Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

409. Gears of Solid Mettle.

-Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Warped Farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

We went into attack mode, the towers had a limited amount of time they could be use, we could use the castles wings to defend for a bit, but we didn’t have the power to really make any fast movements.

“Is everyone inside?” I called out as the castle stood up to its full height.

“Yeah, Ozzy, we’re all in, aside from Pom’s group and whatever they are doing.” I’m sure what they were doing was very important Smolder.

“They’re dealing with Eaters, that’s far more important than taking out The Ray. The Ray is not a PLANT or a virus producing mass of coding zombie trouble.” Sami was still up on the Castle walls

As soon as Castle Alexander took its first step, the impact of its paw slapping against the ground destroyed a mass of enemy programs and the APs somehow avoided taking any. Was it somehow selectively attacking them by stomping out shockwaves?

“Everyone might want to hold onto something, we’re entering combat with The Ray.” Castle Alexander slowly mover to the left, our enemy was moving at a much faster speed and I was thankful that our walls held up two its two fast firing cannon. The missiles weren’t a problem with how easy they were to shoot down.

-Mare Melum, underground region, devastation zone, Pom (Insert Metal Gear 2 OST- Yell “Dead Cell”)-

Facing horrors in false daylight was scary, it would be worse if we were facing them in the dark as we wouldn’t be able to see them coming at us as well.

With Jack being a major problem that was out of the way, now we had to focus on the Eaters and the Zombie Excelsus. The Pure Eaters were multiplying faster than we could deal with them and the Eater Soldiers were somewhat easier to deal with.

I wasn’t doing much, just holding onto the base of Dormarch’s left wing with my left hoof and he was rolling around on the ground at incredible speeds to avoid Eaters and swerving to get into position to retaliate. It was like he was a riding vehicle, which made some sense considering he consumed one to become Garummon.

Dormarch continued to fire lasers from his mouth into the Eater Soldiers and Pure Eaters, he was doing much more damage to the Eater Soldiers than the Pure Eaters were apparently ridiculously tough and require powerful piercing attacks to really harm in any significant manner.

There was no way I’d be able to handle the number of Eaters here and it was slowly getting progressively worse even with constant missile bombardments from the nearby truck and the Commandramon had been firing nonstop into every threat that neared us as we backed away.

We really needed something to deal with the Eaters and fast, I wasn’t about to run around and deal with all of them with the shape shifting Paralance. I didn’t have the strength for that, Dolly was out of action and who knows how long Dormarch could hold his new form for and it was likely more energy intensive than his Dobermon form.

It was at some point that I noticed that we were retreating from the Excelsus, the Excelsus was chasing us or fending off the Eaters by stabbing them with the devastatingly powerful front energy bladed arms that started glowing a sickly yellow. It either did that or outright crushed them under its four massive feet having lost its hind leg drills, watching a Pure Eater get crushed under the pure stomping power of the machine the foot raised back up letting off a cloud of black and white static.

“Any ideas mom?” Aside from a constant fighting retreat into our own territories made by our newest allies Dormarch, no, none at all.

We didn’t have infinite space to keep retreating, we couldn’t keep the Eaters off of the Excelsus forever and the Zombie Excelsus wasn’t very good at fending them off either as they kept trying to fuse to its body.

Even the Candy Cane horn spewing marshmallow cougars couldn’t keep up with or damage their numbers fast enough before fresh Eaters were spawned. They were the most effective thing against the eaters so far for the fact that they fire candy cane spears from their foreheads.

Wait… the Eaters were weak to being heavy piercing damage, but from what we just saw enough crushing force could take them out… but… I looked up at the false sunlight coming from the sky high above.

“How… close is… the nearest elevator… to the top side?” I was still tired and my throat was a bit raw, but my idea was going to require some doing and it would involve collapsing Mare Melum city onto the Eaters with fast enough crushing force that they couldn’t simply eat their way out of it.

“What is it, what’s your idea mom?” Dormarch’s voice sounded more adult, but he was still barely over a month old. He spat another Lupin Laser and the attack pierced through multiple Eater Soldiers and managed to save an allied program unit from being consumed.

The candy cannonball spewing pink ponies were doing their best, but they were only good for the Zombie Programs or the Enemy Programs still trying to attack us in spite of the Eaters coming at us. Their cannonballs did very minimal damage to Eaters.

I noted that Fou wasn’t trying to go on the offensive, he wasn’t touching any of the Eaters or fighting them. In fact, he was actively quite scared of them. It made me wonder if he knew what they were or knew exactly how truly dangerous they are. All I knew was that they ate everything, the environment slowly turning into wasteland around them showed that much.

Like the blue cows, Fou was throwing entire trees at them like giant ballista bolts whenever he could find one that wasn’t eaten out of existence by the floating eldritch black and white checkered monstrosities encroaching on us. That would actually take out one or two.

I mentally asked Dormarch the question of ‘how quickly could we collapse Mare Melum’ before the Eaters become unstoppable swarm? The Eaters attempts at fusing with Excelsus was getting harder and harder to stop the further along we went.

I don’t know what an Eater Mother was or what it looked like, but the Commandramon were quite insistent that we didn’t let them fuse to Excelsus to create one.

I wonder how dangerous being within a mile of an Eater Mother forming was, apparently stopping them would have been hard without a bunch of Mega Level Digimon. We only had the one ultimate level and I could feel Dormarch was running on a time limit and it wouldn’t be long before his evolution ran out of steam and he reverted back to Dalmamon.

Dormarch looked up to the roof of this huge cavernous expanse as he was expending quite a lot of energy on more beams firing from his mouth.

“Guys, how quickly can we collapse the entirety of Mare Melum onto these things?” Even Dormarch thought it was a good idea, mind you getting out of here while the entire city basically collapses onto us was going to be a problem. “I mean like really bury them so hard that they be destroyed by getting crushed.”

“Depends, we’d need a lot of firepower and the ability to find fault lines throughout the city… Castle Alexander would have to bombard it from above while we use the missiles from the missile truck from below… that means we’d have to intentionally let a Mother Eater start forming.” The terror in Drivers voice was noted, but would it work? That’s what we needed to know. “Feasible, but I don’t like it. We’d need someone to fly up and plant DCD Bombs on the ceiling above us.”

“Did someone say fly? I can do that!” The colorful flying lizard that helped me onto Dormarch’s back stated with a cheerful tone.

“You’ll have Pure Eaters on you in seconds. You’d have to be blazingly fast too!” Driver responded, as he gunned down an Eater Soldier that was about to grab one of the many marshmallow cougars rapidly backpedaling as they fired hundreds of horns into the stalking masses that were the Eaters.

“Rainbow.exe was made for all speed and no brains… she’s perfect for helping set up the bombs, but how would you generate them while you’re busy helping the defensive line!” The leader of the smart purple and dark blue raptors called out.

“Well if you can give us some time we can really produce some powerful explosives… we can make impact or remotely detonate C4 blocks, we just need to take out the support structure for this underground region.” I think I had an idea of how we could do that.

Dormarch, tell them to lead…

“We need to lead them into the pillars that have the elevators between the surface and down here. The eaters will likely stop to damage the support structures on their own! We just need to give the flying rainbow lizards time to set up the explosives to speed up the collapse faster… also we need someone that can fly and is smart enough to show them the locations to plant the bombs.” Dormarch as much as anyone else, has picked up on the fact that the flying rainbow lizards weren’t very bright and needed guidance.

“I can do that… just let me… nghhh…” That was the butter yellow pink hair winged Caerbannog in the missile truck with the helpful strange Assassin Caerbannog that helped take down Jack Wolf.

Cuddlestare’s PLANT suddenly started humming loudly and it generated a lot of flying Caerbannogs copies, just without the long pink hair and as more generic in appearances flying versions of the killer biped rabbits.

“Do they actually have any combat capacity Cuddlestare.exe?” Dormarch asked.

“Well they can seize data movement in a given visual area or at least slow it down… they could slow the Eaters down immensely.” Which is something they immediately started doing, Cuddlestare had command of them and it was apparent that they were effective. Large bubbles of energy seemed to slow the Eaters down to a crawl, but it didn’t slow down Excelsus at all. “Um… that machine is too big for them Purpsmart.exe…”

“Good enough, Commandramon continue retreat and start producing and passing the explosives to the Rainbow.exe copies… Rainbow.exe you are to remain with us, I don’t want you getting eaten or destroyed with your clones!" The raptor, Purpsmart.exe, ordered as we continued or embattled retreat. “Cuddlestare can your copies lead the rainbow the fault points to place the explosives? Flarity, how long do you thing your clones can keep holding?”

“Yes…” Squeaked out the cute rabbit.

“To be honest, I doubt we can hold out for long.” The main Flarity stated.

I had a thought and had Dormarch voice it after he finished firing his Lupine Laser again.

“If we gave you access to PLANTs to produce more candy cougars and winged Caerbannogs could you slow them down even more?” Dormarch asked as I sent the idea to him.

“Of course.” The smart raptor said as she watched the Cuddlestares continued to create a slowing zone trying to contain the Eaters to being around the yellow and black striped Excelsus.

“Get to work on that!” Dormarch stated to a random group of Caerbannog that were still throwing knives and strange golden grenades, one saluted and quickly ran off while dodging a few EPs or Neutral Programs that were being dealt with by the allied raptors.

We were going to have to tell the others above ground that the city was about to be destroyed, but unlike Cerebrum this wouldn’t involve the massive loss of lives and homes.

“Everyone, when those PLANTs arrive and start producing our rearguard, we’ll break and run while producing as many powerful explosives as we can.” Driver called out from the Magitek Armor in the center of his formation of two on his right and two on his left.

-Above ground, warped farmlands, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“Do you think we can be dealing with that thing?” Shanty asked from next to me as we got Alexander dodging to the left as a rain of missiles came down to the right, the towers were focus on dealing damage to The Ray.

It was obvious that The Ray was trying to get us closer to the waters of the lake so it can get us close enough to deal the most damage with its most powerful weapon. We really hoping that the mines the Gazimon dropped off did their jobs and were letting ourselves be forced in that direction.

The Gazimon were constantly firing on it doing some moderate damage over time from the Skein Flyers and were taking hits from the two rapid fire cannons as they hovered above the castle and stayed moving.

“It doesn’t seem that powerful, so yes, I think we can deal with it if the towers can keep their fire focused on it.” I answered with some trepidation, as it wasn’t The Ray I was worried about. It’s the EPs, NPs and ZPs that were building up while we dealt with the major problem that had my attention.

The grounds around the moving castle was a mass of enemies and a small barrier of APs between us and them. We really didn’t have the capacity to deal with being hit directly by those missiles, the towers would immediately shift to anti-air if the missiles The Ray fired were homing.

I felt Smolder’s warmth and love as she slid into the seat next to me and the castle shuddered under the impact of several more explosions.

The Ray started moving for the lake while continuing to force us closer.

“Engineering, do we have enough of a power supply for a wing shields as a safety net?” I asked as the four towers continued to pump round after round into The Ray.

“Ten seconds worth, but any more than five and that’ll knock out the gun towers. All other power is currently going into movement.” Well that wasn’t what I wanted to hear from Cid, as that was our only method of attack that wasn’t within a dangerous melee range. “We don’t have much power production, but if we can take this realm we can at least get plenty of power to make the towers automatic and always operable instead of manual and limited.”

“Good to know… are we getting any infection vectors from the zombies trying to attack the legs of Alexander?” Was my next question as I felt the morale around the castle was a little on the low side after hearing that.

“If there is any, it’s minimal and Alexander’s anti-virus armor is holding… wait the back left ankle is starting showing signs of being infected with Zombie Coding. If Pom can deal with the cause of the zombie coding fast enough, then it shouldn’t become a major problem.” Not good news to hear Cid, but at least it was good to know.

“What’s the situation?” Canard soon joined us in the throne room with some bandaged wrapped around his chest as Sami followed him.

“We’re having a major dip in morale… also not good and hopefully Pom’s team hasn’t been wiped out, communications to the underground region are getting distorted again.” I was good at emotions and Canard was stern, but didn’t feel like he had given up yet and Sami was trying to remain positive in the light of this.

“Why wouldn’t we, we’re losing all territories around us to the ZPs and EPs.” As soon as Quetal said that the situation seemed to become a little odd. “Did the NPs just start getting organized?”

“Yeah… I believe they are organizing against the EPs and ZPs, in fact they are ignoring our APs entirely to start exclusively attack the enemy… are they our allies now?” My curiosity was met with a scoff from Canard.

“Maybe a temporary alliance of convenience as the NPs territories are faltering too. They’ll turn on us as soon as things become good for them again.” Still it was nice to have the large monsters fighting for us Canard, but you weren’t wrong about them coming at us afterwards.

“Enemy is entering the lake… tail is sucking up water and preparing a pressurized water laser attack.” Sami announced and that brought my sight back to The Ray.

“Rokusho, The Ray is in position, activate the mines!” On screen the water churned and exploded violently damaging The Ray’s legs toppling it into the water and its water laser to blast by the left side of Alexander.

“Castle Alexander approach The Ray. Towers keep focusing your fire on it, don’t stop!” I hoped this was the right move, because if we had to use the shield… then we’d have to start hitting in melee range.

“Left hind legs of Castle Alexander is turning pretty quickly… it’s about to reach the rear pelvis.” Cid announced.

“Keep track of it Cid!” I called out.

The massive castle dog continued to slowly stomp forward towards The Ray that was taking multiple explosions again as the mines cycled a second round underneath it in the water and the explosives acted like depth charges as they rose up into its legs.

“Tremors from underground… something is happening down there and I don’t like it.” We didn’t exactly have the time to humor Patch Cabbage, as that was more of Pom’s problem at the moment.

“New infection vector in the front right leg, I’m trying to slow down the progress of takeover from here.” At least Cid was actively helping… unlike Torneko and his goons which were sitting around in the depths of the moving giant mechanical dog with a castle on its back.

Welch was fairly busy with manufacturing Skein Flyers if we were going to have APs start using them for aerial support after this and Patch Cabbage was working to keep us supplied with food… also healing berries as Pom would be bound to go through a lot of those things.

-Mare Melum, Underground, central region, Pom-

We made good time in retreating, with most of the six unusual programs helping us with protecting the missile truck as Flarity and Cuddlestare clones stayed behind to slow and or pin down a majority of the Eaters. They were still doing a good job and were covering our butts hard as we retreated.

After a series of explosions massive shards of glass spiked through and shredded quite a few Eaters as we were closer to the pillars and an elevator to the surface. As expected, the Eaters immediately began eating away at the pillars as the Excelsus continued to give chase to us and fight off the Eaters at the same time.

“How many more of those charges do you need?” Driver asked Purpsmart as the artificial sunlight from the ceiling was becoming dimmer from all the damage and the Eaters were fairly scary to see coming from the shadows.

“About ten more clusters in a few specific places, if we really want to make sure all the Eaters and that Excelsus thing are dead at the end of this. Once those go off the entire city is collapsing and we’ll at least want to be at the top of the elevator shaft when that happens, much better if we’re already moving for the edge of the city.” Purpsmart was trying to access the elevator as we held our positions, thankfully the pillars were getting in the way of The Excelsus straight coming at us, but it didn’t stop the Zombie Programs it generated. It had stopped generating live Gekko at least, well as far as alive as machines could get anyway, so we didn’t have to kill those twice. “We’ll get the next set of explosives on a time delay then, mostly to give us a chance to get to the top of the shaft and out of the way.”

“Incoming!” Applelove.exe shouted and Dormarch ducked us behind the missile truck as flames licked at our retreating formation. The Magitek Armors took the brunt of it fairly well scorching the fives armors, said armors quickly joined us and started creating explosives to deal with the last few fault points “Can you hurry it up with the elevator Purpsmart.exe?! I don’t want to be here when the roof starts a collapsing on us.”

“I would, but I don’t have the codes to access this large elevator.” Said elevator could fit the six primary allied programs, the five Magitek Armors and the missile truck just fine… if we could get into it. Fou had separated from us and ran off at some point, not willing to fight the Eaters close up, they were bad when even the nigh immortal Fou wouldn’t touch them.

Fou didn’t seem to care what we were doing as he was more afraid of the Eaters than actually attacking us, though his limited control of the Neutral Programs was interesting to say the least. It lended to the theory that he was the main reason they were here and that the underground had warped into becoming a massive cavernous space… which was actually to our benefit as the support structures were further spread out and not as capable of holding up the city above us.

“Ugh… let me do it… I’m the ‘fourth wall hacker’ of our group!” Pinkpie.exe stated as she went up to the panel and started to randomly flail at it with her hooves. I was about to say something when she suddenly exclaimed. “Really it’s ‘Narpassword’ as in… ‘Not a real password’? Here I thought it would have been one of the funnier Ridley ones...”

The doors on the massive elevator opened up a second later and Dormarch just stared at it before I shook his wing blade a bit. The ten clusters of explosives were going out with the Rainbow Lizards and Flying Bunnies… was there anything normal in my life anymore?

“How?” Purpsmart.exe stated with a flat disbelieving stare.

“No explanation I can give will truly ever make you feel alright with it.” Pinkpie.exe stated as she booped the now fairly irate purple raptor on the nose with a hoof and pulled it back as said raptor snapped at the candy hoof with her teeth. “Hey, I’m bad for your health, don’t try to eat me!”

“Stop all of your gabbing and everyone get in, the explosive are going out and we can’t keep squawking here while something is trying to light us all on fire!” Applelove.exe stated as she ran past us carrying a wide eyed Flarity.exe past us and the missile truck backed into it firing all of its missiles clearing up the Eaters on the Excelsus again for the last time.

“Don’t need to be told twice!” Driver and the four other Commandramon continued to fire as they back their way onto the elevator while constantly dealing with the Eater Soldiers and Pure Eaters coming at us. All those poor Flarity and Cuddlestare clones.

Once we were all in, I noted there was a small problem, I smacked my left hoof to my face as I realized what it was and went back to grabbing onto the handle of the wing blade and mentally told Dormarch to get it.

Dormarch quickly moved to hit the switch and the elevator doors slammed shut and we started rising for the surface… in an elevator with glass walls.

“Why was this particular elevator chosen?” I managed to ask with a scratchy throat.

“It was the nearest, biggest and fastest one we could possibly get, duh!” Thank you Pinkipie.exe, I at least appreciated that someone knew the reason we were on this one as several Pure Eaters started flying up and were leveling out with the moving elevator preparing to come at us through the glass. “Oh… I can see why you were asking that now… heh. Wait, if the entire city is going to collapses beneath us and the Eaters eat the pillar and the elevator shaft directly below us…”

“Also if the entire city is currently infested with Enemy Programs, Zombie Programs and Neutral Programs…” There was a long silence following Dormarch’s words.

“We’ll get to that already burning bridge when we get there.” I stated as the three Eaters outside ate through the glass in one swift forward burst of motion and were now hovering inside the giant elevator and trying to eat it and us.

Needless to say all the Commandramon opened fire on them immediately.

“Do not let them eat the corners that’s where the motors moving us upwards are!” Even as he shouted this Dormarch fired a Lupine Laser to cut through one of the Pure Eaters.

I let go and hopped off of Dormarch’s back to thrust and extend the Paralance safely into one of them and spiked it from the inside going out like I did to the previous one I had defeated. I could at least deal with one at a time.

That was two going up in a burst of static and the last one tried to lunge for us, only to be slowed down the ten streams of concentrated fire as it let out an alien screech while it came for it. Only to be sent blasting through the glass wall of the elevator and go flying away on rocket that exploded a second later.

“Hmph…” The strange Caerbannog driver of the missile truck grunted by for tapping some bits of soot off his cigar.

“More coming from below and…?!” Dormarch announced and then in a flash, at a relatively inopportune time, he reverted back into being a Dalmamon as two Pure Eaters were about to burst into the elevator from our left. “Oh bother, not now!”

I kind of felt sorry for all the APs we were leaving behind down below, but they were making sure that the Eaters didn’t get out from under the city or escaped.

While the Commandramon fired at the other one, and it went sailing on a rocket like the last one, I speared with the paralance and narrowly avoided being touched by the other one as its tentacles waggled at me vigorously.

It was actively forcing the lance deeper into itself to try and get me, these Eaters had no sense of self preservation and they were all the more dangerous for it.

The paralance finally spiked the Eater from the inside before it could touch me and it burst into a cloud of static.

Looking at the glass windows ahead, I didn’t see anymore… I looked left and right… maybe we were.

“Behind us!” There were Five Pure Eaters preparing to burst through this time.

“I got them… I have my saved attack program… Wild Howling.” Dormarch inhaled and held his breathe for a bit. When all five burst in he let out a powerful howling blast the sent them back out flailing into the air and towards the ground below as his attack had stunned them all enough to stop their ability to float. “It is really quite unfortunate that I could only do that once… until I’m capable of evolving again. I was going to use that when we got to the surface but.”

“We’ll be fine. We have our six PLANTs with us, we can force our way out of the city…” Applelove.exe pointed out. “Uh… where are we going when we get to the top?”

“Hopefully, towards Castle Alexander.” Really didn’t care about the fact that we left Fou behind, he’ll live… somehow. He’s smart and strong like that… that and I really didn’t want him with us when he decides that he has nothing to worry about and starts trying to maul me again.

“Yeah, we’ll need to hit the ground floor running, we can’t exactly get bogged down in all the fighting or we’re all going down with the city when it collapses.” The Commandramon named Frosty had the right idea of it.

“Big Boss Lady, ma’am, are you with the missile truck or do you want one of us to carry you?” Driver asked as he turned his machine towards me as I hefted Dormarch onto my back.

“I’m on the Missile Truck, Commandramon you’re going to be the ones to push us through the enemies and will be taking the lead… are you… are you alright with that?” I really didn’t like putting other people ahead of myself, but in this case it’s an exception.

“Sure are, we’re the ones in armor after all.” At least Driver didn’t sound upset about it as the elevator neared the top and the upper region of Mare Melum. “We’re going to be blitzing it guys.”

I looked down below as the Excelsus was starting to become a checkered colored monstrosity covered in tentacles, red eyes and mouths… so many mouths… horrifying… I almost couldn’t look away.

I really think we made the right call here to have those explosives on a short fuse even if we don’t get out of the city in time.

“Well at least it’ll finally be called the City of Lost Destiny for a reason right?” I started sweating a little. “We don’t technically have to worry about all the NPCs we’re about to hurt here right?”

“They’ll probably be rebooted when we system crash most of this realm, they are not like Digimon or Digital Entities… so they’ll be perfectly fine as a part of the local realm system and unlikely to remember the entire city collapsed… mind you we haven’t seen any NPCs in this city to begin with.” Well that was one less worry off of my back Driver. “All we’ve seen are Enemy Programs, Neutral Programs, Coding Zombies and a whole lot violence. Surprisingly things have gone well… considering all of us Commandramon are still alive, I seriously thought that at least two of us would be dead by now and a third would be bleeding out data on the floor somewhere about to blow themselves up with a claw on some kind of detonator while surrounded by hostiles.”

The elevator came to a stop and we were inside of a building, we quickly got off the elevator.

“How much time do we have here exactly? Uh, Caerbannog can you give us some space, so we can get on the roof of the truck?” The Caerbannog driving the missile truck gave us a thumbs up and lifted the rocket pod up to give us a place to sit. There was no confidence that this was going to end well as I climbed up onto the roof of the missile truck with Dormarch, soon to be joined by a blue cow, a raptor, a marshmallow candy cougar and a pink pony that smelled of taffy with a candy spewing cannon, Cuddlestare climbed into the trucks seat next to the odd Caerbannog.

As for the rainbow lizard she sat on top of her PLANT and as far as I can tell, she hadn’t summoned very many clones from it aside from the ones on the bomb squads about to set things off below.

“I’d estimate in the area of five to ten minutes and would say we should probably floor it.” Purpsmart.exe stated as Driver and his team moved forward ahead of the truck and started shooting large holes in the doorway out of here. “Hope those six PLANTs of yours are ready to generate programs to support us while on the move.”

After that was said they ran out guns blazing and we followed after them into the streets positively packed with monsters of all kinds, still plenty of space to evade them.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

We’d blown off one of The Rays legs, it couldn’t get out of the lakes waters. Even then it was still attacking with its two rapid fire cannons, some of its missile launchers were blown up when a missile was struck before it could leave the water bound machine. We had avoided a second water laser and The Ray was not moving, we might have lost the mines we dropped into the water after the second round of explosions.

“Castle Alexander’s infection level is up to the chest, once it gets to the castle past the head, we’re going to lose control.” Okay, let’s hope that Pom could pull something out of her backside here and finally take out what’s causing. “I might have to turn off AP creation soon.”

“This is Dormarch to Castle Alexander, OCELLUS ALEXANDER BETTER STILL BE ALRIGHT, we need artillery support to clear the way for us right now!” I looked at a screen and saw that Dormarch and the entire team of Commandramon and the Harmony programs were in the middle of the city and fighting their way towards us. The rooftop territories we still held had Caerbannogs assisting them from the roofs and they seemed to be moving really fast.

“Granted, towers give supporting artillery fire to our away team in the city.” I ignored the fact that Dormarch was still upset with me. “Did you take care of the gekko producing machine Excelsus? We might currently have a problem with Alexander being infected with whatever infected it.”

“Don’t worry about that, a lot of things is going to be taken care of soon enough!” What did Dormarch mean by that? “Just have the towers keep clearing our path of enemies!”

Castle alexander raised a large yellow and black striped left paw and slapped the face of The Ray forcing its water laser to miss and go wide to our right and we dealt quite a bit of damage while trying to keep its head pinned and facing away from us. Apparently its one good leg was good enough to shake the paw off and started trying to charge up another shot of its water laser.

“Huh… all infection vectors are weakening, the zombie coding is dying out and Alexander is recovering.” Cid called out, which sounded like a good thing.

“All the coding zombies are dying, so that means we don’t have that as a problem anymore!” Sami said with a cheer.

“Well that at least this means that Excelsus has been fully dealt with… and now ‘it’ needs to be dealt with. Good thing we’ve already set that up, because there is no way I’m going back down there with that thing!” For some reason it sounds like Pom had quite a story for us when she finally got back to Castle Alexander and she might actually do it without becoming a mangled mess… she used all of her Sitrus Berries didn’t she?

“Ocellus back on the problem in front of us.” Smolder stated drawing my attention back to The Ray avoiding our paw… and was charging up a laser.

“Right move forward, deploy wings.” The large white feathered wings started to appear on Castle Alexander as the water laser was about ready to fire, we either had to destroy its tail or crush it. Crushing it sounded like an idea. “Sorry Dormarch, but you’re about to lose tower artillery support, we absolutely need it for defense or we’re going to take a lot of damage.”

“Ugh, seriously Ocellus, again?!” Dormarch was probably never going to like me after this.

“It’s either that or we take a lot of damage.” The front half of the Alexander was almost in position for our attack. “Alexander activate defense until water laser attack ends, then rear up and stomp.”

The two white wings folded in front of the castle as the water laser fired and the wings held as the entire castle shook, the laser ended and the wings dropped and disappeared.

“Power levels dropping, towers rendered inoperable… energy depleted defensive shield inoperable.” Alexander reported, before the world started shaking. “Major seismic activity detected, warning, major seismic activity detected.”

“Pom… what did you and the others do? Look, never mind, Alexander stomp The Ray with the front paws now!” The large dog like machine raised up onto its hind legs and then brought them down on The Ray, it didn’t have the ability to maneuver very much and tried to get away by sinking into the lake and failed.

Despite all the shaking and rumbling the paws going on around Castle Alexander landed a mighty blow on top of The Ray with thunderous force crunching its head inwards and its left fin arm.

“Quickly lift the left paw from the head and slam it down on its right weapon, keep it pinned with the right paw.” It was still shooting from said weapon and was missing a lot by aiming to high, but we couldn’t let it continue to use them. The rumbling was getting louder and Alexander managed to destroy its right fin.

“I think its tail still be taking in water, be excusing me for a moment.” Shanty quickly left the throne room and Alexander attacked again as the machine flailed, but was held in place by the right paw.

The entire world seemed to be shaking and I was staying focused on The Ray.

“Pom what’s going on out there?” I asked as I got Castle Alexander to continue attacking The Ray, trying to prevent it from firing another water laser, unfortunately it did… which would have been more of a problem had Shanty not deflected the beam of water with a Bounding Bubble.

“Heh, oh, you know, the entirety of Mare Melum is becoming a sink hole to crush an eldritch abomination. Don’t worry you are all safely outside that range so your fine... we’re still working on that.” Wait… what did Pom just say and how could her anxiety have that kind of range?! The rumbling was getting much worse and then entire world started to slant slightly. “We’re done here if this works at least, just have to survive this situation… Driver on your left, Frosty jump for it, can we not almost die after all the stuff we’ve been through?!”

“Alexander grab it with the left paw and finish it off with a right paw thrust to the chest.” I hoped this would be enough, at least Shanty made it so we wouldn’t have to worry about water lasers.

I watched as Castle Alexander caved the things chest in and the paws big dull flat claws ripped out the large machines inner workings and destroyed the water laser weapon and it started to fade from existence into a massive pile of cubes.

“Turn us in the direction of Pom’s group so we can get a visual on what’s going on.” Turning away from the lake, we got a front row seat to watching as the entirety of Mare Melum sunk into the ground and a truck along with the harmony programs and five armors were at the edges of the collapsing city entering the farmlands and heading in our direction. “Get ready to take our allies onboard Castle Alexander, can we get the guns up to help them come in?”

“No, no chance of that happening we’re low on power again.” Cid stated as Castle Alexander started to crouch down and open up to let Pom’s group board.

“All available and capable fighters to the gates, all APs are to prevent enemy from getting into the castle and nobody is to disembark Castle Alexander, Pom’s team is coming in hot and they need help… at least there are no more enemy coding zombies so all digital allies can safely fight again.” With that said Canard and Sami immediately set off for the gates and the digi-bots with the recently recovered Peppercat were on standby near the gate.

“Warning anomalous spatial activity detected.” Who knows what that could mean, but Pom’s group was coming in safely.

A second later the collapsed rubble of the warped city exploded with a white light and before we knew it Pom’s group was at the gate a second later as if the world had shrunk back to its previous size. Also we were gaining a lot of territories and PLANTs like crazy…

I think we just took all of Mare Melum, but I wondered where all the NPs just went. One second enemies were everywhere, city collapses and the next we have taken the realm and now had a lot of resources to power up Castle Alexander with.

Into the base rolled a missile truck and was quickly followed by the five walking machines which would be the Commandramon that left with Pom.

“Close the gates.” I sighed as the chaos was finally over with and I saw Mare Melum was back to being in one piece. “We did it guys.”

Riding on the Missile truck was Pom who looked haggard and relieved as she hugged a happy looking Dormarch to her chest.

"So glad I didn't have to flip out and enter Beast Mode." Pom grumbled audibly through her headset.

-Jungle Beast realm, Fou-

“Fou?” It didn’t see the tall pillars, the scary 'absence of all life' monsters or anything else and it seemed like his prey was no longer present. However he did see his chaotic monstrous sized NP supporters.

Scratching himself and not knowing what else to do, he howled and the NPs responded. He wanted to fight some more and then take a nap, maybe do a few other things before eventually returning to hunting Pom since she knew how to find fun fights.

-Moon Cell-

The realms had separated and one went flying off, the high threat level anomalous entities had been dealt with and it had lost Mare Melum. Now the Chrysomallus was one realm away from fighting Moon Cell proper and it didn’t like that one bit that such a small force could get so far, at this point they should outright be considered heroes for the soul throne to have survive so much.

“Summoning, Lancer, Assassin, Berserker… Codename: Envious Naga to Midgar.” It was summoning a single servant soul that fit all of those classes in a unique manner and wasn’t a hero in life, more of a victim really that had powers that could have been a hero.

It got a signal that the Caster Team and their tank the Exo-Taranis had been defeated by the two canine warriors. Fairly ironic given the history of the tank in question, unfortunately the Caster team was not good in close up combat so when the two boarded the tank the Caster Team was swiftly dealt with and their souls disappeared into the ether despite the fact that it should be impossible to do so with their souls tied directly to the tank for the very reason of using the Soul Cannon to it's fullest ability.

Moon Cell still wondered why it kept losing all the souls it summoned and chalked it up to the presence of the Chrysomallus countering the computers magical soul trapping and controlling functions just by existing.

“… Summoning Caster, Codename: Lazy Lemming to Midgar.” After some consideration it was going to send a caster after the Chrysomallus’s friends personally, another that could have been a hero and instead more akin to lawful evil.

At least this one was a low effort summon, literally the summon itself had a low effort value, at least they would know not to target anywhere within the general vicinity of the Chrysomallus with anything they can do. They would also be there to watch Envious Naga as there seemed to be some glitches within that particular summoned servants coding.

That was as troubling as the Berserker Ifrit it had contained in Midgar, it would release it upon the Chrysomallus getting nearby its containment zone to see if she could deal with that problem. If none of that was enough, then it would eventually send more servants.

It would already be stressing its systems by having more than one summoned servant in the realm at a time. The more the number of servants increases, the more chances of something going incredibly wrong with its ability to keep control of the situation.

“System Error, servant self-summoning occurring.” At least it would know the servant being summoned, apparently there was a soul with a will so strong that it was denying Moon Cell any control over it like Berserker Ifrit.

Class Gunner- Codename: ------. Location: Midgar.

Ah, the perfect example of why summoning too many servants in one place might be bad, but this might actually be to Moon Cell’s benefit if it could get this wild servant to attack its enemies through some manipulation.

It's invasion forces in Reality and the neighboring Digital Realm were growing stronger by the day, but so too did the resistance against its siege.

Author's Note:

1. One last Realm to take.
2. Moon Cell Battle.
3. Whatever comes after.
4. ???
5. Underpants gnomes referenced.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Uhoh.

XCOM Viper, Ace Of Spades, and LuuBuu?

At least it wasnt Lobo.

Pom uses Newton. Its Super Effective?

[Herald of Opera]

“Really it’s ‘Narpassword’ as in… ‘Not a real password’? Here I thought it would have been one of the funnier Ridley ones...”

For those who don't know, she's talking about Metroid's infamous "ENGAGE RIDLEY MOTHER (censored)" password.