Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Moon Cell Realms, allied territory within the walls of Midgar City, Canard-

“We need someone to get into the wall like yesterday Ocellus, can you have anyone break through the lines to take those PLANTs?” I called out over the visor as I finished running a Trooper through.

“We’re working on it Mr. Thunderbeak!” Answered Clef to the sound of explosions and something crashing. “How is Ms. Pom doing in there?”

“Well apparently the area she’s in apparently gained conditions like you would see on Puckworld… lots of ice and snow in that direction.” Felt nice, but not all my friends were used to hockey playing conditions being a majority of the year. “Also be aware there’s a new types of Neutrals running around. In the terms of round, spherical and highly explosive. General color is red, if they inflate then deal with them fast or get clear as that is a sign they are about to explode… violently. Apparently they are unironically called Bombs. What’s Ocellus currently doing?”

“She’s moving some Magitek Armor to the Commandramon holding the moving castles walls and is trying to find the holes in our defenses to plug them to prevent any more assassin attacks… those guys are scary.” Clef whined that last part, but she’s arguably more dangerous than any assassin archetype that could be thrown at her. That sugary sweetness of hers was lethally cute.

“Canard we got Sweeper’s incoming, look alive!” Sami shouted as three different types of Sweeper machines showed up, the regular two machine gun variant, the yellow chainsaw variant and a flamethrower variant.

I tightly gripped my stick and started forward, as several Guard Hounds burst forth and started running at me, there were also Moon Cell Watchers flying in and our air coverage has recently become abysmal thanks to the eventual loss of the Skein Flyer Zealots. We didn’t nearly have enough forces to hold this position for long.

“Don’t they clearly already have enough things to throw at us than those manufactured automatons?!” Elise stated as she threw a knife unerringly into an enemy program Brute’s red eye.

As useful as having Elise’s support was, she wasn’t an entire army of EPs slowly crushing us in the slum sector of Midgar City. Whatever Shine and Jeanne were doing, they better grab a few more territories soon or we will be having major problems holding this small sections of the city. We needed the reinforcements like yesterday!

-Midgar City, Frozen Street, Pom-

As we hovered in the air above the street, I couldn’t help the feeling that we need to finish Lu Bu fast, which was hard to do according to Shanty’s previous run in with him.

Shanty was basically running on the last dregs of her magic after barely summoning Leviathan’s head, I was to. Unless I pushed into sacrifice territory, and I really didn’t want to lose any more ground to becoming a full on Chrysomallus which inevitably ends in my fairly quick death, then the most combat capable one of us was Dormarch at the moment.

The ice controlling magical being was hopefully sticking around and helping us for the fight, they seemed very effective against Lu Bu’s current form at the very least. Still, their timely appearance had me wary about how much further this fight would go, if we’re all weak at the end of it I’m fairly certain Marek would take advantage of it.

The icy visage of the tall elf figure glanced in our direction, then at Shanty and finally in Dormarch’s direction, before she turned to Lu Bu and formed icicle spears in the air to point them at him.

I silently wondered if Velvet had a trademark on her ice magic fighting style. I at least knew Fleet Cunning Doe was the general Rein combat style, so trademark was not an issue there.

“Pom, feeling a little exposed up here… also that lady, do you feel it?” It wasn’t a familiar bond that Dolly was alluding to and yes I could feel it, if it was then I would have noted the subtle and incredibly soft intrusion earlier. There was an extra connection among my connections to Dormarch and Dolly, just sitting there quietly and it thankfully wasn’t a familiar bond.

“Yes, I think the ice being is on our side… for the time being.” So that’s where our magic went… Shanty and I were basically tapped out and we needed to lean on Dormarch a bit more.

I felt Dormarch send me the fact that he was ready to help and I’m certainly not going to forget that he’s a child, even if he’s a strong one and most distressingly in particular ‘my child’. Metal Hound 002 wasn’t going to last much longer at this rate if we kept getting as close to Lu Bu as we have been and it wasn’t like Shanty lost her Cane Scythe, but her limited water protection isn’t going to hold up to the kinds of flames Lu Bu spews very well.

“Dolly.” I stated while looking at the ice and snow.

“On it!” Dolly answered already knowing what I wanted her to do as we swooped down, the wind hitting my face thanks to the lack of canopy to take it for us.

Dolly span the left barrel as we dragged it through the snow to scoop some up as we headed for Lu Bu’s back, he started to build up some flames in his hands as the ice being shifted into a defensive stance and Shanty took an aggressive stance. Dormarch would prefer to use ranged attacks after Lu Bu threw him through a wall and I only advised being careful as Lu Bu was dangerous even at range.

As we closed in the ice being started to move to attack with the ice and Shanty charged forward, Dormarch prepped a Lupine Laser.

-Pom’s Team vs. Lu bu continued-

The ice being sent a blast of icicles at Lu Bu who melted them out of the air immediately with the flames of his right hand. This was followed by Lu Bu actively dodging the Lupine Laser from Dormarch and almost catching the Cane Scythe by the shaft as Shanty feinted actually going through with her attack and immediately backed off, Lu Bu immediately went from grabbing at Shanty to attempting to backhand Pom and Dolly with the same left hand.

In the face of getting Pom’s smashed in at the speeds they were currently going at, Dolly forced the Metal Hound 002 onto its flight pack and it started to skid forward along the icy street.

The flight pack reversed its fans rotation to push them down the street even faster and they passed by Lu Bu who tried to thrust his left arm forward and down into the street trying to hit the machine.

As they slid past Lu Bu, Dolly aimed both the arms of Metal Hound 002 at Lu Bu and peppered his face with shots from the right machine cannon and a few blasts of snow to the chest from the left arms damaged gun before it quickly went into cycling ammunition again. The snow seemingly doing more damage than high speed projectiles that’d absolutely tear right through Pom.

Putting the fans rotation back to normal Dolly spun the Metal Hound 002 as it rose back into the air to face towards Lu Bu and fired off two missiles from the right shoulder. The missiles were quickly blasted out of the air by fireballs exhaled from Lu Bu’s mouth.

A blast of mist exhaled from the ice elemental beings mouth stunned and staggered Lu Bu and he had a coughing fit as some of the mist entered his mouth. The lithe elf figure went skating backwards to avoid the plumes of flames Lu Bu generated to attack her before he lunged for Shanty with his right fist pulled, Dormarch teleported in using Search Hunter and intercepted by slamming into Lu Bu with a Howling Star attack that bursts him forward in a blaze of light.

Having been launched into the air slight Dolly slung the Metal Hound 002 down and slashed the still available right claw across Lu Bu’s belly before ascending away from the fire spewing out of his left hand.

Lu Bu landed and was about to go for the ice elf thing, when suddenly he felt a slash to his right calf and his anger was drawn back onto Shanty who deftly danced away from his right backhand while managing to score a small cut on his right forearm and dodged his following left hook.

Having missed Lu Bu was hit with a bunch of ice spikes from the ice elemental being that caused Lu Bu to ignite in a fury, vaporizing quite a bit of snow and ice around him instantly.

Soon the flame monster targeted Metal Hound 002 with Pom and Dolly wondering why Lu Bu would ever bother with casting magic at Pom? Well this was soon answered seconds later when their opponent proved that he wasn’t just a beast of rage, but that he was an intelligent beast of rage.

A flash of gold as Pom’s wools glowed brightly happened, however Lu Bu had apparently calculated the angle perfectly to deflect the magic to create explosion of flames right where Dormarch was about to launch an attack.

Dormarch was, thrown off by the explosion of flames, was launched directly into Shanty as she leapt for Lu Bu. Lu Bu followed this up by not going after Shanty, but lobbing several fireballs up at Metal Hound 002 as he charged for the ice elemental.

Metal Hound 002 had to avoid the fireballs, even if they had been created by magic unless the fireballs were magical themselves, they weren’t going to reflect off of Pom if they were natural flames as the end result of magic. It wasn’t the magic being directly applied to Pom so her anti-magic effect didn’t kick in after a near scrape with an exploding mass of flames caused Metal Hound 002 to spiral into a building back first.

Lu Bu roared as he thrust his flame covered left fist at the icy blue colored elf and she dodged around and slashed up his left forearm with a rapier made entirely out of ice that formed and became held in her right hand.

Quickly creating a buckler to take the brunt of the next attack, the ice elemental was sent bouncing down the street by a hard right from Lu Bu.

Rolling out of the wild tumble, the ice maiden stabbed the blade against the icy street and skidded to stop after taking a moment to gather herself and stand up, she fixed the damage dealt to her rapier. She started to skate along the street with ice forming at where her toes touched down.

While the ice elemental was getting back into the fight, Lu Bu attack Shanty who tried to fend him off with several quick swipe of the scythe to create cutting arcs that Lu Bu avoided.

Lu Bu swung his right fist upward at Dormarch diving at him.

Stopping short of actually hitting him, Dormarch canceled out his Howling Star to drop down and unleash an impossible to block or dodge Wild Howling from his mouth, the shockwave shook and locked Lu Bu in position.

Shanty followed up the sudden stun, by ramming the tip of her scythe down in a curving arc for Lu Bu’s chest and jammed him in where his heart should be.

Grunting audibly at the pain of having half the alien metal scythe made out of destroyed robot leg puncturing his flesh, Lu Bu quickly ignored the blade buried in his chest and grabbed Shanty around her water armored waist with his left hand and ignited it while glaring her in the eyes.

“AGGHhhhh…” Shanty was screaming in pain as her fur was being burned, she was quickly released when the ice elemental lady stabbed him in the side making him reflexively dropped the goat that had his ire.

Shanty quickly pulled her weapon free and scrambled away gasping in pain from the burns around her midsection as the ice elemental was knocked down by Lu Bu with the blade still painfully buried in his side.

Lu Bu was about to lay into the icy being, when he took a sudden left hook to the face from the spinning barrel of the malfunctioning machine cannon of the Meta Hound 002 going full speed at him.

The impact shook and staggered Lu Bu and slowed the Metal Hound to swing about its right claw into cutting upwards and into Lu Bu’s belly, chest and a portion of his neck before it took a punch to the chest armor knocking it back and out of the air to sending it skidding along the road.

Lu Bu ignited his own body to melt the ice sword buried in his side and cauterized his damaging wounds.

Pom glared as, under the guidance of Dolly, she flicked the Metal Hound 002 into walk mode from where they landed. Metal Hound 002 planted its left foot forward and kicked off with its right foot to go sliding forward towards Lu Bu at an incredible speed while spinning up its left and right cannons.

Halfway to Lu Bu the right shoulder of Metal Hound 002 loosed two missile which were swiftly blown out of the air by stream of flame from Lu Bu, who started getting pummeled by projectiles from the right cannon.

The right cannon’s firing slowed Metal Hound 002 enough that Lu Bu almost managed to punch Dolly and Pom’s faces, they blocked with the spinning barrel of the mangled left arm and the machine got toppled by the force of the blow.

“Ggrrrr…” Lu Bu growled as he was once again stuck with another rapier of ice created by the ice elemental summoned by Pom and Dolly, he blasted her with flames and she seemed quite weak to them as much as he was weak to her cold ice. She was easily sent through some glass windows of a storefront.

Shanty slashed Lu Bu across the back with the cane scythe sometimes called the Pegged Leg by Shanty, she quickly dodged back and the flinching from her burns almost caused her to take the back of Lu Bu’s left fist to the face. She managed to duck under and back further away from him while short of breath.

Those that knew of Lu Bu, were currently glad he didn’t have his magical form changing weapon, Dormarch was exceptionally happy he didn’t have it on him.

After Shanty distracted Lu Bu, Dormarch got underneath the burning monster and slammed both his frequency wing blades outwards into Lu Bu’s knees.

Once Dormarch got his wing blades properly lodged into Lu Bu’s knees and upper thighs, he reared up with a howl and slammed Lu Bu’s face into the pavement as hard as he could.

“Blade Wind Turbine!” Dormarch announced while standing on his hind legs with a dazed Lu Bu lodged onto his wing blades, he started to spin incredible fast and Lu Bu’s face quickly ripped through the ice covered pavement slightly before being spun about violently.

Pulling back his wing blades Dormarch watched as Lu Bu was sent into a nearby building with a slight glint in his eye as Lu Bu plowed through a support pillar of the building… then the entire skyscraper collapsed onto him.

“Do you think eughh… that is being enough?” Shanty asked as they watched the building collapse several tons of material directly on top of Lu Bu and started kicking up a lot of dust.

“Nope.” Dormarch stated with a firm look on his face as the light of flames could be seen underneath the quickly collapsing rubble, faintly resisting the tide of stone, glass and metal.

“I agree, Shanty catch!” At Pom’s call out, Shanty raised her hoof and caught the thrown Sitrus Berry. The goat immediately downed the healing fruit to ease the pain of her battered form.

The Ice elemental skated over to them and stopped while holding up the ice shield with her left arm and her rapier in her right hand, she slashed it along the ground to create a wall of ice that absorbed the brunt of the shockwave of the building collapsing.

“Who are you… Shiva? Interesting name.” Nobody was going to point out to Pom that the ice elemental Shiva never said a word as her long flowing braided blue hair wave in the winds caused by the collapsed building.

After having been blinded a bit by the dust and debris, things started to settle down and they could see a molten mess as Lu Bu came out from the building. He was gasping and weak after taking a whole building to his body, but he was still going.

Shiva took a few steps forward and held the sword up in front of her face before looking to Pom, Dolly, Shanty and Dormarch.

“Right, we need to finish dealing with him.” Pom said as she looked over the flaming beasts red cracked skin showing what looked like veins of lava, a sure sign that the muscle monster was close to cracking even if it was taking all of their combined efforts to even put this much of a dent in his unstoppable façade. “Are you okay to keep going Dolly?”

“The guy had an entire building collapsed onto him, how do you think I feel to see him getting back up from that?!” Dolly was of course upset that Lu Bu was still going. “What kind of monsters are we fighting here? I thought that whole undying giant metal owl thing was bad.”

“What’s terrifying is that Shiva doesn’t feel like she can stick around for much longer and she’s the most capable we have against him.” Dormarch was readying another Lupine Laser with Lu Bu’s name on it.

“I am being quite exhausted…” Shanty stated as she leaned against her cane scythe and breathing a bit roughly, it was clear to anyone looking that she didn’t want to get grabbed by Lu Bu again. She currently didn’t have any water to protect herself with, the last bit of liquid had been burned away when Lu Bu grabbed and fried her midsection.

Lu Bu crouched down on his fists and roared at them, they each readied themselves in various ways for for the large horned beast of flames was coming at them once more. In the distance a mushroom cloud exploded as one of the reactors that powered the city took a Bomb to its core. This back lit the flaming monster.

“Don’t forget, for all his roaring, raging and flames… he’s still very much intelligent. Dolly, Dormarch, Shiva…” Pom stated with narrowed eyes as the Metal Hound 002 started to move forward and Dormarch did so as well alongside her.

Shanty decided to take a back seat and stayed behind Shiva, as Lu Bu had been targeting her a lot. Lu Bu’s enmity towards Shanty was well noted by Pom who intended to protect her charge from the revenant monster.

Lu Bu lunged forward and tried to ram Metal Hound 002 with his horns, instead of retreating, both the left cannon and right claw came to the defense by catching Lu Bu between the horns and pushing outwards as it held its position only managing to be pushed back a few feet before it stalled the raging beast out.

It was apparent that the flaming demon had weakened enough that the mechanical might of the Magitek Armor could barely overcome his raw muscle. He angled his mouth up and threatened to blow fire at Pom and Dolly directly through the shattered canopy.

A Lupine Laser coming in from Pom and Dolly’s right slammed home into Lu Bu’s mouth and stopped him from firing off his flamethrower breath point blank at the girls, in fact it got him choking on and coughing.

Following this Lu Bu tried to leap away or lift the Metal Hound 002 off of him and instead they kept him pinned using the machines still viable right claw to force him to stay in place.

Shiva fired several sharp icicles into his body as she skated to the left and slashed his left leg up with her freezing ice rapier. The coldness of the magical blade severely weakened Lu Bu making it easier for Metal Hound 002 to hold him in place even if it couldn’t attack in its given position.

Lu Bu didn’t like that he was losing to these fleas through various small bites, his rage flared and he punched his left fist into the Metal Hound 002 denting the metal and then he roared and launched a uppercut with his right fist.

Not only did it lift Metal Hound 002 off the ground and fall onto its back, its right claw became unhooked allowing Lu Bu freedom of movement. He quickly created a claymore of raw flames and tore it through Shiva’s body, dispelling her summoned form.

He tried to swing it for Dormarch who managed to defend with his right wing blade and he rammed his head into Lu Bu’s stomach staggering him into stumbling backwards. Even then Lu Bu let the flaming sword explode in a burst of flames that sent Dormarch skidding backwards, Dormarch quickly planted the wheels at the heels of his current form and revved them up to counteract the backwards force until it evened out.

Dormarch looked up and found himself a good thirty feet away, Lu Bu was still frighteningly strong for a flaming demon that had been heavily worn down. They had lost Shiva’s assistance so they really had to finish Lu Bu and couldn’t afford to let him recover from this fight, he wouldn’t just exclusively start targeting Moon Cell’s forces.

Lu Bu moved to attack Metal Hound 002, it had proven to be quite the thorn in his getting revenge for his pitiful defeat and the fact that he couldn’t break a little goat’s fighting spirit.

The fire leaking monster was only stopped when Shanty leapt up and slashed his left cheek and narrowly managed to plant her scythe into the ground, she use the scythe to pivot herself out of the way of his retaliation as fist and flames struck at the air behind her. Shanty swung around and attack his left leg and almost got splatted as the street was ruptured by Lu Bu’s fist as she hopped backwards.

Shanty might have been running dry on magic, but she was still quite willing to fight Lu Bu and remained quite defiant of Lu Bu hurting Pom or Dolly.

Ripping up a chunk of the street, Lu Bu slung it at Shanty who tried to deflect it with a cutting arc of her scythe. This only ended up with Shanty deflecting the chunk of rubble and it slapped her across the left side of her forehead and knocked the poor goat down and out.

Lu Bu grinned, brought both his fists together and leapt with them raised high above his head and he came down at Shanty swinging them downwards with all his strength.

Dormarch quickly appeared under Lu Bu using Search Hunter and then performed a point blank Howling Star ram his way up into knocking Lu Bu away from attacking Shanty in the form of a rising star.

“Oh come on, can’t I have just have this one cool thing?” Dolly whined as she got the nearby Metal Hound 002 working on getting standing as Dormarch protected Shanty. They had only had this Magitek Armor for about an hour or two and it was already heavily messed up.

“Dolly, not the time!” Pom berated and Dolly acknowledged that now was definitely not the time as they watched Dormarch, held by his left foreleg was slammed face first into the street.

Seeing her baby brother get hurt, put Dolly into getting the Metal Hound 002 on its feet and charging towards Lu Bu as he turned towards them.

“Merak is definitely going to take advantage of this if whether we win or lose the fight, have you noticed the severe lack of EPs that should be breathing down our necks at the moment?” Given how the city was swarming with them, Pom noticed pretty quickly that they were being allowed to fight here uncontested.

“Why are you telling me this?” Dolly asked as she got the Metal Hound 002 striding forth at Lu Bu who was ready for them.

“I have a plan, but I need to know if you think we can do it.” Pom stated simply and looked towards the bottom of the upper city above them and noted something already occurring above their heads. Dolly received a lot of information, the Metal Hound 002 started firing its right cannon and came to a stop.

Dormarch received another part of said plan as he was trying to recover from being used as a full body flail against the fairly ruined street. He gave Pom acknowledgement and would go for Shanty as soon as he could.

“Never tell me the odds Pom, I’m not likely to understand them anyway!” Dolly stated as she fired off missiles from their still functional if battered right shoulder launcher and watched as Lu Bu flinched from the two blasts striking him in the chest.

Dormarch was soon up and getting an unconscious Shanty onto his back and was moving a small distance away, he would protect Shanty while they tried to finish Lu Bu off.

Dolly continued to fire the right machine cannon at Lu Bu as they charged right at him, he fired of a volley of fireballs which had the battered machine dodging to the left and right as it continued its forward momentum with getting closer to Lu Bu.

Angling the right shoulder towards Lu Bu, the Metal Hound 002 plowed straight into him and toppled him. It then jumped up and landed on him.

At that point Pom and Dolly abandoned the controls of the Magitek Armor while Lu Bu was pinned. Pom pulled the Paralance from her back and its dull rounded point became harpoon edged spear as she hopped up high using her wool to spring her up into the air.

Dolly jumped up and off from Pom’s back going even higher and started to flip forward rapidly while holding her skateboard in her paws.

Lu Bu shoved the Magitek Armor forcefully off of himself and stood up while preparing to bellow at the pilots, only to see Pom and Dolly were no long inside it.

He looked up in time for Pom to come down and jam the jagged harpoon like blade halfway into his chest, Pom didn’t have the necessary strength to push it in further. Pom was in fact so lightweight that Lu Bu grabbed the shaft of the spear and was easily going to pull it free without even bothering to attack Pom.

That’s when Dolly finally came down looking like a spiraling screaming meteor, emphasis on the screaming part. When Dolly got above the back end of the spear now jammed downwards into Lu Bu’s chest, she let out a boisterous sounding howl as she lashed out with the flat of her skateboard using her full momentum boosting power, even as drained as she was Dolly was still quite capable of using the cheapest of her magical abilities.

With the spear Pom desperately held in place acting like a nail and Dolly’s skateboard acting like a hammer, half the shaft of the paralance was suddenly slammed down into Lu Bu’s torso from a full blow momentum strike.

Lu Bu's eyes widened and there was a look of pure agony on his face, yet he still wasn't and hasn't gone down.

The raging fire demon slowly tried to grip the shaft of the spear embedded in him to pull it out and maybe to use it on his enemies. Only he noticed something off as Pom quickly leaping away and back for the Metal Hound 002, Dolly flipping after her in a stylish twirl from the recoil of the impressive impact to land on the ewe’s neck as she retreated from having delivered such powerful blow for such a small dog.

Lu Bu started to remove the spear wiggling it upwards and gritting his teeth, he did not have the ability to survive sustaining lethal damage in this form like he had with Shanty in their fight back at the borders of Ignis and Aurora.

What he hadn’t noticed is what Dormarch was doing, as Pom and Dolly got in the Metal Hound 002 again to quickly go pickup Shanty while the final part of the plan carried out.

Dormarch flipped head over heels high above Lu Bu and then performed a Howling Star straight down at the spear with a terrifying laser guided focus.

As powerful as Dolly could be and for as much strength as Pom could pull out of her tiny frame, Dormarch had them both completely beat in raw physical power.

The Metal Hound 002 rushed for Shanty’s prone form and quickly crouched over it as the meteoric Digimon that was Dormarch slammed into the spear embedded in Lu Bu and struck with the raw force of a falling star.

This absolutely destroyed the entire intersection in a volatile manner and the pressure wave sent up a mass of dust and debris to cover the area in a fog.

-Midgar City, Upper City, Top of Shinra Tower, Merak-

“So they won, heh… fire the cannons on their position in this sector!” I smiled and watched as cannons popped out of the underside of the upper city and started to barrage that intersection in the hopes of killing what was Moon Cell’s main aggravation to destroying all life on two worlds.

I was going to show them that taking the city wouldn't be easy if I could just simply bombard their territories back to being mine. The entire lower city was within range of the cannons pointing straight down into it.

"They actually thought they had a chance?" I said with a smirk.