Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Origin Space, Bahamut-

“Ifrit is likely not happy about his current state.” I stated purely for the fact that Lu Bu was getting much closer to the fight at hand.

“I’m fairly surprised Pom is actually going to fight the tank directly.” Arceus didn’t seem too surprised from the look on their face. No, it was surprise at something else, he was watching his children at war with Moon Cell.

“She’s not fighting the tank, she’s distracting it, big difference. Very much using different intent here, otherwise she would actually be intending to actually defeat it than just wearing it down.” That was a decent point my sister Tiamat made, Pom was looking like she was ready to wear it down than actually outright beat it. Now how much would she wear it down though? “Now that would be surprising, because I think she can actually do it. Beat it and the possessed Ifrit I mean, just with a lot of help. I don’t envy the state her body would be in if she intended to beat both of them, it’s a good thing her intent isn’t to fight and win huh? Such a bright fluffy mortal.”

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Central Street to the main gate, Pom-

I stayed crouched low while holding myself up as a Drone was taken down by Krosserdog, Elise was using Search Snakes or throwing knives at the drone in an attempt to deal with the other two. Until the drones were dealt with we really couldn’t damage The Arsenal at all.

Dolly you better stay on me and have my back! I mean that literally, you better be watching out for what’s happening behind us to make sure nothing sneaks up on us while I draw the tanks attention.

If I falter while holding the Paralance near the tank, then we’ll likely die full of holes. We had to give Canard and the others all the time in the world. That’s when I could hear the right cannon began charging up, wished I could see through the… okay I could now see through the canopy of the paralance to see the right cannon on The Arsenal building up to fire, I wonder if it was one-way?

This is going to make me question what this spear couldn’t do or if it was really a spear at all…

Slight change in plans. Hold onto the idea of letting me cast float until I actually ask for it Dolly, can you absorb and force the incoming momentum back into me in the next few seconds?

Dolly didn’t know if she could handle too much force all at once, I just wanted her to absorb as much as she could and force it back into me to wobble counter a drone.

Being out on the streets, my back was to a building and I really didn’t want to plow through any more walls with my body than I had to in life. Still I hopped into the air and the blast from the right cannon struck the canopy of the paralance, I know wouldn’t be alive without this thing being indestructible.

We blasted backwards in the air and I felt Dolly funneling the surge of momentum from the impact right into me, my body started shaking horribly as I landed.

“Great, just what I needed an OP indestructible item in the hands of my enemy!” Merak stated loudly.

“Hooves!” I called back while my body violently shook as I coiled the wool around my hind legs ready to kick off. This was moderately painful, but the pain would be worth it if this immediately took out a drone, I peeked over the canopy to look at one of the drones hovering around the tank on the street.

“Whatever, trying to kill you here!” Lasers arced out from the back of The Arsenal and I inhaled, knowing that the lasers could change directions I exhaled once they neared and managed to avoid either Dolly or me being hit by their suddenly curving behind the Paralance to come at me from all sides. “That Hundred Gunner can’t get here soon enough!”

With my exhale I launched forth using the wool to spring myself and slammed the tip of the paralance into a drone’s eye and it combusted blasting me backwards, the paralance shaking violently in my hooves as Dolly used the momentum from the blast to charge up another wobble counter.

We could do wobble counters as much as we wanted, provided my body can even handle cashing the checks from impacts including explosions like that. It was still painful even if my body was shaking less violently from the drone exploding than the shot from the right arm cannon on the tank.

I waited for Krosser or Elise to finish off the last barrier drone, since I wanted to hit the tank with the weaker wobble counter. Slowly I started to circle around to the right of the tank while drawing a massive amount of fire from its left six rotating machine cannons.

It’s at this point that I realized Dolly was still charging me up from all the smaller impacts of the bullets hitting the canopy of the paralance, well it wasn’t like I exactly asked her to stop. Though I should really tell her when the ramping up of my wobble was getting too much to control.

On the street behind the tank I could see Jeanne stabbing through a trooper and slamming their body down onto a Guard Hound, good to know she’s doing fine, but where was Shanty? I could feel Dormarch readying to jump in and was in range to Search Hunter his way into an attack, he was keeping himself busy with a Guard Hound or two with help from some Zealots and was watching me carefully.

Dormarch was likely looking out for my health as usual, he’s a sweet little baby… considering his age he still technically was one. Does digital time effect maturity for Digimon faster? My poor son, he’s spent most of his life fretting over me and fighting, he really deserves better than this and a nice quiet life at home. My home in Huoshan.

I hoped Shanty was ready to go on the attack as that last barrier drone was getting badly damaged by the constant shots from Krosserdog, the Search Snakes biting into it and flying knives from Elise and the rarely focused fire from Crazy moving along the walls of the nearby buildings. Crazy was as her name suggests, but at least she was helping with the APs and making sure I could even stand out in the open like this with Dolly covering my rear.

Come on, fall already, all this wobble was getting quite painful!

My eyes lit up as a shot from Krosserdog blew through the barrier drone and I immediately kicked off as the barrier dropped and arced through the air as a white blur, to stab the center of the machine’s cylinder.

The enter thing rocked with the impact and I might have cracked the armor slightly before I used my rear legs to kick off of it, glad I did as flamed erupted from around the machine in attempt to light me and Dolly on fire.

“Woohoo that was a good one!” Glad to hear you in good spirits Dolly, because that wouldn’t be anywhere close to nearly enough to finish this thing off.

Following my attack that, Elise dropped down on the machine from above ramming the sword like tip of her spear halfway into the machine, before pushing off with her coiled tail. Jeanne struck out at one of the machine’s wheels damaging it slightly with her banner spear.

Shanty came flying in and rocked the machine with a heavy impact from behind that damaged, dented and cracked the armor before she went bouncing off into a nearby alley as the six machine cannons took aim and fired at her.

“Going to have to do better than that!” At Merak’s taunting the tank’s bottom half started glowing, Elise launched sideways through a buildings window, Jeanne leapt quite an impressive distance backwards and I frantically slammed the edge of the canopy into the street and crouched behind it as blasts of electrical energy flooded the area and spread out from the tank. “How about I heat things up for you!”

The arms on the tank flipped outwards in half revealing flames building up in their middle sections. Flames sprayed outwards from the tank and wherever they landed they stuck to and burned, I was trapped in the street by a walls of flames on either side of me.

“It’s getting kind of hot out here Pom.” That was a reminder that Dolly was immune to cold, not extreme heat. I used my wool to protect Dolly from the wavering air.

“I know that Dolly.” I definitely thoroughly had Merak’s attention given he chose to trap me instead of deal with Jeanne attack the wheels and back of the tank and had to jump back again to avoid another electrical surge of lightning.

The canopy of the paralance absorbed the attack perfectly fine, so I hadn’t a good reason to move yet.

Shanty came back in bouncing off the top of the machine and sending a blast of water into the small hole that Elise had made in the top of The Arsenal’s armor. Her bounce led her to climbing the side of the building Elise had gone into before the wall of flames prevented the naga from helping me down here.

The tanks arms then started filling with fire again, only this time small portals opened up…

“Pom behind us!” I looked behind us and saw two massive portals, we were about to be hit with a massive barrage of flames.

“Shanty, help!” I called out for help, Shanty launched into the sea of flames without a second though and wrapped her Bounding Bubble around us as she bounced off the ground and up to the building that was to my right a second ago.

We avoided being swallowed by a massive stream of flames that filled the street where Dolly and I had been seconds ago. Yeah, that wasn’t survivable by Dolly or me.

“Are you being okay?” Shanty asked as she gave us an air pocket and rolled us along the corridor as another portal opened up behind us and started funneling the massive flames at us.

“When have I ever been, just keep us moving?!” I shouted back in panic as she drove the bubble to smashing through a window into the alleyway’s wall she had been in a minute prior and she bounced us sideways so that we were now behind the tank, as flames erupted from out of the building above us. “Start heading towards the massive gate, we need to make it seem like it’s still our end goal!”

“That should be being fairly easy… whoa!” Shanty covered us completely in water and redirected multiple direction changing lasers away from us by refracting the energy away from us.

The top half of The Arsenal swung around and started spewing hundreds of shots at us from its left arm closed up and I quickly poked the Paralance out the side of the bubble and used it to block the salvo of bullets coming at us as Shanty kept moving us for the gate.

Merak soon made the tank’s bottom half turn around and it charged right for us, didn’t see where Jeanne got to, but Krosserdog was still firing on The Arsenal from the rooftops and was doing some damage at least.

“Alley to the left!” At my call Shanty veered us into an alleyway as the massive charging machine passed by us and then swerved about to start rolling backwards towards the main gate. The street behind it was still embroiled in flames that weren’t dying down, noting that I really didn’t want to be hit with those.

Glancing up in the air I could see Canard on the barely fixed skiff doing something along the middle section of the big walls, we had to keep Merak’s attention in this direction then.

“Don’t let Merak see the skiff and keep up the good work Shanty.” I whispered to Shanty, she nodded to me with a toothy grin as I popped out of the bubble with Dolly to once again face down The Arsenal on hoof as I ran into the street and brought the paralance up. I saw Elise swing into position to clinging to a building to my right, she got past the flames just fine I see, as did Cruel who was riding on her shoulders… I had some idea of where Crazy was, since I did see a stream of shots hit the redirecting laser producer on the machines back.

Every bit of damage, no matter how minimal it was so far, was eventually going to be helpful.

“Like I’m ever going to let you get to the gate or lose sight of Moon Cell’s goal to deal with a threat like you!” Merak sneered loudly, as several portals opened up around me.

Bigger canopy now, immediately, please!

I planted the back end of the paralance and pushed downward, then I heard the sounds of rain… or was that the thousands of impacts of bullets hitting us all angles except from below.

The Paralance had us covered and I was gripping the shortened shaft tightly in my hooves, it had thankfully shifted to fit my defensive needs as we were now kind of inside of a very small tent made from the canopy of the shape shifting paranormal parasol lance weapon.

When the sound of bullets bouncing off the canopy of the paralance stopped I stood up and it returned to be more lance shaped.

“And it shape shifts too, what kind of loot goblin did you get that thing off of?!” No idea what Merak was talking about when in references to goblins, though if I’m right it sounded like Puckwudgie if I’m guessing things correctly. Merak also sounded angry that the paralance protected us from being shredded by the bullet storm.

“If I said it was actually fairy would you believe me?” I stated back with a slight hint of humor in my voice.

“Oh and I’m sure you’re next going to tell me a lady in a lake exists too!” Merak responded in turn.

“Aren’t you a soul summoned from some kind of soul containment device to fight for the cause of a magical genocidal soul controlling machine?” Also didn’t Oberon tell me to say that ‘the lady of the lake says hello’ to that sword wielding dog Pokémon? Don’t know where they are right now, so I really couldn’t do that yet, but I’m still keeping it in mind.

“Yeah, so what?” Before the side of the The Arsenal was slammed into by Shanty who lashed out with a sword shaped mass of liquid that damaged the right side of the tank’s cylinder somewhat, it actually cut into the armor a bit to reveal more armor underneath… how tough was this thing and why do I put myself in these situations?! “Ugh, who built this system so that you can only have three barrier drones active at once! I can understand why only three drones at once, but come on, what weapon making genius limits their imagination after building such a beautiful contraption to do the fighting for them!”

Good question actually, also this tank wouldn’t be nearly as effective if not for Merak’s portal generating ability. He couldn’t alter the size of living beings, but the size of those flames that were still burning the street behind me had almost engulfed me completely.

Three barrier drones came out and of course the tank was made invincible by the shields they projected as I ran towards the right of the tank building up for a shot with its right arm. It actually wasn’t aimed at me this time and luckily Shanty managed to avoid the blast took a chunk out of another building, so I leapt up and to the right of the tank and struck at a Barrier Drone damaging it slightly before it fired a blast of energy at me.

I got clipped by the blast and this resulted in shocking both me and Dolly.

“Agh…” Still managed to stay upright after landing on my hooves and managed to bring the lance up to block a second attempt to shock me into a having heart attack. Lightning was not my friend, kind of wish I was a pegasus at the moment they can handle lightning and shocks better than any pony… not that such shocks couldn’t be lethal to them they were just more resilient to being shocked.

“Okay, ow… can’t feel my body… at least you can still move right?” Dolly stated as she took a portion of that grazing shock, and yet she could still bark... I’m not sure that’s how paralysis works when it comes to lightning shocks.

“Dolly, can I get that ‘float magic’ I asked for earlier now!” I felt Dolly lend me her magic ability and I took to casting the spell, it was a short one and I thankfully managed to get it off before the third drone fired upon me after building up energy. “Float!”

The target of my spell was not the drones or The Arsenal that was currently functionally immune to everything anyone could due to it thanks to the energy field protecting it.

No, I chose a better target for the float spell… myself!

I kicked off the ground and practically flew up to a wall of the building opposite of where I had been standing and watched as an energy blast struck and scorched the ground as I hung onto a window sill to the tanks right.

Making my body lightweight was really quite helpful, I barely weight seventy pounds already… I’m practically feeling weightless now and this would help greatly with maneuverability. Also it helped with mimicking Fleet Cunning Doe movements as my reindeer friend Velvet could do them.

Float on allies gives them controlled limited flight up to a certain height as long as you were above something solid or liquid like the ground or a pool, otherwise you’d float downwards until you were above something solid or liquid to the maximum floating height I could reach.

When float use on enemies it makes them spiral out of control into the air leaving them open and vulnerable to ranged attacks and feasibly close ranged attacks if unpredictable flailing wasn’t an issue. Really useful magic in almost any situation, like right now!

I kicked off the building and moved to hovering above the machine having drawn the attention off of firing at Shanty as I moved to be above the machine that aimed both its guns up at me.

I rolled in the air dodging a massive energy shot and a small volley of bullets to dive down at one of the barrier drones while avoiding the massive energy shot as it came out of a portal horizontally trying to hit me again and jammed the drone with the lance. I swiftly flew away from it and the shock it send my way, while avoiding that massive blast of redirected energy yet again.

“Sorry, still trying to get over some fears I’d rather not let our enemy know about!” It was about this time that Jeanne finally reappeared in the battle and speared a barrier drone entirely through with her banner spear from above and then she launched it at the third barrier drone to do some damage.

While this was happening Merak was focusing on trying to burst down Elise who was proving to be fairly agile and capable of sticking to walls like Shanty or I could. I mean her search snakes could cling to walls, so I shouldn’t be too surprised to find out she could do the same as well. Seriously, how did Elise get all those abilities from gaining something as simple as the ability of ‘resurrection’, there had to be more to it like a theme related to what a more mythical naga might be known for.

Elise said she was normal snake lady prior to gaining the power of ‘resurrection’ and had no other powers before the whole ‘trapped in a facility and tortured a lot’ thing occurred. Still kind of concerned she could still use me as a pillow and sleep so soundly on me not too long after what I did.

Crazy fired a burst from the top of a nearby building that threw off the barrier drone aiming a splash of lightning my way. I narrowly avoided the beam of energy in the air with an aerial backflip and then had to shield from a volley of bullets as even when he was attacking Elise with those direction changing lasers, Merak could still find the time to fire up at me floating above the tank.

Elise looked to be okay in dodging the lasers and only got a few burns as she took cover behind a pillar in a building. Said pillar wouldn’t last more than a direct shot from the right cannon on The Arsenal.

The feeling of flying felt so right, wish it currently didn’t as I knew exactly what the reason for feeling so keen on it was. With that thought in mind I dodged through an array of wildly curving lasers while blocking a few with the paralance to escape being boxed in and burned from all angles I dove down into strike the barrier drone I was focusing on with a lot of blunt force damage it somewhat.

If I was fighting to destroy this thing, then we’d definitely be on the losing end even if we hadn’t taken to many injuries… the thing was putting out so much powerful attacks that I really doubt Shanty, Jeanne or Elise could stop moving for as long as I could and survive without a shield of equivalent strength to an absolutely indestructible object. Just call it a hunch, but with the surrounding buildings being either destroyed, on fire or both doesn’t spell good times.

Being in the unfortunate position of tanking attacks was my job and I had to keep Merak directed at me to stop him from hurting the others and he was targeting them more than me now, so he was likely aware of that.

Dolly can I get a little advice, even if you’re not feeling too well physically?

The response I got from Dolly was to keep dodging and to hold on until she can wiggle her toes again, because that one glancing blast of electricity still stung.

With a swoop I struck out at the second of the two remaining drones and avoided a burst of flames that came from The Arsenal. The drones were getting pummeled by both Krosserdog and Crazy’s support fire.

A pair of zealots leapt from the balcony of a nearby building and jammed their energy blades into one of the nearby barrier drones smashing them into the streets and destroyed the last two. They were likely there thanks to Dormarch’s influence. After finishing the drone they backed off and used their shields to tank a number of the shots to get out of sight of The Arsenal.

“Burn, you little gnats!” The arms on The Arsenal folded back again, going for another burning flames attack and the street behind me was still on fire even now.

Jeanne retreated really fast like insanely so… as did Elise and I quickly floated into a nearby alleyway.

Shanty however didn’t retreat, she bounced her bubbled off the street and high into the air to generate a blade at the top of the bubble shaped like a cutlass.

“Bounding Cutlass!” Shanty slammed the water blade down through the last drone, the cutting arc even did some damage to The Arsenal through the shield.

Thankfully the goat quickly retreated her bubble as the water rapidly boiled away when the flames started erupted from the arms of The Arsenal, it then turned its flames skywards at me.

I quickly floated a circle around the head of the machine that fired its smaller guns up at me while the flames followed after me, I retreated while using the paralance to absorb some of the flames being shot at me.

Without needing a warning, I darted to the side as a pillar of flames rained down on me from above as Merak form a portal to get a better angle on me with the flames coming from one arm and increased the size of the beams of raw fire.

That pillar of flames entered another portal and became even bigger rising to the sky and I narrowly avoided that two with my wool singing just from proximity and the heat.

“Heh, I think it’s about time I call this battle my victory!” Merak stated and I wondered what he meant when I felt numerous impacts struck at the board protecting my back and one shot tore through my left shoulder causing me to grit my teeth and hiss audibly as I quickly sealed the wound with my wool, Dolly caught something coming out of the flames of the burning buildings behind us. “The Hundred Gunner is finally here.”

Looking over my shoulder and still hold the paralance in front of me facing The Arsenal, I saw exactly what the Hundred Gunner was. It was a smaller, possibly less capable, blue version of The Arsenal It had six machine cannons on each arm and its head had three instead of the four guns The Arsenal had.

The machine cannons on the arms were like the left arm of The Arsenal and they all started spinning as The Arsenal took aim at me and several portals appeared around me. There was only on slightly problem, I couldn’t land or stay on the ground while Float was still active.

The Hundred Gunner started spinning up its machine cannons when something dropped on it from above and smashed a large hole through the top of its body.

“What the…” Merak started to say when all the fire in the area winked out of existence suddenly, as if a candle had been snuffed out or more like all the fire had been immediately been drawn into the Hundred Gunner that barely got one good shot on me.

“RARRRRRRGGGHHHH!” The world shook as the massive flame demon we saw at a distance was now here and roared as it ripped its way out of the smaller flimsier tank that Merak brought to the fight, while erupting in a pillar of mighty flames.

“Yep, that is being Lu Bu alright, is it being okay to say that I’m scared of him?” Shanty said as she parked herself on the building next to me and the flame demon shot her a deathly look. “I be calling it a hunch that he even be remembering the fight we be having!”

The flaming demon pointed at Shanty and started stalking forward with flames even more powerful than The Arsenal’s forming in his claws.

I quickly did the most prudent thing in this moment I could think of, I held up a hoof and a paw quickly slapped a Sitrus Berry into it and I quickly downed the berry to help deal with my injuries. Didn’t think it was going to help with that raging demon coming after Shanty and I wouldn’t let him come after her without a fight from me.

Really don’t know how I was going to deal with The Arsenal and a Flaming Demon Lu Bu at the same time… at least we were all thoroughly distracted, hopefully the demolition team was having an easier time than us.

I didn’t know how injured the others had gotten, hadn’t been close to any of them to know. I knew at least Dolly and Dormarch were okay, but we were in for a world of trouble here.

-Nearby on the gate, Canard-

At least the Caerbannogs were keeping the EPs off of Pom’s battle, not that it was going well from what I was seeing on the catwalk. I quickly moved back inside.

“They are getting fried out there, how is the plan coming Sami!” I called out and the orange soldier lizard pulled her head from the gate controls.

“Do you want the good news or the bad new?” Sami stated as she continued to work frantically.

“Bad news.” Then the goods news would maybe be something more hopeful.

“Okay, so opening the gate can be accomplished… but it’ll send the wall guns into overclocking… the good news is I can destroy all the guns around the city if Castle Alexander can survive them being overclocked for ten minutes or retreats long enough for them to be destroyed, but only if I don’t open the massive gate can this occur.” Sami was a veteran virus type digimon, so she’d know what she’s talking about as far as digital manipulations went. “So what I’m saying is we can overclock the guns by opening the gate and the guns will be able to continue firing on the Alexander all the way up to the door without being destroyed or we can make sure the door can’t open and destroy all the guns.”

“If it’s an ‘either or’ in this situation… I’d say destroy the guns and let Castle Alexander worry about getting through the gate. It’s big and powerful enough for it.” I made a gesture to Sami and she nodded and set to work on locking up the gate and causing a destruction of all the wall cannons at once. “Tell me when I can tell Castle Alexander to retreat for the next ten minutes, the moment I make the call we’re going to have every EP in the area knowing we’re here.”

“Give me a moment here Canard… almost… there!” The guns along the walls increased their firing rate to an insane degree. “Call Castle Alexander to retreat for the time being.”

“Ocellus, this is Canard, retreat Castle Alexander for ten minutes, then come back in and charge the city at full force!” I called.

“Canard, what’s going on with the cannons?” Ocellus asked as Castle Alexander, barely a speck on the horizon started moving backwards from the artillery onslaught.

“What we just did is about to destroy all the cannons, after that you’re going to have to force your way across the field and into Midgar on your own, but without their artillery fire you can work up some AP support on the way in by taking the PLANTs in the plains without being constantly blasted.” I pulled my hockey stick from my back and turned as Guard Hounds with their neck tentacles surged up the stairs at us. “We’re about to be hit by a ton of EPs for doing this and calling you just put a big target on our backs, so if you’ll excuse me!”

I turned and heaved the blade of my stick through a Guard Hound and tore it in half.