Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar City, upper city, building rooftop, some time before the incoming dangerous encounter, Dolly-

There we were on a dark and stormy… uh… was it technically night?

Pom was…

“Is Pom Being okay physically?” I turned to Shanty who was sending me a worried look.

I raised my right paw and gave and upwards gesture digit, Dormarch was taking care of that at the moment.

“Is Pom being okay mentally?” Shanty asked a second later with a much flatter look.

I gave a so-so gesture while motioning downwards a bit less than halfway okay while clearly not looking at my goat pal, I even started to rub the back of my neck with my other paw.

Shanty could clearly read my reluctance to say that she wasn’t mentally fit for any kind of fighting right now. It was more to the point that Pom was entirely ‘out to lunch’ after all of that… and the cool crater we caused in the upper city. Nice to see my little bro was keeping her safe while she wasn’t mentally sound.

I sometimes wondered how Pom survives this stuff constantly happening to her and already knew ‘an’ answer, which is being ‘not very well… but hey she’s at least still trying’. One answer didn’t account for everything sometimes.

“Sounds right.” Shanty sighed as she shouldered her scythe thingy and looked around for where we could go, we would surely try to meet up with Dormarch and Pom.

Dormarch used his whole teleporting thing to move what was left of Metal Hound 002 and some spare booster missiles, the same ones I used to help Shanty land safely on this roof, to ram the other ‘Side Winder’ and then promptly detonate it to be sure it was destroyed. Apparently while Dormarch couldn’t teleport with a living being, he could teleport object like the barely working machine with a bunch of missile boosters attached to it.

“How many more of those things do you think they be having?” Good question Shanty, since we couldn’t rely on Metal Hound 002 to be around to fight them and we barely survived two with a machine that was practically falling apart that I wanted to have all for myself. Anymore of those things and we were doomed.

Speaking of doomed EPs were everywhere and there were a lot of incredible bulks EPs up here and we currently lacked the necessary firepower to even deal with them. Oh right I had that ‘fire’ spell… or more like the gem Pom picked up and put in my helmet gave me access to it, maybe I could summon the fire demon too?

I’m not blaming Dormarch for destroying my cool small mecha, he did it to save Pom’s life and I could always get another one made. I couldn’t bring back the dead like that Feliz Navidad snake lady and I’m sure she has to be near someone to get to them before the body got too cold to resurrect, I’m quite glad that Pom likely still has the reviver seed on her and I knew for a fact she was going to need it eventually.

-Shinra Tower, upper floors, Merak the ‘lazy lasering’ lemming-

I slammed my fist against the table and looked at the combat data from the last few seconds with frustration. My genius intellect had never been so thoroughly challenge like this before!

“How!?” By all rights that should have killed at least the ewe among them, the explosion had been positively massive and the crater left afterwards was covering more than a block in width. How did she even get clear of it?!

He only knew the ewe was alive because the EPs in the area were definitely searching for her body to make sure, even a few bits of skeleton would have at least been left behind. However the fact that Moon Cell had the EPs on search patterns going in all directions meant that the target hadn’t died despite all the insanity they just went through, not only that… they escaped and were somehow still moving around given the number of watchers out there would have seen something.

Also he lost the Einhander Twins to that mess, but at least if they wanted to bring a fight to him personally… then he would be ready for them after they surpass every other obstacle in their way. Once they did that he might actually fight them… or run for his life, because he was starting to fear the determination of the people attacking the city and their haunting inability to die despite everything that was being thrown at them.

The Bombs were fairly contained even if they were still trying to blow up PLANTs and set everything on fire in the lower city, still not a major problem to him. The enemy were stuck at the walls and gate from the sheer numbers of assault programs being thrown at them, except for those in the upper city which are proving to be a most vexing threat on my ability to actively be lazy and they were in hiding at the moment.

There’s also Copen the Slayer Dragon actually fighting Moby Dick without fear or hesitation, it’s impressive that he’s willing to take on something of that size and do it so fiercely.

Everything was going perfectly fine and within my parameters and 'nothing could possibly go wrong'. I was prepared for the extra forces that was brought in by the nuisances in that moving dog castle. There is no way they could overpower my defenses with what they had.

-Somewhere on the plains to the right of Midgar Cities’ main entrance, Artoria the Zacian-

“Are you sure feeling okay Artoria?” Ask me later Mash, spiritual carrier of Galahad’s shield. “Their souls are free now, those children can no longer be tortured.”

I sighed… that tank was horrifying monstrosity of war, firing the souls of children at people or their life essence. The implications of the Exo-Taranis’s existence left my skin crawling as my companion tried to keep me pushing forward to end the nightmare of the soul manipulating machines realms we were invading.

If it was just the tortured soul firing tank, then I might have recovered my mental strength by now… but then Moon Cell kept throwing tortured children’s souls at us in a variety of other forms of servants.

So many cruel realms of histories that once were…

I sighed and shivered as I looked towards the city and found that… it was already under attack?

“Call in our forces.” Curious, but we had to continue forward and if we were to find allies that would be great. It wasn’t hard to tell where the servant in the futuristic city was. The tower at the center of it all was rather visible even in the storm clouds and thick rain hitting what appeared to be an upper city built over another city. “We might have allies in this realm already… and they might just save my sanity.”

Our medieval based assault programs started to appear with Mash the Zamazenta summoning them forth. We were one step away from Moon Cell directly and I could see that a major battle had taken place to our immediate left, there was still some fighting and what looked like a moving castle sitting outside the wall. We started moving our catapults and slightly more futuristic siege engines to break the wall.

I was ready to lead our forces with Excalibur held at the ready to march on the final bastion of our enemy before we can strike directly at their heart.

-Somewhere on the plains to the left of Midgar Cities’ main entrance, Fou-

Fou still wanted to hunt the ewe and he had a good sense that the Chrysomallus was here, given the burning city, the sounds of frantic fighting and gunfire in the distance he was quite certain of the chaos being related to the ewe somehow.

This felt like a place to fight and he at least recently figured out something about the place he found himself in.

Fou howled and several wild PLANTs appeared and monstrous assault programs that served Fou appeared, all of them being beasts of cat, canine and other quadrupedal varieties. A wind blew towards the west and something sweet crossed Fou’s nose.

?

A few sniffs of the air flowing from the east had told Fou that cuddly shield face possible mate and cranky sword swinger monster were here too.

A feral grin quickly worked its way onto Fou’s face as he knew what this meant.

“Fou!” More fighting!

Fou’s beast producing PLANTs started sending forces towards the wall with him at the head of them the inert cannons and no defenses to stop his troops from somehow find a way through… wouldn’t be a problem for Fou to make a hole for his forces.

He was quite excited to see what dangerous thing the ewe found to fight this time and then fight it himself, she was fun like that.

-Lower City, hole in the wall, Quetal-

“Ocellus we have some interesting thing happening to Castle Alexander’s left and right sides, might want to check on that.” I got up here with the help of the Dhelmise anchor squad, their chains helped lift us up to the hole in the wall.

I was expecting a response, but worryingly didn’t hear one. Did the assassin archetypes get into the castle again?

Don’t know what happened to Lit, but I was fairly worried about our little bug companion. I was also worried about Shine, Jeanne, Pom and the others… hearing an explosion coming from the upper city, I think everyone was probably doing okay.

We had a lot of tough allies and people working together without complaint and while our front was scattered all over the place, we at least successfully had contact with our people within the wall and got some Caerbannogs through as we held the hole blown in it.

We also prevented the PLANTs in the walls that were spawning heavies from dropping them on top of our allies and crushing the foothold in the lower city by taking some of the inner wall PLANTS to the right of the hole since we’re sure Lit might have something to do with what happened in the left.

Speaking of traveling into the walls, Dazzle came in from the right with Frizzle.

“Quetal we’ve cleared what we think we should without going crazy like Lit might have, do we go into the city to help Canard or get back onboard Castle Alexander?” That was something to ponder on Dazzle, we’re pretty tired since we’ve been basically pumping Sitrus Berries like crazy to stay alive at this point. Still, we had done it and taken the hole in the wall and gave us some room to keep effectively holding it.

“Ocellus we have the wall, where do you need us…. Ocellus?” It seemed like Castle Alexander was having problems. “OCELLUS CAN YOU HEAR ME! Does Castle Alexander need emergency support!?”

“Huh what… oh, sorry Quetal, we just lost contact with Pom in the upper city, she lost her visor and got into a rather hectic fight with some really dangerous enemy Manufactured and then there’s been a sign of a massive explosion. We sent our new Scouts up there to help her… but they barely lasted a full minute before being shot down by the enemy that Pom was fighting, but we managed to successfully support her with missile fire from our artillery trucks. They definitely lost Metal Hound 002, they are still alive because I can still kind of feel Pom’s faint sense of horror at still being alive… undoubtedly no therapist in the world is going to be able to help that particular lambkin.” Ocellus was a bit distracted by her friend going quiet, she was my friend too and I had some worries myself even if I knew how tough Pom was despite not wanting to be. The Manufactured were tougher than the EPs and we’ve been dealing with a lot of them on the plains, enemy programs just didn’t have quite the cohesiveness of machines that were actually built to last and fight until their innards completely broke down. “We’re sure that Pom’s group has taken out those two deadly enemies up there at least, but they are likely hurting and I want to get us up there soon too. What did you need? Are the Bombs still causing problems?”

“We’ve taken and reinforced the hole in the wall and we’ve been dealing with those annoying grinning blast happy explosive horrors that make Electrodes look tame, we want to know where you want us if you’re paying attention to us now.” As I said this, I looked over to Frizzle sitting in the hollow of the wall and quietly eating some bread shaped like her own head with a dollop of butter.

While I continued waiting for an answer I Looked behind me Lucha Mundo was still quite as spirited as ever and his move ‘Coaching’ had been quite helpful for dealing damage to the numerous armored enemies. He was still raring to go, Fighting types were always the best at fighting spirit and he’s been a good friend to all of us.

Dodo’s and Favela were watching the air around us for aerial attacks from Moon Cell forces, but then something caught Dodo’s attention. He was looking up at something, but I didn’t see any enemy aerial assault coming in… so he must have been looking Shanty’s direction.

“I, Favela, think that Dodo senses Shanty is in danger again.” Not the first time since the battle started Favela, but this time something really had Dodo’s attention and he seemed angry and protective. Like he wanted to fly off and go help Shanty personally.

Whatever was happening, it was going on in the upper city region. The only ones from our forces up there were all from Pom’s group and Dodo didn’t seem to really like what was happening judging by his throaty distorted warbling.

“Quetal, after some discussion and getting advice. I want you to protect an incoming team of skiffs we’re sending out to evacuate our foothold in the lower city. We’re going to try and climb directly up to the upper city with Castle Alexander and then we’ll go from there as to what we’re going to do… also we may be getting some good and rather dubious news.” You had my attention Ocellus, but did you need me to ask for it. “We need to break this stonewalling and the best way to do that is go around the problem and not through it.”

“What is it? The Valora units are currently helping with holding position at the moment so we’ve still got time to rest.” It was quite clear to me that the Dhelmise were veterans of running war games in and out of water. The Skarmory were highly trained aerial combatants and had comported themselves extremely well and haven’t been shot down yet, though their injuries should have led them to falling out of the sky. The one Kommo-o and the Hakamo-o were definitely welcome as even without Jeanne they were proving exceedingly sturdy. They’ve taken some nasty hits, but they’ve been staying in the fight long after other Pokémon would have surely dropped out and even the Mirage Collective Pokémon didn’t have their level of stamina.

The ‘Wills of Steel’ in the Valora was proving to be quite strong.

“Good news, we’re getting what might be allies from our right, dubious news we’ve got an image of Fou charging Midgar from the left with an army of beast assault programs. I would say they are NPs, but they are apparently under Fou’s direct control so it’s questionable if we should label them Enemy Programs, Fou’s Allied Programs or just controlled Neutral Programs.” Well at least Ocellus warned us that that beast was around in a timely manner, that thing just wouldn’t go down and I’m fairly certain that if Fou fought against an Ultra Beast, said beast would be learning the meaning of pain quite quickly and might be the one to bet against surviving the fight. “The allies on the right might be good news because they resemble the description of Zacian and Zamazenta that attacked you on the way to Valora, I’m sure we can work things out with them if they are willing to talk. We’ll need to send a messenger to the leaders of their forces and get ourselves coordinated with them if possible and hope willing since we haven’t be able to get much further than where we currently are.”

“…” I was aching, being a Weavile and all this fighting had made me not feel as weak as Fou definitely had. From what we understand about Fou, he increases in strength to match however aggressive and powerful his opponent is. A terrifying ability when it was pointed at you, I say we ignore Fou for the time being and let him point himself at Midgar for us. “Mundo!”

“Yes mi amigo?” The Hawlucha would be a good diplomat and he was a strong enough to take care of himself in a pinch, plus he was a spiritual counselor. Pom could probably use his talents right now, but we didn’t know where she was or the trouble she was in, but the number of EPs above us must be swarming heavily given how dead Moon Cell wanted her.

“We need to send you on a diplomatic mission to contact a Zacian and a Zamazenta that might have attacked Pom and me on our way to Valora. I would go… but I have something of a grudge and Dark types with grudges is not conducive for talking.” I watched as Mundo stand straighter at my words. “You might have to skirt enemy airspace to get to their forces setting up in that direction, that is if you’re willing to split off and do it. If you say yes, then I’ll ask Ocellus what she wants you to say or ask of what may be new friendlies on the battlefield. We don’t want to get into a miscommunication at this stage and have to fight Fou and those two at the same time. We let Fou do his thing, he’s a force of nature our worst enemy kind of deserves at this point.”

Hard to know which way was north, east, west or south in these realms, because I seriously doubted compasses work here.

“As far as a Dark type with a grudge, you are downright the friendliest Dark type I know just for saying that alone Quetal. You have so many friends to use that Dark energy for and you use it bravely as a hero! That you can acknowledge the grudge and even overcome it is amazing to me, whereas it would probably take some Pokémon a lot of time to admit to something like that. I am quite willing to do some talking to what may be our companions in the fight against this massive monstrosity that is Moon Cell!” Striking a pose with one arm held up and a bent and angle and the other just held straight out at an angle, Mundo made me smile as he stood proudly and ready to make nice with some people who might not want to talk with us.

I doubted they’d attack Mundo outright though like they did with Pom, he was too colorful to be an EP.

“Ocellus, Mundo is volunteering to fly out to make friends with the two on our right, what do you want him to say to them and what kind of collaboration can you expect?” Once I got that information, Mundo took off while we held position and waited for the skiffs.

The aerial assaults in the foothold section inside the wall were getting worse and I just had to stay here and watch until then, but at least they were giving them Yveltal levels of hell down there. Canard was something else as a leader.

-Seventh Heaven Bar, Canard-

The air assaults were far worse than their ground forces, the Gunship drones and Moon Cell Watchers were bad enough, but now they were adding whirligigs to the mix or helicopters with machine cannons.

We’ve been pinned down. My initial expectations of the Gazimon was that they wouldn’t be of any big help, they had proved me thoroughly wrong by staying in the fight instead of cowering away from it. At best they had acted in a support roll, but now I was seeing their capabilities in wielding the turrets they set up to great effect.

“Surprisingly, this still has yet to rate the top ten worst situations I’ve ever been in.” Grinned Sami, who had been quite a trooper like always. My favorite orange soldier lizard was still gunning down enemies with her rifle and the occasional bazooka shot once she manages some time to reload.

As far as heavy munitions, Sami, Krosserdog, Elise and Snake, along with the Caerbannog APs, were the only ones dealing with the flying enemy with any effectiveness aside from the Gazimon on the quick build gun turrets. The gun turrets, which the APs were set in protecting to the best of their abilities, the Zealots proved themselves time and again to be resourceful and deadly if given enough time and resources to jury rig a vehicle out of something if not just using their bodies as living shields.

It was a surprise that a Rider Zealot even managed to turn a Sweeper into a controllable machine that counted as ‘riding it’ as far as the Zealots shield was concerned.

“Canard, be prepared for evacuation and to pull out all acquired PLANTs, we’re already pulling PLANTs from the walls to get some extra power to get us up into the upper city and still have energy for firepower while flying.” Bet what Ocellus just said would please that NPC program named Cid who had a hard coded love for making things fly. If we ever see Pilot Tsukaimon again, I’ll introduce Cid to him if the destruction of Moon Cell doesn’t cause problems. “We’ll try to redeploy you and everyone else in the upper city, wait for the skiffs and escorting Skein Flyers Zealots to arrive. Don’t worry about the lower city, we have allied forces that might be taking care of that problem soon and the upper city is going to be much worse in quantity. Pom is tentatively alive, but we lost contact with her and Metal Hound 002 has been shot down and has blown up a section of the upper city. She’s likely gone to ground given the mass of EP signals we’re getting from up there, it’s like looking at an anthill that got kicked over.”

A magic computer as powerful, reality bending and soul twisting as Moon Cell would leave me to believe that there would be problems when we ultimately got around to destroying its ability to genocide entire civilizations. At this point I was hardly caring for the repercussions of destroying what kept everything in these realms in order given the massive number of EPs we’ve been barely fighting off, I’ve likely already clubbed down a few thousand by myself at this point.

“Jeanne, Shine if you can hear me, retreat to Seventh Heaven Bar with whatever PLANTs you’ve acquired, we’re pulling out and moving for the upper city! The rest of the lower might be taken care of by some more incoming friends.” Since there was little point in taking the lower city except to gain more territory or PLANTs, we needed to attack the problem at its source and said name was Merak. “Ocellus you better have a lot of aerial power flying with those skiffs, these last few hours have been horribly rife with projectiles coming at us from all directions above us as much as on the ground with the troopers.”

I’ve been hit quite a lot, but not for a lack of dodging talent on my part, it’s just the sheer volume of projectiles coming at us was just that daunting. If we were evacuating I would rather do so with the airspace cleared up and possibly in our possession temporarily.

Thankfully my injuries were nothing Sitrus Berries couldn’t heal, like a truly permanent injury.

“Mirage Collective is sending its Gyarados to assist our Skein Flyers and the Harmony Programs are sending in their Draco Volans, which apparently learned how to spit fireballs… definitely something I would expect of a magical impression of Rainbow Dash despite the fact that they really shouldn’t be capable of it. I think the airspace will soon be clear enough for pick up and regrouping… besides we can’t stay stalled out and down here forever.” Yeah, because if Ocellus wasn’t wrong, Pom was up there doing miracles to draw attention away from us with what little she had and she was in grave danger at the moment.

We really couldn’t stay here much longer being constantly hit with hammers while looking like a bunch of nails, we’re getting body checked rather hard and haven’t made much progress beyond the entrance. A referee would have penalty boxed these guys something fierce by now, but I think the karma of Fou showing up was just the ticket to give us the puck.

I would like to say it had been enough and that Pom had done enough and even deserves a lot of rest, like for the rest of the time we were here in Midgar. Even then I knew that Pom wouldn’t go for it or be quite done yet, given she’s been involved with meeting every servant face to face since we started our counter invasion. Even if she wasn’t exactly directly responsible for their defeat, Pom would still want to learn more about them given they were the souls of figures from a time in some history like Elise was.

A time from which Moon Cell was apparently around to trap souls and used them to its own ends, that it had so many meant that it’s been around for eons and far longer than multiple civilizations have risen, fell, went through an apocalypse and new life to rise to prominence once again multiple times.

“Good to know.” Now there’s a shudder, at least we had something of a net positive of allies to keep our momentum up.

-Rooftop, seconds before the danger appears, Shanty-

Well I think we should be trying to meet up with…

My right ear be twitching and my eyes narrowed as I quickly thought through my course of actions while inhaling a bit.

I can’t be quite doing what Pom does with Dancing Flame, but I can be doing my own version of it well enough without causing myself health issues. I be learning from seeing how badly it be effecting Pom, did not want to end up like her and didn’t want her to be ending up like that again either.

I quickly wrapped my left hoof around Dolly’s torso and threw us off the roof by exhaling to create a water clone beneath me, this launched us with a blast of water from its creation. The just formed clone was about to attack the incoming danger in retaliation and never got the chance.

A swooping form be tearing straight the through the building we were on and my hapless copy that I be leaving behind, this demolished the entire building as we fell towards the street. I be forming a Bounding Bubble and rolled us toward the edge of the crater nearby before dropping it and looking around for what had attacked us. Also I be noting the nearby EPs that be alerted to our presence from the loud destruction were starting to come this way.

The thing that be attacking us then be showing itself with the building crumbling behind it, it not being much of a surprise to me who it is.

“Why can’t you just be leaving me alone? I will never be giving up on my dreams of adventures grand or small!” The thing I was witnessing was being a grey ghostly looking crow, covered in a strange purple lightning and he is feeling particularly malevolent by how he radiates his aggression into the air around him. The face may be slightly different… but it was definitely being Lu Bu. His response was to be throwing a dumpster at me that Dolly and I be dodging with rolls to the side before coming back together. “Why is that being so important to you that you try to be ending me this hard over it? I get the wounded pride thing maybe, but at this point it is being ridiculous that you still be targeting me and not the one that actually be killing you!”

That was being Hideyoshi of Ignis if I be recalling his name correctly.

Dolly was looking slightly panicked and barked something that seemed a bit worried. She also be barking, yipping and growling something that be sounding quite sarcastic and almost be sounding like the words ‘Well at least now you know how Pom feels Shanty’. I can even be agreeing with that sentiment if I be getting her emotions correct more than I did her words.

I am going to be learning to understand dogs at some point, I be wanting one on my crew as intelligent and cool as Dolly is being. A Diamond Dog would be a good pick for that. That is when I be getting around to getting a ship and or building the one I’m dreaming of. Nothing would be cooler than having an actual salty dog as a visual pun!

“We can be taking him Dolly!” Even if none of the others were being anywhere near here to be saving me and Dolly, there was nobody coming to save ‘him’ either. Pom was not being capable of a fight, but at least Dormarch would be watching her. I couldn’t be expecting Pom to be showing up, but it probably was better that she didn’t be doing that in her state.

Dolly whined a bit, but she didn’t seem to be unwilling to help me if the look in her eyes is being anything to go by as she took up a position at my side and I readied my cane scythe. I really couldn’t be taking Lu Bu alone no matter his form anyway, I am not being an idiot as he is being shown to be way too strong for me several times over already.

Even as a bleeding ghost he was being stronger than me physically!

Didn’t mean I feared him, third times the charm whether it be his or mine. One of us is dying here and it wasn’t being me.

I twirled my cane scythe stylishly and be holding it across my shoulders, the blade on my right as I stood on my hind legs and grinned at him and leaned forward ready to be getting this started.

Dolly just readied her board to be kicked into motion and waited, she barked to me without taking her eyes off of Lu Bu.

Lu Bu be clenching his fist and his muscles bulged as he spread his wings, he looked like and ornithian with wings and there was no way I wasn’t going to be taking this seriously.

I calmly took out a bottle and chugged some rum before putting it away.

-Shanty and Dolly (Rowdy Ruff-ians) vs. Lu Bu Soul (Where’s ‘Kirby of the stars’ when you needed him?)-