Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, Struggling Allied Territory, Sami-

“So even if we were to somehow get Castle Alexander past the walls after opening the gate, they still would have been prepared for us… we’re getting bombarded here!” The cannons above our heads really let loose on the area Pom was in after a massive explosion sent a massive cloud of dust into the sky. Didn’t know what was going on over there, but we could only hope Pom got out of it okay… Magitek Armor was definitely not made to take that kind of pummeling and I’ve read the specifications on it.

Wish I had some of that right now, I could do what Dormarch did and eat something mechanical to power a digital evolution. I looked over to see Canard wiping the sweat from his brow after taking down six different Sweepers while I dealt with some problem further away with my rockets, those manufactured enemies were a terror.

“Bomb!” Canard called out as a grinning red creature spewing flames everywhere as it moved approached. They only explode after taking an amount of damage and we had yet to find the exact threshold, but we knew when we surpassed it as they came at us while inflating like balloons.

So far Bombs were more dangerous to our enemy given their spread, Krosserdog blew it apart before it could really do much and it turned into a floating mass of burning cinders and ash.

Canard took shelter in a doorway from some Troopers firing on our position in a building.

“Ocellus please tell us you have someone willing to go into the walls to deal with those PLANTs, we’re not in a good position and we’re getting absolutely hammered here and we don’t know where Pom is!” Canard wanted Castle Alexander to give us information as they were within range to start tracking our positions. Since wherever Pom was, she probably couldn’t speak up without drawing fire from above.

“Pom is… I assume she’s currently trying to deal with the cannons on the underside of the upper city or she’s getting a much needed break from the fighting. Can’t blame her for that.” Ocellus called in. “If she calls us then she’s going to give away her position, I’ll try contacting her to see if she will try to deal with the cannons above the entrance of the city. They can’t hit us unless we try to get inside… so the most we can do is keep pressuring the wall or maybe… we can climb to the upper city from the wall. We’ll get back to you on that, we’ll send you more Skein Flyer air support when we’re able.”

“Incoming!” Elise shouted and we lunged for cover as the surroundings streets were blasted with cannon fire.

-Unfinished construction infrastructure on the underside of the upper city, Dormarch-

Wind whipped by my face this high up and blew my ears back a bit. I was rendered a Dalmamon again, I’m surprised that we managed to make it out of the kill zone.

Mom definitely had a really good read on this Merak guy. He really liked making his enemies run through a gauntlet of traps, he was prepared for almost absolutely everything we did. He didn’t expect us to get out of the underground facility alive and even if we did he cut us off from our support using that weird soul liquid stuff that has some rather terrifying effects on the living.

“Mom, how’s Dolly?” I asked as I turned away from looking down from the infrastructure we were sitting on and scouting the surrounding airspace in case an enemy Gunship, Moon Cell Watcher or a heli-trooper spotted us, which would be bad as we were currently immobile. So far none of them were looking up for us and the airspace was decidedly theirs after they took out the Skein Flyer Rider Zealots.

This city was far better defended than Mare Melum was and Mare Melum was a horror show that was going to give me nightmares.

Said infrastructure was hanging from the underside of the upper city and I could see a nearby tunnel leading into something like sewers for the upper city. We were currently stuck with a damaged Metal Hound 002 that couldn’t be operated without Dolly, she barely managed to land this thing before she passed out.

I could feasibly connect with mom and try to operate it through her like Dolly did or I could just connect to its system and pilot it through digital manipulation and have mom direct me on what we needed to do, but it would needed repairs or we wouldn’t be getting very far. To that end I was thinking of suggesting something, but I needed to get a few things out of the way first.

“She’s out of it… that use of ‘Haste’ has caused her painful enough migraines to knock her out. She overdrew by far too much, at least she managed to stay awake long enough to get us up here.” Mom was petting an unconscious Dolly and my more biological sister looked quite worn down. It was a good thing she could overdraw at least once Mom, if she hadn’t we would have been caught by the cannons firing down on us from above.

“How did you know about the cannons on the underside of the city?” It was a wonder that I was curious about, because Mom had somehow called it.

“I didn’t, but I had an idea that something like those Thousand Gunner things might show up and blow us away while we were trying to recover from the fight with Lu Bu… so getting away from things really fast was prudent and we could fly.” After saying this mom held up a marble, the one that was quickly grabbed from the crater before we blasted our way into the sky in the dust cloud I had created from impacting with Lu Bu full bore. She carefully slotted it into Dolly’s helmet next to the one that apparently allowed for the summoning of that strange elemental entity Shiva. There was a red and blue glow as the marble like gems seemingly connected to one another. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of him either.”

“What makes you say that?” After I slammed the spear through his entire torso with a howling star aimed straight down from what was close to the roof of the lower city, I really doubted anyone would survive that.

“Fou for one, I think we just separated Lu Bu from the fire demon since this marble came from the morphing body we left behind in the crater.” A crater that was recently and quite summarily blasted to hell and more by the upper cities underside cannons Mom… actually... right, that wouldn’t be nearly enough to finish off someone like Lu Bu. “I… don’t exactly have a great record for killing people.”

Yeah, Mom was still quite upset about tearing open Elise and enjoying eating meat while she was flipping out and acting like a beast. To think she still didn’t have full control of that was a little terrifying. I did not know how to broach that subject with anything approaching tact and Dolly would probably be even worse about it.

Even if he no longer had a fire demons body, the fact that a body even remained after we took what felt like the fire demons power off of him warranted fear that Lu Bu could get up and return later and the fact that he even returned the first time was as terrifying. That’s even when I tore the guy entirely in half when I hit the paralance… which according to several people Lu Bu has managed to survive such an attack before.

Mom was totally exhausted, fighting The Arsenal and Lu Bu back to back took a lot of out of us and the Metal Hound 002 could barely work without a decently healthy pilot and Mom was never going to be the picture of healthy in some regard. I clambered up to mom and nuzzled against her neck with my nose, she hadn’t moved much to unstrap herself from the seat or do much of anything other than talk and hold onto Shanty and Dolly.

I checked Shanty’s health, first off she definitely has a concussion… followed by torn muscles, exhaustion, minor signs of heatstroke and bruises with some light internal bleeding.

Mom, picking up on my thoughts, carefully placed Dolly on the controls of the inactive armor and rolled Shanty into position to start juicing a Sitrus Berry to pour the liquids down her throat. The nasty swollen part of Shanty’s head and bruises started healing rapidly much to Mom’s great relief. I checked the pack hidden under her wool and noted there was only one berry left and a reviver seed, did not know where the other one was. We’re not going to last long without the supplies that was dropped for us in the allied section of the city, I’m fairly certain Canard and the others have them.

“I have no idea what we’re going to do from here.” Mom stated quietly, then something came up on her visor.

“Pom, if you can hear me don’t respond, we don’t want them knowing your current position.” I could faintly hear Ocellus as I move to sit on the left damaged shoulder of Metal Hound 002. “We already have an idea of your situation and it’s slightly better than how our forces on the ground in the city are doing with being bombarded from above. We think you’re at least in a position to do something about those cannons, but judging by how you look… you likely need ten or more minutes to get yourself together.”

Mom technically needed six months of paid vacation and therapy, of the full spiritual, mental and physical variety. Unfortunately we were not in a position to get her a much needed vacation any time soon.

“Anyway, I know this might be a bit much, but the power grid to those cannons likely isn’t protected… or are at the very least lightly guarded and you can access them from the nearby upper city sewer network opening currently to your left. Once you’re detected they are going to start throwing a lot of stuff your way, so my advice is to be completely stealthy until you have to absolutely go loud. When you do go loud, make sure it’s as noisy as possible so we can ‘maybe’ send some help your way as you’re really going to need it at that point. We’re already working on an idea to get Castle Alexander up to the upper city… provided we can get the anti-gravity generator to work… we can climb the wall and use the wall at the lower city to climb up into the upper city directly instead of having to go through the lower city. I seriously doubt they’ll let us do this uncontested though and will have something ready to stop us from doing that. I mean other than those underside cannons angling for us at extreme firing angles and are one of the things that can keep us from climbing up from the top of the wall. Whatever else they have in mind will likely stop us from fully climbing up to the upper city proper. We can’t abandon the others holding the lower city either, but we don’t have any ideas on how to move them when there are so many EPs pinning them down. Hope you can come up with something Pom, we’re not exactly in a good position here even if we’ve basically taken the plains.”

“Really wished I could have responded to that…” Mom muttered before looking to me her eyes were filled with a sense of dull haggard tiredness. “How are you feeling sweetie?”

“As good as can be expected.” I stated dryly and she nodded. “We can’t exactly fly after the ‘Haste’ magic kind of burned through the warranty on the Magitek Armors flight pack. I have an idea of how we can get Metal Hound Zero Zero Two moving, but we won’t get far unless we can find a Sweeper.”

“Why a Sweeper?” Pom asked as she recalled what Sweepers were like. Dangerous bipedal machines, but were a bit slow on the reaction time compared to Mom.

“I think I can do some in field repairs if we can take one down and maybe find one of those marbles to act as a power source… this means we’d need to disable one without damaging it too much.” Easier said than done, given Mom and I were the only ones currently capable of fighting and I was out of evolution power and mom shouldn’t do magic for a while. I glanced at the golden wool covering her right hind leg as well as her front two legs. “Since it’s made from the same technology that made this armor, it’ll undoubtedly have some compatible parts at the very least so we can jury rig it into something more capable than it currently is.”

“Wouldn’t we need factory stuff for something like that?” Mom may not be the foremost knowledgeable on technology, but she did point out an issue to making said alterations to Metal Hound 002. The Magitek Armor had definitely seen better hours before Mom got a hold of it.

“I’m sure we could work something out Mom, now we can’t stay out in the open for too long or someone might notice us.” I quickly clambered from the shoulder to the seat and slapped my right claw onto the control panel, let’s see… accessing technological interface and… I slowly got the Metal Hound 002 into walk mode and moving for the nearby large pipe entrance and out of sight of anything that might look in this direction. “I’ve got direct control of it Mom, don’t look so worried.”

Mom sat up and looked behind us at the battlefield outside the walls far down below as beams and projectiles ripped through the air between the EPs, manufactured machines and our allied forces.

I might not have a digital evolution at the moment, but I was still a digimon and Magitek Armor was something I could control as it had systems I could manipulate as a ‘data’ type digimon. Sure the canopy was entirely ripped off, but that didn’t mean the systems in the control panel had disappeared, the only problem was that my overall control could not match up to Dolly’s ridiculous piloting skills when working together with Mom.

After moving forward a bit more and were ignoring the shaky sounds as the Magitek Armor rattled poorly with each step, we stopped after stepping into the end of the pipe. I then released my control of the machine and Pom patted me gently on the back while sighing.

“We can’t exactly leave Dolly or Shanty alone…” I trailed off and thought about what I was going to suggest. “I need to take control of a particular type of Sweeper to do some repairs, it’s either that or we wait for Dolly to wake up and feasibly be capable. In her current state… that’s not advisable. Moving Shanty’s body around too much would be a bad idea too.”

“Could you tell me what part of the Sweeper needs to be taken out to make it inoperable in a swift manner?” Mom did think she could do something with the paralance, I’m surprised we had the time to pick it up before we fled the streets far below. “I won’t be able to move something that heavy, but we could move the Metal Hound Two to an inoperable one after we take it down. While I don’t feel comfortable leaving Dolly or Shanty alone, we can do so for an amount of time and work together to deal with a Sweeper quickly or I can scout ahead while you pilot the Metal Hound close behind me so they’ll at least be safe and nearby while you provide ranged support.”

The first option would mean we would be leaving the two to rest in one spot, where they would be harder to find for the enemy or we take them with us, but at least we would know where they are at all times and our enemies weren’t in the habit of taking hostages anyway. They’ve been trying for lethal since we got into the Moon Cell Realms, if they were found unconscious… well I wouldn’t want to give Moon Cell the opportunity to use their souls against us or kill them in the first place.

“Second option, I follow you and you take the lead Mom. I can’t exactly pilot this thing smoothly… mostly because of how I pilot it. I can at least work the missile launcher or machine cannon arm, but I doubt I’d be able to use the melee claw efficiently. I don’t want to leave them exposed by themselves.” I made sure to point out that I wasn’t going to be pulling the kind of stuff she and Dolly could do. Mom nodded and after getting big sis Dolly and Shanty placed in comfortable positions together inside the armor, she shakily clambered down the Magitek Armor with that paranormal parasol stuck to her back. “Are you sure you’re good enough to physically fight something?”

“Oh I’m perfectly fine physically at the moment, aside from some exhaustion It’s just nerves that have me shaking like I am.” Mom stated as she started forward into the tunnel and motioned for me to follow with her right hoof. “Now if you were to ask about magically and mentally… well you’d have an entirely different kettle of fish there.”

I planted my claws into the controls and slowly got the Metal Hound 002 moving forward behind Mom, I also turned on a light so we could see in the dark tunnels we were entering. If I heard something I’d simply turn them off and we’d go from there depending on how the situation changes.

I continued piloting the damaged machine forward after Mom as she slowly led us into the tunnels, staying within the beam of the light as her eyes looked about in the dark with her pulled back ears pointed upwards and alert.

-Near Midgar City entrance, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

I had no idea what Pom would do as we lost visuals of her high up in the rafters of the lower city, but she was last seen on the move.

“Quetal, how is it going out there?” I asked as I turned my eyes back to the rather bombastic battlefield we were still pressuring.

“As well as can be expected, the EPs are still appearing on our side of the wall, our allies inside shouldn’t be getting hit by them quite yet.” Quetal was quite well aware, as was I, that our allies within the walls were under constant pressure. “I might volunteer for going into the walls, but that’s only if we can reach the hole in the wall with a good enough team. We’re lucky that we even got a territory in the wall that’s been holding as well as it has been.”

Most of the PLANTs within the wall were producing EPs to send at Castle Alexander, completely understandable as they weren’t sending any EPs after the one territory within the wall that we had.

I hadn’t even told Quetal about the cannons on the underside of the upper city firing down into our territories in there where our friends were slowly being pummeled to death. We didn’t have many territories inside to begin with, but I’m pretty sure Quetal and the others had an idea that things inside were going far worse than out here.

The news of the grinning fire creatures called Bombs spreading everywhere was giving us some hope they were going to continue to be more of a problem for the EPs than they would for us currently. Given they could take territories in an explosive manner and were causing massive explosions while lighting many things on fire throughout the lower city. Couldn’t they have been name Grinners or Fireballs? Goodness knows what their anatomy is like, given that exploding is a natural part of their existence. No Changeling would be dumb enough to try and turn into one of those things.

“Hmm… the EPs are mostly still appearing on our side of the wall, we need someone to go in and take care of the PLANTs nearest to our allies before they become a problem for our forces on the inside. With how powerful the PLANTs in the walls are… we can use them to feasibly create a new Allied Program units to assist us in battle.” So far we had Saber Knight, Rider Zealots, Lancer Guardians and Assassin Caerbannogs, we needed Archer, Berserker or Casters. “If you can into the walls, then the PLANTs shouldn’t be too well defended, given most of their resources are being spent on assaulting Castle Alexander. We need those resources Quetal.”

“I’ll see what I can do to get two small teams together to go along the inner walls for a bit to the left and right.” Quetal was a good field commander, one that was making sure no one was getting in over their heads out there. “We’ll get you the resources to field more APs soon, how goes work on sending another aerial strike force? We’re going to need some way of picking up slack on the battle line if we’re to move anyone into the walls to deal with the problem.”

Casters would give us better territory control and offensive might, provided that we protect the Casters of course. Archers would give us more range advantage and we were lacking for ranged offensive measures. Berserkers… well they’d at least be hard to take down. How could we focus on Casters though, because Archers might not be important if Casters make up for the range disadvantage we were currently having trouble with.

“It’s not going over very well, it’s taking time to produce more Skein Flyers for the Rider Zealots and Welch says they have something going on in the manufacturing line and… ?!” I saw something come out of manufacturing walk towards the wall held by the Magitek Armors piloted by the Commandramon, who’ve been calling wall duty the best post they’ve ever gotten in their lives thus far, the thing leapt over the walls of the castle and cleared Castle Alexander’s head as it marched forth onto the battle field on four legs.

“I have returned…” A voice stated over communications and I saw a strange Rider Zealot pop up on the screen for a few seconds. I have no idea what he meant about returning, but he was certainly interesting. “Cheese House!”

The four legged teal machine popped something up in its center and started blasting machine EPs with massive blasts of concentrated energy, said blasts did incredible amounts of damage as the armored tetrapod thing stalked forward. Four more of those fairly large four legged machines hopped over the walls and landed to begin surrounding the green one, only their colors seemed to be a stock yellow. It wasn’t long before they all set forth for the wall or Quetal’s team, both were in the same general direction really.

“Sorry for all the wait Ocellus, but those walkers are fairly interesting… apparently giving Rider Zealots access to production facilities means they’ll start making cool walking tanks. I think the designs put a heavy emphasis on their shielding ability as much as heavy damage single shots.” Welch stated as she popped up on screen, in the background I could see various Rider Zealot APs moving around and building Skein Flyers and something else a little bigger and tougher. Those things looked like they could fly and take a bit of punishment. “I’ll get to work on sending some Skein Flyer forces and what looks like a space capable updated version they want to make that seems to be another Rider Zealot special build!”

“Please hurry Welch, our guys inside the city are not only being bombarded from cannons from above, they are having all kinds of problems with the aerial EPs in there!” I stated with worry. “They are in dire need of aerial support.”

“You can say that again eyes, we’ve got the traps and a few quick build turrets from Torneko up, for all the good that will do if those cannons above us keep raining on our parade. I'm glad we had the foresight to set the turrets up under the buildings awnings to give us a protective cover from the raining shells… but we won’t be able to hold our positions forever once those cannons blow our cover.” The head of the Gazimon stated as he popped up on screen and behind him I could see a Gazimon firing a turret into the air to take out several Moon Cell Watcher spheres before they could fire their lasers. “So yes, please, hurry up on those aerial forces! What Skein Flyers we have can’t get back into the air and the Gazimon among us are not willing to fly in an airspace this highly clogged with enemies. We haven’t taken casualties, mostly because our APs are doing that for us, but the Skein Flyers we still have really can’t fly in this mess and we’re not letting the Rider Zealots use our personal rides until all else fails. We’ll try to hold on for those reinforcements.”

“We’ll get them to you soon.” I sighed, the battlefield was a mess, but we had a good eighty percent of the plains and not much to show for it aside from being able to contest the city a bit. The mechanical EPs spawning in were quite dangerous, the manufactured enemies were still a strange choice and they couldn’t be spawned in from PLANTs. My thoughts were that the manufactured had a bit more staying power, but I wasn’t certain of it yet.

“We better, the battles momentum has slowed down like molasses on one of Pinkie’s infamous log jam pancakes.” Smolder stated while watching the ceiling and the walls around us in a paranoid fashion.

So far we’ve managed to stop anymore assassins from sneaking in, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still trying.

-Upper City, tunnel network, Pom-

“Phew… that… that was a bit of a thing.” I stated as I leaned against the wall breathing roughly as I had a death grip on the paralance within my left hoof and looked at the eighteen or so Sweepers that were destroyed by me and Dormarch.

“You’re telling me, but we somehow managed to get away with only drawing a marginal amount of attention to ourselves.” Given that they were manufactured Dormarch, I think they couldn’t warn anyone as well as the EPs would have if they were destroyed. “Why were there so many in here though? Seems unusual and like they were searching for something or someone. Those weren’t guard patterns of movement, they were exceptionally aggressive.”

Speaking of manufacturing, Dormarch had plenty of parts to work with when it came to fixing the damaged parts of Metal Hound 002.

He had my help with taking some parts from a few of the Sweepers. One had a triple rocket launcher and after attaching that to the left shoulder, now we could fire five missiles though the triple missile launcher would take longer to cycle. We also replaced the left rotary machine cannon with a single barrel machine gun, sure it wasn’t nearly as powerful… but it wasn’t a total loss in effectiveness and since the claw blades were broken we added an underslung horizontal spinning saw to the left arm to make up for the lack of melee ability.

I had been correct in saying that we didn’t have the facilities to fix everything… for one the melted off armor need to be fixed in a factory. I also didn’t know how we were going to replace the canopy, but some of the parts from the Sweepers fixed some of the minor damage in the flight pack and we could get airborne again… not quite as useful in these claustrophobic tunnels, but it would be quite helpful if we can get into the upper city proper and out of these tunnels.

Someone had to go after Merak directly and keep him occupied and unfortunately…

That was us.

-Lower Midgar City, blasted to hell and back crater, ???-

An arm rose from the rubble and clenched into a fist, no longer bound to Ifrit… Lu Bu rises again despite the fact that he definitely shouldn’t with how damaged his soul was.

Obsession and wrath rose from the ground in a pillar of purple sparks and lightning with a decidedly dark aura hungry for battle and war, it had yet to find satisfaction by it's losses.

Nothing would keep a good berserker down and bad ones were even worse, not even the slight lack of a body would stop this soul. The cannon shells that hit the figure barely put a dent in it as it roared to the sky in an angry manner.

Ifrit had tried to hold Lu Bu back... he failed.

-???, Oleander-

"I think Pom would appreciate her own super heroic dog right?" I said with a pleasant smile as I held a comic book in my magic, this comic book had a similar function to the Equus made comic books. However instead of being pulled inside the comic to play a part in the story as it wrote itself through the users actions... this comic pulled a hero out to help the user with whatever they desired, even if said desires were not exactly heroic. The imagination and willpower of the user powered these magic comics, the character from the comic could last quite a while and had a one shot super boost before the comic being wears out along with the user.

"Lucky the Punchy Poodle... that's... a pretty big dog, are you sure Pom would like this?" Buttina asked as she looked at the large purple skinned and white haired and furred poodle on the cover of the comic book.

"Well if she doesn't then Big Mama might, she's almost the most famously known Canis Major in existence for choosing to be a familiar to Pom. Didn't come up until after Pom started living in Huoshan though. Poor dear was quite isolated before then, so nobody really noticed the oddities to put Pom in the world record book for most familiars ever acquired until that point. That and most beings in the Meadow Hills region are very odd about their privacy." Which was a rarity and nobody quite understood how the dynamic worked when the Canis Major was definitely much stronger than Pom was physically. "I don't know what happened to the supposed Big Papa that existed, but Pom had a clue that something did in fact happen and that Big Papa was likely twice the size of Big Mama and this is how big Big Mama is."

I created an exact replica of how big Big Mama was, if Big Papa was twice or even three times her size, then I know something really bad went down and Big Mama sought Pom out to take care of her puppies in case something happened to her. Lambkin were generally safe beings to be around as far as child rearing went, if a bit... crazy paranoid about the safety of their charges.

"Whoa... can we fight that?" Whistled Wrex with a grin. "Might be as fun as Skagzilla was."

"No, Pom wouldn't like it if you hurt Big Mama, also I'm quite sure you don't quite understand how star beasts work and a Canis Major is definitely outside your wheelhouse... considering its completely outside of mine even with Fred and a weapon the conceptually locks and unlocks things." I said with growl and Lucky popped out the comic matching my growl as he appeared at my side.

Lucky's one shot Super Boost was simple, become bigger and red... while becoming completely invulnerable to damage for a limited time, uses up a ton of energy and is the reason why it's Lucky's one shot super boost. Note that 'invulnerable to damage' does not in fact mean 'invulnerable to pain', but said pain just made Lucky stronger.

I'm sure Pom would love to meet a hulking super hero dog that would help her with chores and Pom wouldn't abuse or misuse him like that lady I took this comic from.