1

Freedom Fighter had angled his descent so he had crashed into a Noxxa sentry as he had landed hard on the stone balcony surrounding the tower. He was almost grateful for it, as it had cushioned his landing slightly. He had collided into him as the sentry was trotting around the outside and had knocked both of them to the ground. Freedom Fighter skidded on the ground, ripped a knife out of a scabbard, and rushed at the Nox who was trying to stand again. Freedom Fighter gripped his neck, batting away the claws that tried to strike him, and buried the knife in his skull. The buggish monster dissolved in his hooves, and he shook the dust off of him.

That was when the pain caught up to him and he clutched his body in agony. He lept away like a shadow in a suddenly lit room and hid himself in between a small ballista and the stacks of ammunition for it. Then he examined his body for injuries.

For the hundredth time since he first put it on, Freedom Fighter thanked Celestia for giving him the armored bodysuit he had on. It could absorb a lot of shock through the dampeners in between layers, and the exoskeleton inside of it could make him exceptionally strong. But it couldn't absorb all of the shock. Feeling himself, Freedom could feel some nasty bruises the size of his hoof on his right arm and his chest. He sighed and shrugged it off.

He'd been hurt worse before.

Freedom Fighter peeked his head out. No one was there. Then the doors to the tower banged open and Freedom ducked down again. Out marched four dozen Noxxa. The one leading them snarled, "Secure the balcony and make sure the siege engines are protected. The tower is on complete lockdown while we have to search for that princess of excrement."

Freedom Fighter very nearly leaped out of his hiding place to carve out his heart with one of the duller knives he had.

He continued. "If you find anypony, kill them on sight. The Guardians of the Sun are the ones leading the rescue."

A shaky voice came stumbling. "B-but sir, won't it be more likely that they would kill us first?"

Freedom Fighter could imagine the glare the leader must be leveling at his subordinate right now. "Not if you are better than them, it's not," he growled. "Well? Do you think you're better than them? Or are you willing to defer the contest of strength to a filthy pony?"

"N-n-no, S-s-sir."

A moment passed.

"You know, the only thing keeping you alive right now is your honesty, Ka."

"Y-y-yes, sir."

"Are there any other objections?" he asked harshly.

There was a collective murmur of dissent.

"Then get out there and kill the Guardians if you find them!"

As they passed close to where Freedom Fighter was, he could hear one of them say to another, "Have you ever killed a Guardian?"

"No."

"Me either."

Freedom Fighter waited until they had passed away, then peeked his head out again. His eyes centered in on his target and he grinned under his cowl.

His target was a large trebuchet fifteen yards away, its arm cocked back and ready to fire. It was perched on long black spindly legs, giving it all the appearance of an evil insect ready to attack. Surrounding it were twelve Noxxa on their back four legs, grasping long, wicked spears and scowling at anything that moved. Freedom Fighter sighed silently at the sight.

'Spears. Why is it that guards are always armed with spears?' he reflected.

why are you so concerned about spears? he asked himself.

'I'm not concerned! I'm exasperated! You'd think the typical guard would be a bit more creative in their weapon choices!'

So you're saying you'd like a bit more variety.

'Yes! Gimme a guard that's armed with a battle-ax or a broadsword anytime soon, not these tired overused weapons! I want a challenge, you know.'

You already have a challenge. You have to rush over there, put the Dark Stone and an explosive or two in the net at the end, arm the bomb, and fire it to get some distance from the tower before it explodes- all while holding your own against a dozen or more heavily armed Noxxa. Is that not a challenge?

'Of course it's a challenge!' he cackled. 'But is it a challenge for me or a challenge for them to stop me?'

Sometimes I get so annoyed with your behavior I want to punch you.

'Then go ahead and punch me! See if I care!'

Freedom Fighter punched himself in the face.

Ow...that hurt...

Freedom Fighter smirked and smugly replied, 'See what you get for trying to hurt me? Now focus, me. I've got a trebuchet I need to hijack.'

The warrior crept out from his hiding spot and made his way stealthily to the insectoid catapult. He leaped, slid, and hid around heavy spots of Noxxa patrols. There were a lot of ammunition piles and modified armor pieces for the catapults lying around, providing him with a lot of hiding places when he saw a patrol coming near. It was slow going, for the most part. The sheer amount of Noxxa around was almost inconceivable. But he reasoned that was because of the security breach and the Princess's escape attempt.

The princess...

'No!' he yelled at himself. 'None of that right now. My relationship to her is strictly business. Now go away!'

And it did.

Eventually, he found himself at one of the catapult's front legs. Three Noxxa guards stood along the cardinal directions on the catapult's points. Three each stood facing north, south, east, and west. Freedom Fighter was still out of sight, but the Nox closest to him was sniffing. He was getting a suspicious smell from somewhere... the smell of a pony.

Freedom Fighter pulled out a small cylinder with a red button on top and triggered the detonator.

Near the ballista where he had first hidden, the ammunition for it was incinerated in a massive explosion as the explosives planted there were triggered and promptly blew up. A huge ball of flame erupted and a plume of smoke poured out of it.

Every Noxxa guard that was patrolling immediately rushed to the scene with apprehension on their buglike faces. They were yelling, "Come on! Whoever he was, he couldn't have gone far!" Soon the area was mostly clear, and the Noxxa surrounding the catapult were now looking towards the massive column of smoke.

With the distraction working, Freedom Fighter rushed as fast as he could to the holding arm of the trebuchet and set to work, unbeknownst to the Noxxa guards, who had now left their posts to view the action far away. He opened up a hidden chamber in his armored bodysuit, took out the Dark Stone, then resealed the hidden chamber. He then reached once again into his suit and opened the part letting his bandoleer of explosives show. He selected three heavy explosives and hurriedly stuffed all of them into the holding net of the catapult, which was already partially filled with some stones.

His right hoof sprouted a hidden blade and he was about to cut the rope holding the net back, but came up short when he heard a roar behind him. He whirled around to see another dozen Noxxa who had seen him trying to command the catapult. The one who was now leading the charge against him was fully twice the size of the others. He was in Berzerker armor and held a massive mace in his two front claws. The other eleven behind him all held an assortment of swords, axes, and one even had a dried golden warhammer with what looked like dried dark maroon blood on both ends.

The pantomime had ended. The climax, however, was about to begin.

Freedom Fighter reached towards his flanks and unhitched the pair of military batons on either side of him, folded in half by a small hinge. He stood upright, his leg stiffeners clicking into place. He gave a flick of his hooves and the sticks unhinged, doubling their length. He then conjoined one end of the stick to the other and twisted them, locking them in place to form a long, collapsible staff. He twirled it in front of him expertly in a salute to his enemies, then crouched low to the ground, his staff angled behind him as he narrowed his eyes.

Only the berzerker didn't get the message; only he continued to charge at him. He swung his massive mace hard as he drew close.

Freedom Fighter leaped as the mace came towards him, and landed on top of the massive weapon. The berzerker lifted the weapon over his head and Freedom jumped off the mace and landed on the back of the massive Noxxa's head. He flipped a switch on the staff and a small thin blade jutted out of the end. As the Nox clawed at his head, Freedom dodged the swipes and drove the end of the staff into his eye through the armor hole.

The Nox shrieked and tried to shake the pony off his head, but only succeeded in stirring the bladed staff in his head, making him scream even more. Freedom took the staff out of his eye socket a little bit as if to remove it--

Only to drive it even deeper into his head.

His scream was lost as his body collapsed into ash, leaving behind a perfect shell of black armor. Freedom Fighter was kneeling on the massive helmet with his staff out to the side. The others hissed loudly at their fallen compatriot.

Freedom Fighter grinned under his mask and beckoned with his staff.

They charged bellowing war cries and brandishing their weapons. Unfortunately for Freedom Fighter, however, their cries alerted the other Noxxa that were investigating the faraway explosion. He turned to see them all rush at him from the opposite direction.

Freedom Fighter leaped backwards off the helmet and retreated to protect the trebuchet, and more importantly, the Dark Stone. They could not find out it was there. When he reached the catapult platform, the first few Noxxa fell upon him.

The speed at which his staff moved was akin to a helicopter's blades. Strikes to the attackers came from everywhere. A jab to the chest, a swipe to the leg, a sickening crunch as the staff collided into their heads. They could barely get any hits on him because he and his staff moved at a respectable fraction of the speed of sound. Freedom Fighter spun and twirled, leaped and jumped and slid around them all with the agility of a cat. Every hit he slammed into their heads caved in their skulls. The metal the staff was made of made the Noxxa's weapons look like cardboard. Not a single Nox made it to the catapult.

After he had killed enough to make the ground powdered with black ash, the rest of the Noxxa backed away tentatively. Freedom Fighter was outnumbered by at least twenty to one.

Just like old times.

However, there came several ear-piercing shrieks as several objects embedded themselves in the wooden planks at Freedom Fighter's hooves. He leaped backwards and sighed.

Blasted archers.

From the tower, two stories up, several Noxxa had armed themselves with crossbows and bows and arrows. They were too well concealed for Freedom Fighter to return fire. And anyway, how could he? He had throwing knives, sure, but the archers were too well concealed behind stone for them to be of much use. Against crossbows, a throwing knife was negligible.

'Eligible to be negligible,' he corrected himself.

You're an unintelligible dirigible!

'Ooh, good one,' Freedom Fighter complimented himself, backflipping away from several arrows seeking his flesh. He flipped backwards once more and hid behind a large beam of the trebuchet. An arrow splintered the post right next to his ear and he straightened behind his cover.

You can't stay here long, he reminded himself. If you do, you'll have all of them rushing at you all at once and one of them could disarm the catapult.

'You have a suggestion, then?' he screamed at his other made-up voice.

Yeah! Don't get shot!

He peeked out, and an arrow zinged past his nose at an uncomfortably close distance. He then spotted the directional positioning wheel that changed the direction the catapult faced.

His mind raced. He needed to fire the catapult and detonate the explosives, but he couldn't do it so long as there were archers shooting at him. He needed a way to take out those archers. But the only thing he had was...

He looked up at the catapult again and then back at the positioning wheel.

A sickening grin spread across his face like he was spreading peanut butter. 'Why fire away from the tower,' he asked himself, 'When you can fire directly into the enemy tower instead?'

And before he could argue with himself again, he was out from behind his cover running at full gallop, with his staff wildly deflecting the arrows coming close to him, directly at the positioning wheel.

When he got there, a Nox had gotten to the wheel on the opposite end of it first and was holding out a large dirk, about twelve inches in length. When Freedom got close, the Nox thrust his arm through the spokes of the wheel to stab him in the heart. Freedom Fighter narrowly avoided the thrust, then spun the wheel hard to the right. The Noxxa's arm got caught between the spokes and the wheel stand, and he cried in pain and dropped the dirk. Freedom caught the knife, flipped over the wheel, and as he came down, buried it to the hilt in a chink in the Noxxa's armor. He crumpled to dust with a bit of it in the wheel spokes.

Freedom Fighter then started to spin the wheel as fast as he could, and as he did so, the platform the catapult was on started to rotate. A few Noxxa took to the air with their wings, firing more crossbows. As they fired, Freedom Fighter hid behind the wheel stand, still spinning the wheel as fast as he could. The wood around him splintered with the crossbow arrow's impacts. The catapult began to turn to face the dull red tower.

And then all of a sudden the arrow barrage stopped.

Freedom yet again poked out his head, hoping to see some signs of contention among them, only to see several dozen of the spiny, six-legged bugs rush forward, no longer having to worry about marching under a storm of arrows.

Freedom Fighter inwardly groaned. 'Could this day get any better?' he asked himself before taking out another explosive from his bandoleer, arming it to grenade mode, and tossing it into the swarm. Some of the smarter ones cried aloud and leaped backwards, but most of the others were blown to Tartarus by an explosion. The wooden platform gave a massive upheaval of splintered wood and Noxxa dust, and a plume of smoke billowed out.

The smoke clouded the archer's vision, and their arrows begun to fly wildly through the air. Freedom Fighter gave one last spin of the wheel and unslung his staff from his back. He started to violently slam the end of the staff into the heads of any Noxxa who got near to him. A quick, hard spin to the head was usually all it took to dent them into a cloud of dust.

The fog of war blocked Freedom Fighter's vision for him to accurately fight, so he brained a final enemy, went back to the wheel, and began to once again turn the catapult to face the tower. Several arrows once again sunk their tips into the hard wood of the catapult's beams. Some of the arrows split a few ropes before impacting into the wooden platform. This made Freedom Fighter nervous. Would the catapult even work without those couple of split ropes?

Arrows continued to thunk into the wood all around him. The wheel spun faster, with a few chunks of it torn out by arrows.

When the cloud of smoke from the bomb had thinned a little, a few of the Noxxa saw a bad sight. The loaded catapult was now completely turned around to face them, and most of them realized what was going to happen. They started to shriek and push each other in an effort to run away. The archers tried to fire at the ropes more, hoping to disable the catapult.

It was now or never. Freedom took the dirk from the Nox he had killed at the wheel, aimed at the release rope holding the payload back, and threw the knife with expert precision. It sliced clean through the rope release, and the trebuchet's arm whipped up.

A massive boom and a flash of orange fire took place on the side of the gargantuan tower. It wiped out just about every single Nox there as the payload of rocks, explosives, and a Dark Stone slammed into the structure. Rocks sprayed everywhere and Freedom Fighter was flung backwards by the sheer force of it. He hit the edge of the battlements with a groan that knocked the air out of his lungs. He instinctively curled up on the ground to make his frame smaller to avoid getting hit by debris. A piece of burning wood landed right in front of him with a sharp crack, and a rock narrowly missed crashing into his head.

When the noise of the explosion had died down, he drew his head up again. The trebuchet had been shredded by debris and was looking very much out of action as one of its supports had snapped in half. There was a large hole now in the side of the tower near the Noxxa archer's firing positions, and the ground all around him was strewn with burning wreckage. He could not hear any Noxxa, and as he looked around, he couldn't see any either. The air was thick with smoke and ash, and Freedom Fighter had an uncomfortable feeling that the Noxxa's remains were now in the air he was breathing.

He coughed, irritating his already-damaged throat. He did, however, feel a brief twinge of satisfaction as he looked around at a job well done. He picked his staff off the ground and collapsed it, then re-hitched them to his flanks. He then got to his four hooves and started to walk away, but his front hoof stumbled over something. Freedom Fighter looked down in annoyance at the pesky object.

It was the Dark Stone.

Completely undamaged.

The explosion had done nothing.

Every voice he had screamed, 'YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!'

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

I hope your username doesn't guarantee lots of memes in this story. If the main OCs of this story were voiced, what would they sound like?

[BradyBunch]

8443082
Well, first off, I won't be using a lot of memes. For me to include that would be weak humor. I can come up with better stuff than overused internet material. And second off, I think that Noble Blade would sound like a warm, reassuring, charming kind of guy. Think Obi-Wan Kenobi with a weaker british accent. Firestorm...I dunno. Try Rainbow Dash if she were a guy. And if he uses accents occasionally, that's because he's joking. Of course, Freedom Fighter won't sound like anything. He's a mute! But if you're wondering what his made-up voices sound like, imagine how Deadpool's voices are like. Do you like the story and OCs so far?

[DmitriTheWriter]

A shaky voice came stumbling. "B-but sir, won't it be more likely that they would kill us first?"

Hey, Marshal Malice doesn't pay you to think!

Freedom Fighter leaped backwards off the helmet and retreated to protect the trebuchet, and more importantly, the Dark Stone. They could not find out it was there.

You see this underline? That means important! Nothing important ever goes without an underline!

Freedom Fighter inwardly groaned. 'Could this day get any better?' he asked himself before taking out another explosive from his bandoleer, arming it to grenade mode, and tossing it into the swarm.

Grenade mode? Are these all-purpose explosives? Most importantly, are there modes with much higher yields? I'm asking for a friend.

Freedom Fighter looked down in annoyance at the pesky object.

It was the Dark Stone.

Completely undamaged.

The explosion had done nothing.

Every voice he had screamed, 'YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!'

You see, here at Krasrax Industries, we pay our engineers $0 an hour to ensure a job well done.

---

Well, now we know at least one of the Guardians of the Sun are (probably) packing high-powered explosives with them wherever they go. You sir have piqued my interest.

[BradyBunch]

9991040
I got rid of those, uh, Deus ex Machina weapons further on in the story. You won't have to worry about these guys pulling extra things out of their butt all the time. These earlier chapters were some of my worst. Nevertheless, I'm glad you're piqued. It makes me proud to hear that.