Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Moon Cell Realms, Midgar City, tunnels under upper city, Pom-

“Do you even know where we’re going Dormarch?” Leaning forward, I whispered this into Dormarch’s ears, he leaned his head back and nosed me in the chin affectionately like a puppy would do with their mother. I smiled a little and shared those warm feelings with Dormarch, since he took in emotions like Ocellus and I wanted him to know I appreciated his presence.

I was his mother so… yeah, I was still trying to come to terms with a lot of things. I wonder if the therapists in Meadow Hills would have half a better time with me than anyone else or would I drive them crazy with all the stuff I’ve been through over the course of a year?

It just seemed to me like we were randomly moving around the maze of tunnels for the last ten minutes, we were kind of on a time limit and our friends likely wouldn’t survive those underside cannons for too much longer. Ocellus basically said we might be in a position to put a stop to them, which was what we were currently going off of.

“Not yet Mom, but I’m definitely looking for something. I’ll know it when I see it.” Dormarch quietly stated back as the Metal Hound 002 currently sat in a small alcove out of sight and waited as a patrol of Crawler and Drone EPs moved past us. “I promise that we’re not wandering aimlessly near enemy patrols without good reason. I know what I’m looking for and if I see it… well I’m going to need you to take control of the arms on Metal Hound for a short while to cover me while I get the information we need when I do find it.”

Manufactured automatons couldn’t be replicated from PLANTs and I still quietly wondered what the difference was between the general Enemy Programs and Manufactured were. I mean aside from the manufactured enemies always being machines and not dissolving upon defeat or possibly being slightly tougher, but then the Drones and Crawlers were EPs that could be spawned from PLANTs so it wasn’t like the PLANTs couldn’t make mechanical things. Trying not to think about those horrid Archer Gekko things… their biological like movements and mooing sounds were very much uncanny and nightmare inducing. It was rather confusing as to why Moon Cell’s forces would even bother with manufactured machines, unless there was something more to it like with the many variants of Sweepers we’ve seen.

Really did not want to go near those flamethrower variants again, there was only so much fire damage the lanolin in my wool could take. My golden wool was basically more resilient to damage, but I wasn’t testing that at the moment for obvious reasons.

I was fairly worried that the mess of the eighteen Sweepers we left behind would be found, thankfully nothing like an alarm seems to have come of it and we originally only attacked four. The rest still showed up rather quickly, as they had come running at us in that small room we stopped at. Eighteen in a moderately confined space was more than I wanted to deal with, but it seems to have not alerted any of the EPs in the slightest. Dormarch had been fairly accurate with Metal Hounds right machine cannon.

Dormarch had rendered some the parts we got from those Sweepers into tools he used to give Metal Hound the working weapons currently on its left arm. Parts from one Flamethrower Sweeper’s arms was good for making a makeshift welding device and also had enough power to melt some parts into the shape of other tools that were now squared away in Dormarch’s Digivice, apparently he looked up to Sami in her ability to create her own stuff outside the ones that she came with as a digital entity.

We had done things like turn spikes on the chainsaw to use as a screwdriver and the like to fit whatever we’d need to make some slapdash replacement of the weapons and repairs to the flight pack of Metal Hound 002. Which is why we used an lightning powered magical marble to fix the damaged power generation unit in the flight pack we could have ejected at any time. It seemed nothing like the burning red or icy blue of the ones taking up space in Dolly’s skateboard helmet, the ones that had Shiva and that flame demon Lu Bu had been possessing.

Terrifying thought that a guy like Lu Bu could possess demons and not the other way around. I wonder when, not if, we’d run into that monster again. We were in upper city so chances are it might take him a while to catch up to us up here if he could outright feel where Shanty was.

While my wool could lift more than my relatively frail body could, it still took a little bit of doing to get the machine gun, saw and rocket launchers in position and properly attached to Metal Hound’s left arm.

We’re glad that the saw and machine gun were working when we tested them for a matter of seconds, as too much testing would attract unwanted attention we weren’t ready to fully draw to ourselves. The rockets would definitely need testing in a space that wasn’t as enclosed as our current circumstances.

The lights on the Metal Hound were currently off as the nearby EPs would likely have detected it on sight, once the patrol was long gone and after a count of ten we decided to continue forward. We’re quite thankful the crawlers or drones lights hadn’t bother to look into the alcove we were in. Without the canopy we were missing the HUD for a variety of things that we were now relying on our senses to detect. That or we could rely on the visor I was wearing, it was how Ocellus or Castle Alexander must have spotted us on the underside of the upper city.

The Magitek Armor carefully walked out under Dormarch’s ever increasing capabilities with controlling it, trying not to make much noise as he did so. Dolly seemed to be good at going full tilt, whereas Dormarch was being far more slow a methodical given he was manipulating the systems directly instead of the controls.

We were being exceedingly careful because Dolly and Shanty were both out cold and in no condition to fight even if they were awake, they were currently helpless. Not to mention we couldn’t fix the melted off armor, plus the aforementioned missing canopy exposed us to gunfire and those two things meant that there were chances of an unfortunate projectile piercing Metal Hound and hitting either of them.

So yes, the protection the Magitek Armor gives us was good and all, but I’d rather we not leave things to chance when those Drones could simply fly up and could get an angle on either of my currently sleeping angels. Dormarch understood as well as I did how horrible the situation involving the battlefields outside and inside the city were getting, we just couldn’t rush things even if we had wanted to do something immediately.

We eventually came to what looked like a cistern of various tunnels leading off in all directions, these tunnels weren’t exactly filled with liquids so I couldn’t exactly call them sewers. We moved off to the right side and Dormarch was looking for something among the walls.

We were both watching the shadows as we entered the lit area and Dormarch’s head suddenly snapped a little more to the left of the wall we had been looking at to our right, and he turned the torso to turn the lights on the object to get a better look in something more than the dim lighting.

I had thought he saw movement to my relief, and ever dangerous heartrates and increasing anxiety, it was something like a large metal box embedded in the wall. The casing didn’t look too particularly thick and it had something like a lock on it so I might be able to pry that open if Dormarch needed me to do so.

Given this box had Dormarch’s three tails wagging meant it was definitely of importance to us, as he had finally found what he was looking for apparently. Hopefully it would involve a map since we were quite lost.

I was about to think that we were quite lost ‘down’ here, but we’re technically above all our friends and not technically underground. We were way above ground if anything, still it was a tunnel network and I had no idea where the entrance we came in through was and we were technically underground for the upper city.

Metal Hound 002 was quickly mover over to the box and its back was soon facing it and Dormarch motioned with a paw for me to hop out.

My cuddly fish tailed digital monster Dalmatian was about to say something and I pushed my left hoof against the lock and filled it with my wool. With quick twist, I swiftly pulled the casing open for him and he nodded.

“It’s an electrical box and has some systems I can access, could get some directions, patrol routes and most importantly a route to the nearest power station up here to stop those cannons from firing on our friends.” Provided they are still alive Dormarch, but I doubted they’d be dead with the likes of Canard being as tough as they come. Probably won’t be in good condition, but any condition of mildly injured was better than outright buried at the rate things were going. “I’m going to need some time Mom and this might draw some attention...”

I nodded and hopped back into Metal Hound, I noted how we were in a corner of an eight way intersection. Six singular tunnels lead away from here at various angles, while two three pipe wide tunnels ran along the other two paths with what looked like a rail system. Metal Hound was wedged between two of the singular tunnels off to the side of the vast open space in the middle of the cistern… I’m certain the small bit of pipe in the middle of the room leading downwards opens up into open airspace beneath us leading to the lower city, Metal Hound 002 wouldn’t fit in it… but it was a nice last effort idea to bug out with Dormarch, Dolly and Shanty in an emergency.

Two singular tunnels to the left and one singular tunnel to the right, the one directly to our left was the middle one we came out of, three singular tunnels across from us and the wide tunnels between all of the six singular ones.

I took the time to breathe a bit to center my nerves as I heard Dormarch working on something behind me, really hoped he didn’t hurt himself doing whatever it was he was doing.

I could control the arms of Metal Hound 002 easily enough… so long as I didn’t have to move the armor anywhere from its current position. I was slightly testing the aim of the arms and trying to get an idea as to where the shots would land if I fired them, the canopy had been very helpful in that regard.

Having any sense of accuracy without Dolly was going to be literal hit or miss with me, so I’d be relying on spray and pray if Dormarch tripped something or an enemy patrol came along. I wasn’t discounting a surprise ambush either, we can’t be going completely unnoticed in the tunnel network as being odd noises. I mean eighteen Sweepers showed up to attack us, that was a lot of attention to draw and they were definitely aggressively looking for something that likely wasn’t us.

Moby Dick was above the upper city so where were all the slightly airborne aquatic EPs that thing spawned? They couldn’t all be going to Castle Alexander.

“Let’s see… power flow… ah, we take a… then go that way… okay we have a place to attack. Current location is… not too far away actually.” Dormarch was muttering quietly as he gathered the data we needed, apparently some kind of computer system was in the box. “That and electrical systems Mom, keep a look out for anything coming. I might not be able to pick up if I set off a silent alarm.”

Right, he was on the same page as me at the moment with the many various worries of what we were doing. He was such a good boy.

“Concerning, the fire demon is known as Ifrit… originally summoned to attack us. Lu Bu soul showing up kind of ruined the plan and they had to seal him up to be used as a power source instead. He was already overpowering containment while we were in the underground facility. The marbles that are in Dolly’s helmet? Those are generally called Materia, it can be condensed power squeezed out of that caustic soul juice we saw in that underground facility that Canard got a scan of. Apparently Shiva and Ifrit are unique forms of Materia. I find it a little too coincidental that Dolly would simply find Shiva just like that and then help us with Ifrit, I think divine intervention is going on here.” Wouldn’t think it impossible Dormarch, given Arceus was likely actively watching us and was functionally a ridiculously powerful deity that had limited ability to act in such an overt manner. Like most immortals he had a job to do and couldn’t functionally take the field without a few caveats happening. At least I got some odd feelings of playfulness off of Shiva for the time she was around and there was a connection between her and Ifrit, if the linking of the two Materia was anything to go by given how they shined together. “Since your wondering, Materia are functionally safe objects to wield that can let you use magic even if you are not particularly capable of it without the Materia. The soul liquid stuff that Canard scanned, anything living touches that stuff for more than five seconds will likely die from it in the most permanent fashion possible that even Elise couldn’t resurrect you from. Really strange difference in lethality there one thing empowers you and the other makes sure you cease existing, also there’s the fact that I’m getting some history of the use of materia… as in the ability to learn to do magic from them that you don’t know how to do on your own. So if Dolly spent enough time with those, she could technically learn ice and fire magic instead of having to using the Materia to help her cast that magic.”

I mean how else is Arceus going to know if I helped Aurora or not if he didn’t watch what I was doing or at least pay us some form of attention? Well we are kind of far away from Aurora, but what we’re doing here was arguably more important at the moment and I’m sure Arceus would agree as one of his worlds, among possible theoretical thousands, was in grave danger.

As for Dolly, I trusted her to use the magic she could learn from this responsibly. Besides the migraine she’s used magic in a lot of useful ways and know not to overdo it.

Plus it was nice to know that the Materia weren’t immediately life threatening, maybe a threat to our magic given how much of that Shiva drained from us just to manifest. Sure it may have been a lot of magic, but she didn’t waste it and really helped us with the flame spewing Lu Bu, the marble we picked up from that may actually let us summon Ifrit too. I was actually a little wary of summoning someone that was originally intended to be sent at us… still kind of came at us anyway.

“Would you say that Materia is the conceptual condensed existence of life experiences of the soul then and still somewhat living, or is it just nature turned into raw magical power?” I was thinking about the lightning marble we put in the flight pack of Metal Hound 002, the one that Dolly burned out by casting ‘Haste’ on it, didn’t feel nearly as alive as the two marbles currently taking up space in Dolly’s helmet.

“Something like that and a little of both actually. It’s not all condensed caustic soul juice, though that would be a main ingredient for these Materia things to form. I think the process of making Materia tries to weed out any intelligence getting into the Materia and leaves behind the raw power, Materia would make it easier for Dolly to use magic and it should be relatively safe. Given that the manufactured enemy machines can run off Materia as a power source, it would be a bad idea if the Materia had souls in them that could overtake the machine. So I’m certain that most Materia does not have a soul, but has plenty of raw magical power given form and possibly some echoes of the once living.” Well that made me shiver Dormarch. “Materia that have life in them like Shiva or Ifrit seem to be more of a unique situation, there are some references to ‘Magicite’ being a more powerful form of Materia and that might be what we have given the many references to ‘Summoning’. Unfortunately, it seems to take a lot out of the wielder to summon their power. Being infused with the caustic soul liquid, called Mako apparently, is not a good idea given the numerous mental issues that come with it if you survive the process… on top of gaining super strength, speed, reflexes… that stuff was used to make super soldiers that could have been a ridiculously mentally unstable. The Materia were incredibly safe for anyone to use by comparison and mostly just empowered whoever wielded them without mental contamination, but some still had a better affinity for wielding Materia than others and you would need to work to be anywhere a quarter as strong as the super soldiers created directly from the soul juice infusions.”

Wasn’t it bad enough that servants were summoned as indentured souls to Moon Cell, did the apocalypse causing computer really need to power ‘The Manufactured’ off of the energy of what it might consider to be lesser souls and magic? I shuddered to think about exactly why Manufactured are necessary now, especially when EPs existed and replicated in large numbers as long as a PLANT is nearby.

“Well Dolly can at least learn to shoot Ice and Fire right? I mean she would be rather thrilled to have those abilities, wish I could feel as close to magic as she does.” Funny you mention that Dormarch, she’s jealous of how strong you were and you’re jealous how connected she was to magic… also maybe you were being a bit vaguely jealous to how connected she was to me. I could actually easily coach Dolly about how to use ice and fire magic. “I don’t seem to have the talent for it. Sure I have some talent with lightning attacks, but it just doesn’t feel the same.”

“Now don’t say that, you have plenty of magic where it counts Dormarch… most of it probably manifests in your evolutions and the abilities that come with them.” While I was talking to Dormarch and he was doing his thing behind me, my attention had not been taken off any of the eerily silent tunnels around us. It was so quiet I could probably hear a pin drop from five hundred feet away. “You’re magical enough just still being alive to me sweetie, I also hope you continue living for a long time too. Longer than I will at the rate I’m going… I don’t think I would have much of an idea as to how to run high end technology or would have made it this far without you or Dolly dropping into my currently hectic life.”

While Dolly was aware of and knew how to use some forms of technology, given she grew up around a tablets and Artificial Intelligent toys that could apparently translate animal speech that nobody really thought about the implications or incredible advancement thereof in understanding languages, working with high end stuff was definitely far more in Dormarch’s domain. I was liable to get into reading science fiction stories if I ever made it back to Equus, mostly to see how close they got to other worlds actually having such things.

I’ve seen both horrors and wonders in equal measures… magnificent machine empires, worlds of peace and tranquility with incredible combat skills that can surpass technology with spiritual might and so much more. Have I really ever stopped to think about it all? Pressing ever forward was wearing me down and sitting still was giving me too much time to think about the things I’ve been doing and have done.

“Okay, I got everything we need, now I’ll get us to the power station that’ll take out the cannons around this region of Midgar City… also my intrusions in the electrical grid ‘might’ have been noticed.” Dormarch popped into the air above Metal Hound 002 in a flash of Search Hunter and landed to take control of it from me and start steering us to the middle tunnel across from us. “How much it was noticed will become known to us quite soon, so we’ll be moving as quickly as we can away from here.”

“I can definitely get behind that Dormy.” I said quietly as I wrapped my hooves around Dormarch and hugged him tenderly, his three fishy tails showed his appreciation.

-Five minutes later-

“Ceiling.” I whispered and Dormarch stopped us before we walked into a trap as several red lasers became visible from the kicked up dust of Metal Hound 002 stopping short of them and those lasers were filling up the exit of the tunnel by several inactive Crawler EPs laying around.

We had kicked something of a hornets nest somewhere, the EPs were setting up points like this everywhere. They were inactively watching a number of tunnels now and those red lasers were meant to catch motions of something bigger than the dust particles that revealed those lasers.

I still didn’t think we were the only ones they were looking for, but I couldn’t think of who could be up here without taking the roads, trains or other pathways up here. Not much flight power going on without a Skein Flyer and the enemy having a rigid control of the airspace inside Midgar City.

Suddenly the EPs went active and turned off their sensors and dropped to the ground, Dormarch started spinning up the right machine cannon. Only… the EPs didn’t come after us, they were after something else as a mass of them scurried away in the direction of the power station while we sat their quietly and Dormarch let off the trigger.

Dormarch looked to me and I narrowed my eyes in thought, I then nodded to Dormarch and we set off after the EPs. Something was up and it wasn’t an ambush meant for us, I’m starting to think we were going entirely unnoticed for an entirely different reason than how careful we were being.

It didn’t take long of trailing after the Crawlers to hear the sounds of fighting and destruction coming from ahead, something was attacking the power station? A few explosions could be heard and we weren’t the cause, we eventually followed the Crawlers and some arriving Drones into a hectic scene with unusual Programs we were going to label Neutral.

They were these weird NP spheres everywhere, taking up all kinds of formations and connecting in odd manners to create drills, lasers and other things out of energy like hammers to smash into the EPs. They worked together fairly well and looked quite hard to hit.

That’s when I saw a figure dashing away from the power station we were approaching, he was dragon like with white scales, red eyes and a red and white suit. He stopped and aimed his weapon in my direction when he finally noticed us, but held off on firing his weapon.

Dormarch backed us up and protectively raised the arms of Metal Hound 002 defensively, we didn’t shoot or present an aggressive front. The strange figure instead turned rammed forward at an incredible speed with flames coming out the back of his armor, he slammed into a Drone in his way and promptly blasted it with a handheld laser weapon that never seemed to miss a single shot as the energy beams curved directly into what he had physically impacted with.

The hovering figure eventually narrowed his eyes at us suspiciously after returning his gaze to us for moment and stared into my eyes while aiming the gun in my general direction with suspicion. I wasn’t chomping at the bit for a fight with the guy that was for certain and he has to acknowledge that we were here for something else than whatever it was he had done to earn such ire of the local EPs.

He seemed incredibly dangerous and he eventually recognized our lack of aggression towards him.

I silently told Dormarch to hold fire, until the dragon figure eventually shot off with multiple round robot programs circling around him protectively taking projectiles for him as he disappeared down the tunnels at insane speeds. Flames erupting from the back of his armor.

A fairly massive swarm of EPs, that thankfully hadn’t noticed us, soon followed that guy down the tunnels he went down as we quickly made our way for the power station.

We decided to take this opportunity to do we came here for, given he was drawing a majority of the enemy forces away from where we currently wanted to be.

“Was that a dragon?” Dormarch asked curiously.

“Don’t know, he was wielding a lot of weird technology though. He might be something like Snake.” A neutral servant running around causing problems for our enemies was better than us picking a fight with him. “Look we can’t focus on that now we need to hurry, we have to stop our friends from being blasted to smithereens by the underside cannons if they are even alive at this point!”

“A self-summoned servant? There was something absolutely terrifying about that guy, I could almost feel the history to him… one that speaks of blood and violence. He was definitely a servant well outside of Moon Cell’s control.” That didn’t mean he was our friend though Dormarch, we needed to do what we came here to do. Also it was nice to know you could detect servants with that odd grafted on spiritual core of yours. “I don’t know about you mom, but I definitely think we should make this quick and move into the upper city to start drawing Merak’s ire after we finish with the power station. Provided there’s anything left to manipulate anymore. Still, we should be careful about a dangerous neutral servant like that running around.”

-???-

One of the floating spherical red and white robots with a pair of blank yellow eyes slowly pulled away from the shadows after listening in on the pair in the bipedal machine for a bit.

They were headed in the direction of the power station that they just hit and were using the opportunity to do something to save people. Copen wasn’t the only one here then and there was some disturbing information in what little conversation they just spoke out loud.

The name Merak was definitely familiar, it in fact inspired a burning ire in her processors like nothing else feasibly could. The idea of throwing a smug lemming off a cliff and immediately firing hundreds of missiles after it came to mind… plus maybe a limited thermonuclear device.

The battle pod went to eventually deliver what limited information it had gained to Copen the Slayer Dragon, once they were in a more peaceful situation that is. Copen was currently at war with Moby Dick the whale that spewed a million enemies in various territories we’ve been fighting for throughout the upper city of Midgar. We still had no idea why we were fighting for those territories, we just knew that it was important to keep doing so.

In any case that whale had been trying to kill Copen for quite a while now and the feeling was mutual with us trying to kill that massive flying monster that just wouldn’t die.

So far I didn’t know whether they were enemies or allies that had been in the bipedal mech, but they hadn’t shot at Copen so they were quickly put in the neutral list for now and were unwilling to start a fight with my beloved boss. They were some of the few living things that had been seen in this city of false life. Copen was thankfully a bit too busy to actually bother with them at the moment and they weren’t going our way or bothering us, so maybe something would come of our meeting later.

I, Battle Pod Lola, would always serve Copen beyond death wherever he went and would follow his soul into utter destruction.

A shadow of a fairy girl could be seen on the wall was odd coming from the completely spherical machine as it passed by some light as it quickly retreated from the area.

Lola would hope that they could be friends or at the very least allies with the only other living things around. The word ‘neutral servant’ had caused some issue for Lola when used in reference to Copen, but she would not tarry here longer lest Copen absolutely notices her absence from the swarm.

She was starting to remember many things, so many things that she had wanted to tell Copen… she wasn’t even sure Copen himself was actually functionally alive even if he breathed and moved like he was. Something was very wrong, since they appeared in the upper city that never stopped raining… why did the Zozo Slam Shuffle keep coming to mind in her music files?

Hearing the sound of fighting ahead, Lola prepared to rejoin the swarm of similar battle pods that had very little intelligence to speak of as she was the main queen bee of them all.

Melting in the twilight, the wish of a mechanical girl…

-Under upper Midgar City, tunnel system Power Station, Dormarch-

“Hurry up Dormarch!” Mom shouted and I heard the sound of the machine gun and machine cannon going firing off, I also heard the rapid series of explosions of five different missiles going off.

“Almost got it Mom, hold on for another minute!” We definitely weren’t getting a majority of the enemy forces attention with how many must be after that dragon guy.

Okay reroute the power and… set to explode, we needed to get out of here. I’m surprised by how badly damaged the power station actually is.

I quickly used Search Hunter to get over to Metal Hound 002 and immediately took control to get us moving, in flight mode, because walk mode wasn’t going to be nearly fast enough to avoid what I just did under a large amount of stress.

-Allied Territory, Lower Midgard City, Canard-

Pom just pulled off a small miracle, given the cannons above us were self-destructing all over the place in a small area, giving us breathing space from constant bombardments from above. Now if only the chunks of cannon weren’t currently raining down on us along with parts of the upper city.

It might take out some of the flyers at least, Castle Alexander couldn’t send us that aerial support fast enough. I mean that literally.

“The ceiling cannons are down permanently in our area!” I called out as I rammed the blade of my stick forward and managed to barely deflect the spinning sawblade of a Sweeper away from me.

Peppercat leapt onto the Sweeper and jammed a lighting blade into to take it down. The quick turrets set up by the Gazimon were doing their best, but we were outgunned and being overrun.

“Oh that’s good, now what can we do about getting some help with all of these aerial forces?!” Sami stated having reverted back to a Commandramon at a rather inopportune time. Her rocket launcher was getting a workout against those gunships. “M-freaking-Loader!”

Propping up the rocket launcher on her shoulder, even as spray of bullets was rapidly moving towards her position, Sami sent a rocket into the gunship and sent it spiraling into a building with a powerful blast.

We had been seeing less Guard Hounds and Troopers and more aerial enemies like Drones or enemies that could stay out of melee range like Crawlers which were climbing all over the walls of the buildings to come at us from various angles in an attempt to hit us with electric arc guns.

This wasn’t very helpful to us when most of our APs were entirely melee focused, at least Rider Zealots was keeping a majority of the projectiles from outright crushing us completely. Keeping the turrets in working condition was a full time job, but at least they were no longer in threat of being wiped out by the ceiling cannons far over our heads.

“It’ll give us a chance to breathe or retreat some at least!” Says the digibot that doesn’t breathe, Krosserdog was at least proving to be highly effective against any Heli-troopers that entered his sight.

Like the Caerbannogs were proving more useful against the aerial enemies by using rope darts to rip them out of the air when an assassination opportunity popped up, they and the Rider Zealots were making up the most of our AP forces at the moment.

Our territories were faltering badly, but we were not out of this fight, not if I had anything to say about it and not by a long shot!

“Slap shot!” I sent an exploding digital puck forth with prayers to the gods of sports on my tongue as I exhaled.

We could see a territory popping in the distance and it wasn’t the Bombs that time, Shine and Jeanne must be working hard to even have done that. We were basically swamped from all sides, so that gave me some measure of relief that they were still fighting too.

-Outside of Midgar City, Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

I sighed with relief, Pom was still pulling off small things in big ways. At least she managed to take care of the cannons directly over our forces. We were having problems getting people up to the wall and inside of it.

A territory was suddenly taken within the wall and I blinked.

“Quetal did you finally get a team in there?” I asked.

“No… given that we have lost track of Lit in this chaos, it’s probably him. Little guy has been pushing harder than anyone else on the battlefield. Lit is hopped up on an impressive amount of energy and adrenaline, he’s been eating every energy source that comes near him dry in seconds. That much energy is like a sugar rush to him, only he’s not going to get a sugar crash from it.” Quetal responded and I was in a little bit of disbelief that something so small could be that destructive. Lit was a little innocent fluff ball that spent a lot of time cuddling up to Dolly, but his actions on the battlefield spoke louder than any words ever could… given he’s taken out more Manufactured enemies by himself than the rest of our Pokémon Companions team combined with what seemed like half the effort. “If he has the title of hero, I’d believe that more now than ever, he’s only going in one direction in the wall though. We will work on going the other way and taking sections of the wall once we can climb up to the hole, don’t know if Lit is smart enough to turn around, he may just clear the walls surrounding Midgard entirely of PLANTs before coming out of there.”

Lit might not be the brightest bug in the world, but he was certainly a powerhouse given three more PLANTs worth of territories within the walls suddenly collapsed in quick succession and our offensive line suddenly bulged forward due to the lack of pressure holding us back.

“Welch the ceiling cannons are down, tell us you got some aerial support to send in there!” Several long flying vehicles rose from Castle Alexander.

“Yep, those should last a little longer than Skein Flyers, apparently they are simply labeled Scouts. Things are armed with missiles and pulse guns. How are the dragoons working out?” Those flying ships started providing aerial support alongside the Gyarados from the Mirage Collective.

“They’re holding fairly well, but we’re going to need those resources if we want to get up to the upper city on those massive pizza plates without have to go through more of this stalling stuff.” I quietly went back to watching over the battlefield, sending out orders when necessary.

More than forty percent of the lower city was on fire thanks to the Bombs, why did absolutely everywhere we go with Pom eventually turn into some form of large chaotic mess?

-Inside the leftward wall of Midgard City from the hole, Lit (Music: Nyan Cat)-

The set of four blue eyes, as a green glowing corona of the yellow bullet ricocheted around the inside of Midgar Cities outer walls, were wide open, dilated and rotating weirdly.

There was few bits of twitching in the eyes showing that Lit was still alive, somehow, as the colorful streaks of energy started to appear behind the rapidly rebounding tiny creature of death and destruction for any EP that was dumb enough to be in his direct path right now. Those poor unfortunate Enemy Programs that were the inner walls defenses.

The tiny yellow furred bug Pokémon blurred through things at a speed faster than two hundred miles per hour, and it was still increasing no less, consuming energy from every single PLANT he made contact with at an increasingly disturbing rate that he just started shooting straight through them instead of stopping on contact to drain the energy out of them.

Every time Lit hit a PLANT a stream of energy was being pulled into his body from behind that was left in his wake trying to catch up with his practically flying form. The green streak from Lit’s Lunge attack started fully distorting into creating a rainbow trail behind him.

Lit would eventually come to his senses… hopefully... it might need him to finally run out of energy to consume and momentum though. He'd probably set the world record for longest single Lunge move ever performed by a Pokémon to a point none other could possibly replicate the feat of incidentally turning it into a 'Flying Type' move.

Some would think this would be the proper opportunity to make the pun of Lit being completely and utterly ‘bugged out’ of his mind.