Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

412. Massive Cavern Assault.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Realm, Outside Midgar, Plains, Castle Alexander-

The winged Moby Dick was staying above the massive city of Midgar and hovering around the central tower there.

The incoming fire from the guns on Midgar’s ground floor walls was hitting the shields and Castle Alexander could remain in place indefinitely as long as it stayed in a resting defense mode and the Rider Zealot in control of the castle wasn’t taxed.

The head of the walking canine castle was resting on the ground facing the wall with a massive amount of firepower coming towards it.

Alongside the cannons constantly firing on Castle Alexander at the edge of their fairly large range, a lot of EP crossing were the fields of the plains. Waiting for the enemy were Rider Zealots piloting several missile trucks in the courtyard, several Magitek armor piloted Zealots were out in front of the castle and Skein Flyers hovered overhead in preparation for any oncoming aerial enemy.

Saber Knight APs were readying their shields on the field and standing with the Magitek armors, protecting the gates was the Lancer Guardians and out in the plains the Assassin Caerbannogs were already sneaking into positions and setting up traps for the incoming enemy armor. Some Caerbannogs were tunneling, others were relying on the illusion of being normal rabbits and there were those that were moving cardboard boxes that went entirely ignored, their leader Snake would be proud of that last one as the enemy didn’t seem to notice piles of stacked boxes moving around the fields randomly.

The EPs had walking, rolling and hovering tanks as armor and artillery, massive numbers of them. Its ground forces involved Assassin Reapers, Berserker Vikings, Saber Knights and even a whole slew of repurposed aquatic EPs turned into more land capable combat forms. The winged Berserker Sharks were particularly terrifying for those who remember fighting them from Cape and it took a while for them to give up after they were already dead.

Castle Alexander was outnumbered five to one, but the counter invasion force wasn’t outgunned in the slightest. Hundreds of missiles launched from the courtyard and the automatic function of Castle Alexander’s towers went to work as it started putting artillery shots into the field in the hopes of capturing some territory to fill out their APs numbers.

While Castle Alexander was drawing all the heat, at the back of the fortress a small garage door size entrance at the back of the castle opened. Eight Skein Flyers piloted by Rider Zealots flew forward circling a hovering platform with Jeanne D Arc’s Backdoor Team soared forward and hovered its way down the ramp like tail of mobile castle.

Jeanne had a firmed face as she sat on the platform continuing down towards the tip of the tail, they would be using Torneko’s map to make use of the nearby entrance to the underground portion of Midgar. As the plan went they would work their way up to dealing with the wall guns and opening the massive gate of Midgar. Either objective would open up the opportunity for their dog fortress to penetrate the city, provided it was still standing by the time they got the entrance into Midgar open.

Dealing with the wall guns would be the better of the two options, if the gate gets open then Castle Alexander could at least enter hover mode and move faster than expected to get through the massive gateway while under heavy fire.

There was a lot of stuff being thrown at Castle Alexander already and it had the banner wielding, armored scales, fighting dragon worried.

Pom, Dormarch and Dolly all turned to stare at the city as they circle clockwise around from behind Castle Alexander to the left of it and continued off to the side at an angle and not directly towards the frontlines, the entrance to the underground was nearby.

Krosserdog looked to Pom fondly for a moment and then turned Peppercat who was glaring at him with an angry mark forming in the metal on her head. They had their work cut out for them, because they doubted the caverns into the city would be unguarded and the Digi-bots were working well outside their system policing functions.

Shine adjusted the bag she had slung over her shoulder and looked to Snake who stared at the city flatly with a grim frown on his face, the rogue servant and killer bipedal bunny eventually reached over and gently ruffled Shine’s hair making her squeak cutely. Snake knew that Shine was talented in stealth and maybe he could teach her a thing or two before everything was said and done.

Canard was checking his Valora brand hockey stick over and making sure it was ready for the coming fight and the digital energy levels his digivice held. Sami was going over the supplies the transport was carrying. They had two spare Skein Flyers ready for an emergency and almost everyone has been given a crash course in how to fly one of the tilt rotor, jet assisted, flying hover bikes. They also had a lot of Sitrus Berries, the limited supply of reviver seeds were what needed to be preserved at all costs.

“Down cola!” The Rider Zealot stated nonsensically from the back of the hovering transport platform as he piloted the skiff towards where the tunnels, caverns, waterways and mines began. It didn’t matter what pathway they took, they would all take them under where Midgar’s many defenses were and into the city.

The problem was that it was bound to be a one way trip and help wouldn’t be forthcoming if they got wiped out, everyone else would be too busy with the defense of Castle Alexander.

Some would say the defenses on Midgar were rather excessive or overkill, if not for the fact that they were warranted and easily good enough to keep Castle Alexander at bay indefinitely unless one of the objectives was met.

Upon approaching the hole sloping into the earth, Shanty grinned excitedly as four of the escorting Skein Flyer Zealots moved forward and the others took up the rear and the vehicle tilted forward to be swallowed up by the earth and some temporary darkness before lights lit up all around the hovering skiff and the Skein Flyers also added their own cones of light as they delved into the cavern.

-Cavern Assault Route, Pom-

I tapped the headset and a visor extended across my eyes, I braced it in place with some light shifting of my wool. It helped with lighting up the darkness of the cavern and there was a map in the corner of my view would prevent us from getting turned around down here as we started down into the bowels of the realm.

We had no idea what was down here, but I feared we were going to find out fairly soon and it would be quite horrible. At least the visors would cover for the things that might have been changed by Moon Cell or time or at least that was what I was told.

Our procession just flowed through and into the caverns and tunnels, the Rider Zealots knew our route and where we needed to be.

“Kind of quiet…” Dolly was about to go there with as the visor went across her face and started lighting it up as much as the lights from the Skein Flyers around us… so I silently sent her a big empathetic ‘NO’ and glared at her. We’re trying to sneak into Midgar here and she was about to say something… ‘TEMPTING’… out loud. “Right, right, sorry.”

We continued forward at a fairly quick pace, there were various tunnels and pathways, mine carts and picks left behind in the walls. The lights of the Skein Flyers swept down the tunnels as we passed by them and so far we weren’t see any EP activity, but I wouldn’t put it past Moon Cell’s forces to know we were already down here.

Even Jeanne was already tense as she looked around into the shadows where the Rider Zealots weren’t, there was even glancing at the ceiling to make sure nothing got the drop on us as we continued on the rocky slope downwards into a system of tunnels.

The only noise was from the fans as we hovered forward, I was at the left rear of the vehicle and Jeanne was at the right front looking about while keeping a tight and ready grip on her banner spear.

The winding and twisting caverns were quiet, but if we saw anything moving or alive they would have come up on our visors as being separate from the environment. That feature of our visors would work even if the enemy was camouflaging as part of our surroundings.

Thus far nobody saw any movement or heard any sounds as we moved forward as quietly as possible, even the hums of the fans keeping our platform aloft were faint and any noise we could hear other than them would be very noticeable.

No detection of enemy PLANTs down here either, saw plenty of those in the plains and Moby Dick hovering above the city. After a while of being unbothered we did start to hear moving water, slow at that, we were on the right track at least… according to the map scanned into the visors.

All the underground water flowed into or towards Midgar’s lower section. The skiff went over the water and continued forward with our eight escorts completely on alert.

“Seismic activity… movement in the area ahead.” Announced Krossderdog, immediately everyone was tense and had their guards up as soon as the digi-bot said this. They had a full three hundred and sixty degree coverage of the ceiling and nooks and crannies between all the stalactites and stalagmites around them.

They were still above the river of water as the floated out over a wide expanse of water heading in the direction of an entrance, no sign of anything moving in the water.

The entrance they were about to go through was when things started.

Several hard to see creatures suddenly dropped from above and landed on several of the stalagmites sticking out of the water and before they could even see what they were a powerful buzzing filled the cavern and a wall of water kicked up in front of the Rider Zealots who swerved out of the way and the Skiff bounced off it.

The zealots opened fire but the rapid fire shots couldn’t get through the wall of water, they then immediately started turning and firing as twenty or so flying bugs swept out of hidden crevices to start attacking them.

They were quickly felled under the torrent of eight rapid fire energy cannons, but they were fast and if they got too close to our Rider Zealots they might be able to take them out in melee. Flickers of blue could be seen coming off the skiff and the eight Skein Flyers, the flying bugs apparently had some kind of ranged option and were spitting what looked like acid covered spikes from their mouths.

“Ambush!” I called out, getting everyone focused on what was happening as forty flying bugs started to surge in from all sides and behind us after that initial test wave of attackers.

Sami and Krosserdog immediately went to work with gunning them down. We were going to get stuck here and crushed under the numbers unless we did something, they had us cornered!

“Shanty, Dormarch!” I called out and told Dolly to help protect the skiff mentally, my wool shifting to environmental adaptation as I leapt overboard from the skiff. The wall of water being produced by the loud buzzing stopping our forward progress didn’t cover going underneath it.

I splashed into the water and this was followed by two other shifts of mass in the water as Dormarch and Shanty had followed me in. We all swam forward together underneath the water barrier.

-A great cave offensive, Music: Top Ride: Metal, Kirby Air Ride (Alternative: Kirby Super Star Cocoa Cave)-

Pom, Shanty and Dormarch swam forward and when they tried to poke their heads out of the water, only for several acid covered spikes force them to duck back down.

Several hovering bugs were trying to protect the ones generating the wall of water stopping their transport from proceeding forward and stuck in the ambush spot.

Shanty leapt out of the water while sweeping a mass of it upwards with her to block the spikes being fired at her as she bounced off the spiraling waterspout with her hooves and quickly slashed down two of the bugs with her cane scythe.

The wall of water immediately weakened and while the bugs were focused entirely on Shanty, Dormarch popped up and fired off two Wild Barks and Pom finished off another by grabbing it with her wool and dragging it into the water.

The bug thing shrieked until it drowned, which didn’t take more than two seconds of its head being underwater before it started dissolving into cubes.

The wall of water weakened enough that a stream of shots prevented the bug from trying to land and build the water barrier back up with their fast flapping wings as they anchored themselves to the rock.

The skiff swiftly moved forward with the eight Skein Flyers bringing up the rear and blasting anything trying to come through the bottleneck that was now to their favor.

Dormarch was the first to get out of the water and back on the skiff, this was followed by Shanty skipping across the top of the flowing water on her hooves, Pom soon followed by reaching up and grabbing the side of the skiff as it passed above her.

When it looked like Pom was going to pull herself up, her eyes widened and she looked back down at her hind right leg and was dragged back into the water with a loud bleating noise erupting from her mouth.

There were several shadows that were now moving through the water from behind the skiff that weren’t the flying bugs currently occupying everyone’s attentions.

Pom’s eyes widened as she saw what looked like a large horned tiger striped armored water bug had her hind right leg in its mandibles grip and she saw movements from the horn above its head.

As she flailed out of the way of the fast extending needle, Dormarch was watching the outline of a flailing Pom under the water through the visor he had on.

Dormarch saw Pom avoid being speared through the side by the bugs extending spear from its head, so it was likely a Lancer classification of monster.

Pom broke off the pointy proboscis with a swift regular right magical wolf claw, then proceed to grab the broken spear with her right hoof and turned it around to stab it down into the water monsters face with it and almost got it to let go of her. When that wasn’t enough Pom formed a triangular scoop blade out of wool on her left leg and stabbed it deep into the creature’s brain and kicked off with her hind legs before two more of the arriving monsters could get her in their large mandibles.

Pom immediately started swimming away as she quickly could and there were ten of those things down there with her, then she got swept up in a current and was quickly getting ahead of the skiff with three of the water bound chasers going after her.

“Enemies in the water, go higher, we don’t want them damaging the skiff! Mom’s fine for the moment, now go-go-go!” Dormarch called and the vehicle lurched forward and avoided a rising spear that was deflected and knocked back into the water by Jeanne with a quick block and sweep of her banner spear.

The bug was blasted out of the air a second later as the Skein Flyers started avoiding the leaping water bugs and continued to fire on the flying shrieking spike spewers in the air around them. The flying bugs spikes kept bouncing off the shields generated by the Zealots, but despite this they still tried to fly closer and to use their blade edged legs to strike out at the ones protecting the skiff.

Thanks to the skiff suddenly going into forward motion the flying bugs were unable to close in as the group surged forward.

In the water beneath them Pom was trying to remain upright and keep an eye on the outline of the skiff at the same time through the visor, the current was at least helping her put some distance between the three water bugs chasing her down as she continued to swim forward using her rippling wool like a fish would their fins to keep her speed up.

While trying to keep an eye on the skiff, a thought crossed Pom’s mind about Moby Dick being present above the city of Midgar and there being water in the caverns beneath…

As soon as the thought crossed Pom’s mind, she leaned back and avoided some snapping jaws rising up for her face and kicked off the nose of a Berserker Shark that just scared the living daylights out of her and quickly swam around it. The only notable different thing about it was the feathered flippers and fin, meaning it was likely capable of flight.

The shark turned and gave chase, only to find itself being cut in half vertically thanks to Shanty as the skiff passed by overhead.

This didn’t stop the striped bugs from continuing to chase Pom underwater nor did it prevent them from slamming into the bottom of the skiff in an effort to damage it or knock someone off into the underground river.

“Look out Assassin Jellyfish on the ceiling!” Jeanne’s warning came just in time as multiple colorful blobs started trying to rain down from the ceiling onto the skiff. A number of Jellyfish managed to land in the skiff and some clung onto the side and back. “Keep them off the zealot!”

Jeanne could not move to the back of the raft as she was slinging a bug that leapt from the water off the end of her banner spear and into the water, she was busy defending the front and watching Pom’s outline in the visor struggling underwater under water to deal with a kraken that tried to grab her.

“We’re surrounded on all sides, we just need to keep moving!” Canard immediately slashed apart the jellyfish tried to go for the Zealot with the end of his hockey stick, Dolly soon joined him by whipping her board by its strap through another that tried to climb up onto the back of the boat where their pilot was. Canard hit the headset to contact Pom as he slashed through another jellyfish. “Pom, if you can hear me, we’ll try to pick you up, but we’ll need you need to get out of the water for that!”

Pom nodded to herself and continued to swim for it and darted to the side to rake the blade made of wool down the right side of the water bug that tried grab her. Now she had Assassin Jellyfish trying to swarm her that were dropping from the ceiling onto the Skiff, any that missed were going to be on top of her.

It was hard for Pom to swim towards a wall or surface with the current keeping her centralized in the water. She couldn’t respond as she was too focused as several Caster Eels started trying to form barricades of reef in her path, she swiftly slipped through the tightening holes in the water and some of the eels glowed with electricity as their mouths opened as they used the energy to speed up behind her and give chase.

Pom was quickly losing track of how many things were trying to kill her in this moment as stalactites slammed into the water almost crushing her.

“She’s being in too much trouble… also waterfall!” Shanty called out over the headsets, she turned from Pom’s atheletic activities and looked to see a waterfall ahead and a slope off to the side. She looked back to see Dormarch and Dolly blasted Momentum Barks and Wild Barks at the bugs harassing the skiff and the Rider Zealots had their own problems, including the one piloting their craft who had to generate an energy blade on his right and slice an Assassin Jelly in half. A stalactite struck the skiff and sent Shanty flipping into the air. “Well I was going to be going after Pom anyway!”

Shanty landed on top of the water and gathered up a bubble around her and then dove that bubble into the water and was soon shooting through the water after Pom who was about to be grabbed by another tiger striped water bug.

“Zealot, take the slope!” Jeanne screamed as she jammed her spear up into a shrieking flying bug and promptly launched it at a tiger bug trying to leap out of the water into the skiff from the right.

“Pom and Shanty are safely out of range Peppercat, go wild!” Krosserdog brought down two spike spitting nuisances with precise shots to their wings.

Peppercat’s eyes lit up as she bodily threw a boarding jellyfish into the path of a stalactite off the left side, where it splattered in gruesome detail. Lifting herself up over the left edge of the skiff, she started clinging to the left side of the hovering skiff she leaned down towards the water with her left claw glowing brightly with electrical energy.

“Waters clear!” Peppercat called out as she dunked her left plug claw into the rushing waters below the skiff and lit up the entire river, numerous EPs in the water suddenly exploded violently or were heavily damaged and immediately went belly up as they started dissolving into cubes.

Peppercat quickly pulled herself back onto the skiff and clawed down another Assassin Jelly trying to go for their pilot, Canard was too busy with one of the winged shrieking bugs that landed on the right side of the skiff.

One of the Skein Flyer Zealots moved ahead and pointed down the slope to take a lead position ahead of the skiff as it started to turn off the water for the safer slope. This was while the others continued to deal with the flying bugs coming at them from all sides.

Meanwhile Shanty had caught up to Pom and pulled her into the bubble. Instead of resisting the waterfall and trying for the slope as the others were doing, as Peppercat’s blast of electricity went off in the water behind them, Pom instead pointed them forwards.

Shanty got in on the idea as Pom was pointing somewhere specific below the sudden drop and sped up the bounding bubble around them towards the water’s edge.

They launched off the top of the waterfall and Shanty focused the bubble to being beneath both of them and they slammed down onto something solid. It was a platform on some rails. Pom was about to say something when the platform, still covered in the water from Shanty’s bounding bubble splattering into it, started speeding down the tracks.

“How do I keep getting into these situations?” Pom lamented as several flying bugs swooped down from holes in the ceiling and gave chase to them as they were moving along the side of the river.

“At least these EPs are being easy to deal with right?” Shanty didn’t quite realize why there was a sudden look of pure horror on Pom’s face as she looked at her before Pom could say anything something large slammed down into the track behind them.

“Shanty…” Groaned Pom as Shanty looked behind them to see a singular central giant wheeled machine with blue armor that looked similar and reminiscent in design to a Magitek Armor. At the back of the thing were two large metallic orbs connecting too thin long mechanical arms to the machine, said arms led all the way down to two large armored forearms ending in four claws. Said claws started to rapidly spin up into the shape of two massive drills as the thing gave chase to them, it raised its right arm as it approached the out of control platform moving down the rails. “Move!”

Pom pushed Shanty towards the front of the platform, avoiding several spikes fired out of the mouths of the three flying bugs with the machine, as the machine’s right drill came down and tore hole into the central back of the platform causing the water to go gushing out into the machine.

For some reason the water caused the large drilling machine to slow it down immensely and causes it to fall back behind them and stop damaging the platform they were on.

Several small rifle shots blasted into the side of the big wheel on the machine. Krosserdog, noticing how little damage he was doing, decided to take aim at the three bugs and dropped them from the air for the machine to run over in quick succession.

The big blue armored machine currently chasing Pom and Shanty started glowing, a bolt of lightning struck the platform Pom and Shanty were on. This stunned the both of them and caused their bodies to convulse and scream in agony, it certainly didn’t help that the both of them were wet.

“Slapshot!” Canard popped an exploding puck of digital energy into the air with his right hand and slammed it with his hockey stick in his left to send it into the side of the machine, actually managing to damage and crack its armor greatly.

Sami was currently too busy firing on the flying bugs still approaching the vehicle from all sides.

In response to the attack on it, the machine raised its left drill and stretched it forward at the skiff and scored a damaging hit on the front right side of it before it could swerve out of range.

“Thanks for giving me a place to plant this, grenade out!” Snake called and pulled a golden cross covered sphere and tossed it into the crack on the left side of the large machine’s armor, following that Snake tossed out two darts with a rope connected between them to clothesline a few of the flying bugs still chasing after them.

Snake had been mostly throwing an endless supply of knives up to this point and giving Shine a few pointers as he passed her some of his knives so she doesn’t use up her limited stock of throwing ammunition in her bag.

“HALLELUJAH~!” The following noise and explosion of light from the golden grenade slammed the right side of the blue armored mono-wheeled machine into the wall and create a huge shrieking noise as its metal rubbed against the wall.

The machines left arm angled to the right and the shrieking noise coming from the large machine ceased, since it had suddenly burrowed into the wall at an incredible speed and disappeared from sight.

“Doubt that’s the end of that thing…” As Snake said this he idly tossed a knife over his shoulder, without even looking, and caused a flying shrieking bug to choke on its own spike and fall into the rushing waters beneath the skiff where it perished.

“Nnnnhhh-hah!” Shine tossed her knife behind the skiff transport at seemingly nothing, until the knife found itself planted into the forehead of a tiger bug leaping out of the water for one of the Rider Zealots protecting them. The bug died immediately and flopped back into the water.

A smirking Snake just passed five more knives to Shine and she smiled up at him cheerfully as she took them and some offered darts to throw.

Sure the Skein Flyers had taken some damage from melee strikes, but the Zealots were proving their weight even in close combat as their energy blades were fairly deadly as long as they were not taking any hits.

This was made pretty hard considering one of the defending Rider Zealots was graving injured by one of the slicing blade arms from the shrieking nuisances that just kept coming, it was like the tunnel was just a hive full of the spike spitting things and it only took one direct melee hit to seriously injure the zealots.

Flying shrieking bugs the size of big dogs that spit acid spikes, a large mono-wheeled drill tank, spearing water tiger bug and previously seen aquatic EPs. Most of this stuff was constantly being thrown at the skiff or trying to attack Pom and Shanty while they were still stunned and trying to get movement back into their limbs.

Sitting at the right side of the vehicle was Sami as she propped up her rifle and continued to gun down the colorful jellies trying to get at a slowly recovering Shanty and Pom. She was soon helped by Krosserdog as there was a lull in the flying insects in keeping the colorful killer jellies from stabbing at the two.

Only Pom was immune to their poison thanks to the Pecha scarf she wore underneath the bell under her wool, so Shanty was getting priority protection from the two.

Pom manage to get her still jittering legs underneath her and carefully moved to wrap her hooves protectively around Shanty. Pom, knowing she was not going to be able to make a leap back to the skiff that was keeping up with them, turned to face the three jellies that dropped onto the damage back of the railway platform.

The skiff had to veer off to the left to follow the water as the platform the two were on were going down a tunnel alone.

Pom slowly got her twitching hind limbs under control and pushed her and Shanty towards the front as the three colorful assassin class jellies of yellow, blue and pink approached them on their tentacles in an almost dancing ballet like fashion.

When they exited the tunnel Pom looked to the water on the left side of the platform and didn’t see the others, the approaching pink jelly glowed brightly and lunged only to have its body blast apart from a shot to the right of the platform. Looking over that way she saw Krosserdog trying to get a bead on the other two before another tunnel covered them again.

Pom fired a Bark Blast out of her mouth fending off and destroying the yellow one and the blue one tried to go for Shanty’s body. Pom quickly shifted her position to take the tentacle jabbing her in the back for Shanty and reflexively bucked upwards hard with her right hind leg to send the blue jelly flailing off the back through the gap created by the large drill machine. A blue glowing splatter was left behind and Pom sighed.

They exited the tunnel but something was a little wrong, there was a flowing river… above them?!

Canard and the others looked up at Pom in equal puzzlement, not knowing how the flat railway platform wasn’t falling down from above.

“There wasn’t even a twist in the tracks, how the…?!” Pom’s voice was cut off from those on the skiff watching as the platform went into another tunnel.

“Does anyone else think there are glitches in the system warping reality?” Krosserdog asked while rubbing at the back of his head lazily.

“Doesn’t matter, look whose back!” Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder Canard was pointing out the drilling machine erupting from the wall to their right again. Coming out of the tunnel on the opposite side of the river to their left was Pom who was clawing wildly at a flying bug trying to hit her or Shanty with a bladed arm.

Shanty, suddenly having all the feeling back in her limbs, rose up from Pom’s protective left hoof propping up her back and she slashed the bug clean in half almost vertically with her cane scythe.

Pom hugged Shanty and then saw the machine across from them starting to glow.

Eyes wide, Pom jumped and a bolt of lightning struck the platform and the energy traveled down into the rails before Pom landed on her hind legs on top of her wool she had squeezed dry to insulate against any potential shock.

Sure Pom’s wool could reflect magic, but not when it was targeting her indirectly!

Another shine from the machine and Pom was about to leap when instead Shanty dragged her towards the middle of the platform as fire erupted at the front from out of nowhere creating a blast of heat that started melting the front half of the platform and turning the rust metal molten.

The flames had been centered on an area around where Pom was and not directly on her specifically, the machine knew better than to cast any magic directly at the Chrysomallus.

“I could actually be feeling that coming?” Shanty looked a little confused as Pom and her separated and stared at the machine across from them. The skiff was under attack by more flying bugs and two of the Rider Zealots on the Skein Flyers were trying to cover them as well, the Skein Flyers had taken a lot of damage and were still dishing out more than they were getting.

Shanty narrowed her eyes again as a blue glow overtook the machine, but the magic wasn’t targeting them this time…

“Look out, it’s going to attack you!” Hearing Shanty’s words the Zealot piloting the platform swerved it to the left closer to the railway platform that Shanty and Pom were on. The Skein Flyers also veered out of the way as a laser fired forward out of the blue machine crawling along the right wall of the tunnel and swept it for the skiff intended to destroy it. It missed and any of the bugs caught in the path of the laser were slice in half and fired. “Can anyone be dealing with that thing? I don’t think I be wanting it to be casting anymore magic at us!”

The machine tunneling through the wall started to glow a sickly purple and seemed to be looking for a good target on the skiff.

“… Boss, I swerve!” One of the Zealots yelled as he turned his damaged smoking Skein Flyer onto the machine and then, with an impressive leap off of it for the middle of the skiff, the zealot managed to get onboard safely. He then signaled something to one of the other Skein Flyers. “Enter a doom!”

The Skein Flyer rammed into and struck the damaged opening caused by the grenade Snake threw earlier, it then got lodged in pretty deep into the inner workings of the machine that suddenly stopped its attempt at casting magic to try and pulled the Skein Flyer free as it had pierced in deep enough to hamper the mono-wheel.

One of the seven Skein Flyers turned and fired a burst into the suddenly very much unshielded quite damaged vehicle without its Rider Zealot. It was nice to know that if for any reason a Zealot was unseated from a vehicle, that it would immediately become vulnerable.

The rapid fire energy shots, hit something and the top of the drilling machine blew open and it flipped and flopped out of the right wall and into the river of water. The damage machine began sparking violently as soon as it touched the water.

Despite its heavy damage, the drilling machine continued to give chase by widening its four claws on its arms effectively turning them into functional propellers instead of drills, pulling it into chasing after the skiff.

“We spoke to soon?!” The Zealot standing on the skiff stated looking panicked as the Rider Zealots on the seven airborne Skein Flyers were still dealing with the incoming flying bugs.

“You… shall perish this day my mortal nemesis!” One of the bugs instead of like any of the spike spitting shrieking bugs, had a wide fanning red and orange head armored carapace and zoomed at Pom with a large stinger pointed for her.

“Oh, hi Beezy, can’t play right now, bye Beezy!” Pom stated pleasantly as she grabbed Beezy by the stinger with her hooves as Beelzebug, in the form of something called a Bnahabra, tried to stab her in the heart with it.

Pom just promptly threw Bnahabra Beezlebug towards the large drilling machine in the water.

“NOOOOOoooo-aghaghahhlglhl!?” The left propeller of the drill machine was damaged immensely with the caustic demon bugs guts slammed into and through the spinning propeller as it chunked up the poor reoccurring demon.

The end results was the sudden talking bug that attacked Pom becoming chunky salsa and causing the left arm of the machine to become quite damage and start smoking as it caught on fire, in fact Beezy had just helped Pom out a lot just by showing up. Which was rather nice of him, considering the rather hectic situation they were still in.

“You’d think he would be giving up by now…” Shanty shook her head sadly at seeing the poor bug demon again and how quickly Pom dispatched him, much to their advantage.

“Slapshot!” Canard had been firing a lot of Slapshots up to this point, but even with the minimal damage he just did to the right propeller the large drilling machine was still coming at them. “We need to finish that thing off, does anyone have any suggestions!”

“Scanning complete, Caster Magitek Tunnel Armor, hybrid PLANT and EP of the likes of Moby dick, weaknesses include water and lightning.” The Yggdrasil.sys assistant on Canard’s Digivice stated with a what sound like a smile in its voice.

“Peppercat, can you be helping me out?” Shanty landed on the skiff a second later as Pom threw her upon hearing its weakenesses.

“Right!” Peppercat, brought her arms together and lightning coalesced between her plug claws into a ball as she ran up next to Shanty.

“Riptide!” Shanty fired a blast of water forward towards the exposed machinery of the incoming Tunnel Armor.

“Thunder ball special!” The ball combined with the Shanty’s Riptide wave and a second later, Pom landed on the skiff as the malfunctioning Tunnel Armor glowed a bright white and sunk into the waters before exploding violently. The entire tunnel filled with the takeover of territory that Castle Alexander was sure to notice.

“Well they’ll know we’re coming now… like they didn’t know before.” Pom lamented, both Dolly and Dormarch clamped onto her affectionately.

The further the skiff went along with the seven Skein Flyers, the more mechanical things started to become.

-Top of tower with labeled with Shinra, fancy room, a lazy lemming servant-

“Hmph, so they got past the Tunnel Armor… now let’s see if they can handle the naga’s domain in the underground laboratories.” The lemming stated as he leaned back in his chair and played video games, he’ll get to the realm intruders when he needs to. “I’m sure the behemoths down there sure are quite hungry. They can’t be that strong after all of that… right? Ah well, now if I can just get past this one level with the crocodiles…”

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Always impresses me how anyone can play those game styles. I literally cant see anything, given The Blue Blur is an absolute description, and thats when the viewpoint is centralised on him, which means non of the surroundngs are actually visible due to movement.

As for that stage, might as well go for the best music ever played in a childrens film.

Thunderstruck.

[Herald of Opera]

The bug thing shrieked until it drowned, which didn’t take more than two seconds of its head being underwater before it started dissolving into cubes.

Fun fact: insects do not have proper lungs. They will in fact drown nearly instantly if not specifically adapted to water.

yellow, blue and pink

It's cyan and magenta.

Bnahabra Beezlebug

Not even a Large Monster, because of course he isn't. If you hit them too hard, they won't leave a body to carve.