-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, Inner Upper City, upper floors of Shinra Tower, Pom-

“Be a good boy for Metabee and Rokusho now.” As we split off from the Eater destroyer teams, I bade Dormarch farewell and hugged him affectionately.

“Mom…” Dormarch blushed, but he didn’t break the hug. I had to and I was very reluctant to do so knowing exactly what I was walking into. “Just be careful of the security cameras.”

We had already stashed away the three motor bars, Sami still had her original one, because there wasn’t a lot of space inside the building to actually fly the Skein Flyer forms programmed into them. There was the possibility of them using those bars to come up and help us, but the airspace around Shinra Tower was exceptionally hostile.

“We’ll try to do this fast and catch up to help you, try to stay alive until we get there.” Canard offered a calming hand to my withers as I shuddered, he gave me a few pats and then was up and off with the other two teams. “Come on guys, let’s move. We know what our jobs are here, Pom and her team has theirs.”

Canard was the one to free his world, so I had little issue with believing he could pull this off.

Looking out a nearby window as Dolly and Peppercat followed me as we made our way up and forward as stealthily as possible. I saw lots of Drones, Heli-troopers, Moon Cell Watchers moving around outside the windows and avoided the sweeping beams as they lit up the hallway we soon found ourselves in from outside the window and even a few ‘Manufactured’ helicopters moving about in the rainstorm out there and sometimes shining powerful lights through the windows.

“It just occurred to me what Merak’s classification as a servant exactly is and why it is that classification specifically.” I drew Peppercat’s curious attention as, but before she had any time to ask a question I shushed her and Dolly.

I leapt to the ceiling and used my wool to grappled both Dolly and Peppercat up to me. Barely ten seconds later a batch of Troopers came out of a doorway and passed by below us. I’m fairly certain we avoided the security cameras that Dormarch had warned us about, because they looked alert and ready to shoot. Either Canard or Rokusho’s team must have drawn their attention somehow, that or they went loud before we could.

The servants we defeated were on my mind. Caster Circe in particular, the smell of that pan fried pig that Dolly calls ‘bacon’ now smells much better in my memory than it previously did.

I crawled along the ceiling avoiding a patrol of the robotic lightning spewing Crawlers moving by while trying to ignore that memory.

A servants classifications had a drastic effect on what they focused on particular. They probably didn’t effect Dormarch nearly as much as it would a normal servant as far as capabilities go.

Once we managed to bypass another patrol and reached a staircase we made our way even higher up the building.

“What do you mean about Merak’s Classification?” Peppercat asked after making sure we managed to bypass the patrol successfully.

“Elise likely had three different classification across her various personalities… Elise herself was probably meant to be a Lancer. Therefore she is good with a spear.” Given her general decent skill with spears and the ability to stretch her arms to spear you with them, I was using her as a comparison. “I bring this up because I know what all the ‘Manufactured Machines’ are about now, since Merak is a Caster class.”

“Caster? He doesn’t seem to know or use any magic that I’ve seen.” Peppercat stated as she and Dolly climbed the stairs slowly in my wake until we came up to a door and stopped at it. “Not that I know much of magic, aside from what I’ve seen you do, along with Ocellus, Shanty and Dolly.”

“The Caster classification is not always about magic, though the name would imply as such… also sufficiently advanced technology is a magic all its own in some ways.” My thoughts were on the Caster Eels and how the manipulated the environment around them. That and it let us know that Moby Dick was present in this realm when I saw a few of them in the water leading into the underground facility, but not what was happening with the whale sized monster generator currently. “While Merak doesn’t use magic, he is very much fits his classification.”

“How so?” Peppercat asked as I eased the door open and peeked an eye through the next short hallway leading into a much larger room with numerous Crawlers hanging out on the ceiling.

There were also Troopers setting up and preparing to fire on whatever came through this door.

From here we’d have to fight our way through to Merak and go loud, the EPs were only in position of waiting for something and not actively acting to come at us. I pulled the Paralance from the wool on my back to represent that we needed to get ready for a fight.

The red cat digibot flexed her claws and nodded, Dolly flipped the mystical stone bone up into the air and caught it in her right paw as she had one hind leg on her skateboard and was simply waiting for my signal to go.

“Casters don’t necessarily need magic to be effective, they don’t need to apply magic directly to their opponent either if they do have magic. They can just be capable strategists or good at controlling a domain or territory with an insane level of expertise. In fact Caster seems like a classification with quite a broad scope of capabilities to address many situations, compared to like say a Saber which seems to be incredibly narrow in being overall powerful in combat.” Given how much trouble we had with taking Midgar, I’m fairly certain that Merak was truly being as lazy a genius as Elise suggested he was. We did just use that knowledge to just take the stairs without impediment, he’d probably think we’d want to go the faster route and use the elevators and the staircase up wasn’t likely even a thought in his mind as being a thing anyone would use. “With how well he’s been fending us off, he’s a Caster alright. He’s been fighting us indirectly since we arrived in this Realm and very few of the things he’s done were rarely unfortunate for him, like his blowing a hole through the wall with ‘The Arsenal’ doing that diffusion beam thing. Even when we took territories in the lower city he was already ready to bombard us from above to turn the territories back in his favor. He’s managed to keep Castle Alexander outside the wall for quite a long time until it managed to gain enough power to actually fly to the upper city. He’s been stalling us out by quite a lot, his only issue is that he seemingly can’t deal with unaccounted for chaos very well, that and he’s ultimately very lazy. The ‘Manufactured’ he sends at us exist because they are practically his form of magic alongside his ability to generate portals, he has quite a lot of control over the entirety of Midgar making it hard to impossible to fully capture as long as he’s alive. I’m sure he could be doing so much worse to stop us and I’m fairly certain he has something waiting for us when we do eventually reach him. While he won’t be good in a direct fight, he never intends to let us fight him directly at all and will try to never let us get to that point since he’ll spend the whole battle fighting us through some form of intermediary puppet like he’s been doing from the start. Except this time he’ll actually be inside of it and controlling it directly given how close we are to him.”

“So… what?” It seemed Peppercat didn’t understand what I was getting at.

“Well I’ve finally created a nearly full mental profile for Merak and I’m sure if he was to try and fight me himself without anything between me and his actual physical body, he wouldn’t win that fight even on his luckiest of days and would lose one hundred percent of the time in under five minutes if he uses his portals. Less than a minute if he doesn’t.” I’m quite certain he wouldn’t be just sitting out in the open though, he wouldn’t be too lazy to be doing that though when he might actually be taking us seriously as threats to him. “I’m already expecting him to have some kind of powerful machine, him to have an ostentatious method putting himself inside said machine as his back up weaponry for when we deal with said machine and that he’s likely to set off some sort of city wide self-destruct to wipe the entirety of this Midgar City realm. That would be in a last ditch effort to try and kill us all by taking us with him or at the very least force us to fight through another one of Moon Cell’s realms. At least that kind of destruction will deal with the Eaters, but we’re in the center of the realm and retreating Castle Alexander to the edge of the realm in time to get out wouldn’t be viable or even possible at this point.”

“So we’re going to be on a time limit to beat him when we eventually do meet him and get him started on fighting us.” Yep, that was about the size of it Peppercat.

“Now let’s get back to what we were doing. Dolly focus on the smaller enemies, Peppercat use me as a living shield when needed and take the fight to them wherever and whenever you can.” I held the paralance in front of me and kicked the slightly open door to being fully open, I brought up the paralance at the same time while doing this.

I locked my wool in place to handle the several rockets and a ludicrous amount of projectile fire as crawlers starting hurtling towards us along the walls, ceiling and floor. There were Troopers that more heavily armed than normal, specifically with rocket launchers.

None of them penetrated the paralance and with me locking myself in place with my wool, none of them moved me either. After a five second delay of silence, I leapt forward pushing off with two springs of wool from my hind legs as lunged forward using the canopy of the paralance as a battering ram.

I took down several of the Troopers that were wielding the rocket launchers and knocking a number of Crawlers back into a room.

The room was fairly large and it looked like we were in something of a laboratory sector and the room was large and full of what looked like tubes that had experiments in them. I plowed through several Troopers before I planted my rear hooves on the floor and angled my indestructible shield to keep myself safe from more incoming fire.

Peppercat, who had followed my forward lunge, immediately broke away from me as I did and start to claw them down producing lightning energy as she leapt about while trying to avoid the projectile fire that was still mostly aimed in my direction.

Dolly was zipping about and throwing the stone bone into Crawlers or smashing into them with her skateboard while performing a variety of showy tricks.

Sighing at Dolly’s showboating, even if the tricks were not just for style and were actually doing something to aid her fighting, I shook my head and started firing off Thousand Spears into the nearest Troopers as they were somewhat vulnerable to it.

Once Merak knows we’re here, he’s likely to first be a bit surprised we used the stairs and then will probably invite us in to show off the strongest ‘Manufactured’ he’s likely been saving for a personal confrontation like what’s about to happen.

I closed up the paralance and then swung it into the legs of the nearest Trooper, to not only knock them down, but to reorient the facing of the rocket launcher they were holding with a follow up kicked. I watched as the freshly fired rocket blew apart several Crawlers as I stomped down on the Troopers head.

“What the, where the… how did you even get there?!” Merak’s voice said in the background as I continued to take down Troopers with one hoof Thousand Spears, launching jets into the surrounding crowds. “I had the elevators and all the floors between me and you absolutely covered in death traps! I would have noticed if you had used them!”

“We took the stairs!” My shouting was in the hopes of riling up the so called genius that allowed us to get this far into the building.

“Wha… stairs? What stairs?! There shouldn’t be any stairs, stairs should be a myth!” There was a pause from Merak as I, Peppercat and Dolly continued to tear through a room of EPs in short order as we made our way to the other side of this strange lab space. “I didn’t think this building had stairs like that, as it would be a complete waste of space! With the cities lacking all forms of Operational Safety Hazard Assessment compliance, why would there even be stairs there leading past all of the buildings inner defenses… THOSE STAIRS ARE SO STUPID GAH! Who would even be stupid enough to even use all of those anyway, who would enjoy there being that many stairs in this building?!”

-In a distant time and place, somewhere else completely like the Moon Cell Realm’s version of Midgar City, someone named Zack-

“Running up the stairs, do-do-do, running up the stairs, beep-boop-woo~!” I sang as I ran up every flight of stairs with enthusiasm, I would be doing one hundred and fifty crouching crunches afterwards and then do a lap around the entire City of Midgar… they might have to send a helicopter out to pick my overzealous exercising butt up again, but I was making all kinds of gains on my leg day today! Relaxation, vacation, what are those? “Running up the stairs, do-do-do~!”

-Exiting the laboratory to head up another flight of stairs, Peppercat-

Merak was ranting about and focusing on the fact that stairs existing in a building loaded with technological prowess like this and how the stairs were so useless, superfluous and quite angry that they completely bypassed most of the security systems in place to prevent invaders like us from getting this high up in the building.

We simply made our way up to the next floor and started wrecking our way through some crawlers, didn’t seem to be much more than Drones and Crawlers here. No PLANTs detected as far as hearing a humming sound.

Merak was too angry to really start throwing more dangerous stuff at us, either that or he didn’t have nearly as much to put in our way now that we were more than ninety percent of the way through the building.

We definitely heard him working on something in the background as he cursed up a storm about not being ready for us to be this far into the building, I think we lit a fire under the lazy lemming’s butt.

This laboratory section was giving me the feelings of the place being haunted, I kept seeing some flashes of a scientist with glasses trying to get a red canine and a cute squirrel girl together for some disturbing reason. Hallways littered with bloodied sliced up bodies, red splotches of once living biological beings going everywhere to paint a line of terror and flashes of a sword that was at least seven feet long. Machines that weren’t there, sparking and sputtering layed destroyed on the floor.

Whatever I was seeing must be stray historical data of this place, kind of gives off the feeling of seeing ghosts. I mean at what point would you see a one winged monster with long silver hair tearing through everything with relative ease like that? That looked like someone that would be a Saber class servant and yet Moon Cell didn’t use someone that terrifying feeling? Maybe the guy was too powerful for even Moon Cell and that was a fairly horrifying thought in and of itself.

I ignored all the weird anomalous sights and kept focused on our task at claw, as part of the Digibot forces of the Yggdrasil Systems I had to do my duty to ensure the safety of my home lands.

To that end I had to ensure Pom’s survival as she was the world’s biggest monkey wrench in Moon Cell’s plans, since Moon Cell really seems to have it in for her and saw her as threat number one given how every EP seems to specifically target her quite heavily. She was also kind of a symbol of the counter invasion force.

I could tell Pom didn’t want to be in the middle of all this, but she just kept going anyway even if it wasn’t mentally sound for her to keep doing so. As far as everyone who knew her as a friend would tell you, she’s a hero.

It wasn’t hard to see I had an advantage against the more machine like Crawlers and Drones, when I could hit them with bursts of energy from my claws that is. Their systems did not handle shocks very well, I’m a walking energy sponge like that little bug Lit… heard the little guy was lost or worse. Dolly didn’t seem happy with that fact.

Dolly was taking down the flying drones, throwing and catching the stone bone to a rhythmic beat as she continued to throw the bone and bash with her board as she flipped, did wall rides and expertly dodged numerous attacks coming at her with over the top acrobatics involving her board being in the path of projectiles as needed.

Pom was not very strong physically, but I think her wool acting like an exoskeleton when it took on a more wolf like shape made up the difference as she continued to bash her way through enemies with an indestructible weapon. Nobody knew what that weapon was made of, but it being immune to Eaters was of great interest to me and any of us digital world heroes.

What Pom lacked in strength she made up in speed, but the odd thing was I wasn’t seeing her using Dancing Flame. It was like her most famous and well known technique, the one she was specifically known for when it comes to inhaling and then moving far faster than she had any right too upon exhaling. She was breathing normally, but still accelerating to that level of speed every once in a while without sharp or slow inhales leading to explosive exhales she does to show she’s even using the technique.

I’m glad Yggdrasil System resorted to adults as troubleshooters this time, far less angst and overcoming it with heroic resolve involved or getting into pointless fights with their friends. Though Pom still counted in the angst category, she at least wasn’t voicing her feelings on the matter near constantly and just let us know that she was tired of all this.

We must have caught Merak off guard quite badly, because we made it up to what looked like a living space and it looked a bit trashed, signs definitely point to Merak having been here recently and he hastily vacated the living space.

Yep, must have been in quite a haste to get out of this living space to have… no… wait… after a few more glances… I realized that he didn’t hastily leave these somewhat lavish living quarters. They were like this before he left.

Merak was just a slob… ugh, I heard he was a lazy genius, but all those empty drink cans, fatty snack foods and an excessive amount of sleeping bags everywhere was telling quite a story.

Oh good Yggdrasil System, we’re dealing with that kind of genius!

“I’m going to take this opportunity while we have a chance, Dolly you can go after me.” Pom ran off for the nearby overly meticulously clean bathroom, I waited and watched the staircase and doors behind us for any more EPs.

While waiting on the biologicals to take a quick bathroom break, I’m guessing that the reason we weren’t seeing any EPs up here was because both Roksuho and Canard’s team were now getting a bulk of this mess now below us. That and the number of EPs on the way had been fairly thin too, no signs of PLANTs up here.

So… we were getting off easy… for the moment. I’m betting Merak won’t make us taking the fight to him easy at all if Pom is correct about him.

Aside from having to use a few Hi-potions for projectile related wounds, rarely were the EPs around here good enough to get in a melee hit, we were pretty much on top of the servant and all we had to do was face him.

I was hoping Pom was wrong about her idea of him, because nobody would be crazy enough to try and blow up an entire realm while still being inside of it…

…

Right?

-Dolly-

I kicked the door back into place and sighed, time to go beat up a butt lazier than mine. I passed by Coriander Kitty and came to a stop next to Pom as I got on my board and picked up the mystical stone bone.

“Ready when you are Pom!” I said with a grin and a wagging tail, that was a nice rest break.

“Well I’m not ready yet and this isn’t going to go well for us, also I’m not ready to move just yet since I have something to do.” Pom then tapped the visor. “Ocellus, we’re about to engage the servant and I have quite a bad feeling about this, is Castle Alexander moved out of the way of any problems and still collecting PLANTs?”

…

Probably listening to Ocellus, I stretched out and laid on my board to wait.

“Okay, but be aware before trying to send air support that the airspace around here is decidedly hostile and Merak might just shoot them down by himself with whatever he has waiting for us through the use of portals.” Pom stated after a bit. “Well I appreciate the thought. If you could get a skiff through to drop off some help, it would be a nice, but don’t endanger yourselves needlessly. Though I do have one suggestion… drop them near the three PLANTs we’re controlling in the inner city, the Berserker Moogles are holding the area… yes aggressively and yes I feel the dumb muscle thing too. Have them go on foot from there after using that as a staging area. Is the territory still ours? Okay good to know, keep doing what you’re doing Ocellus. When Merak makes an announcement ignore whatever time limit he sets up and keep on course.”

“So are we getting help?” Paprika Puss asked.

“Not in a timely manner, but we should have enough coming that if we survive for long enough we won’t be on the wrong side of this fight when they arrive to help.” You know what you weren’t saying Pom, I’m of the opinion that you think we couldn’t win with just the three of us. “Peppercat can you maybe generate powerful magnetic fields? It would be helpful to know if you can do that with your lightning generation abilities.”

“Nyeh… I might be able to.” The red cat answered unsure.

“Well let’s go see the ferret and we’ll show him that we’re capable!” I barked and Pom nodded to me patted me on the head and motioned for Chili Cheetah to follow us.

We made our way up and eventually we came to the roof and sitting there playing on a gaming device was that guy who looked up at us with a bored expression.

The chair he was sitting in floated into the air, it had arms dangling from it and it looked like a recliner.

He had a portal above his head keeping the rain off of him while we were soaked to the bone the moment we came out here.

“Stopped to use the bathroom and call your friends did you?” The lemming asked as he continued to look at the screen and not pay us any attention.

Pom was glancing off to the side and when I looked I saw that large checkerboard Muncher that looked like a huge pimple, she returned her gaze to fuzzy guy and I did as well.

“Go on, show us your big machine to take us out that you’re going to put up your backup weapon inside of to control it and then state the time limit for how long we have to fight you for.” Pom stated dully with a flat look in her eyes.

“So you’ve already guessed most of what I was going to do? Well now that’s quite an attractive bit of intelligence, it’s just too bad Moon Cell can’t grab your soul and put it under my control.” Yeah, guy was a creep, would bite his backside one hundred percent. He did something with the gaming device. “Though did you expect me to set the arena as well as the stage?”

The floating chair this guy was sitting on rose into the air with the two large limbs ending in four large metallic fingers rose up.

Something started happening to the roof, it seems like the building expanded beneath us to produce a huge circular floor that double the width of the roof and something started to rise up behind the floating chair.

“Let me show you why I enjoy technology so much… it makes it so I don’t have to lift a finger to fight you.” After he said that a massive machine that rose up behind our enemy made me put my tail thoroughly between my legs as the two armed chair hovered backwards. The guy was still lazily playing away at the game and grinned at us. “Let me introduce you to finest machine I have, one that I’ve modified extensively to be far more than the original product. Whoever made it was somewhat brilliant, but I don’t think they understand how to pack even more weapons into such a small space… they thought big, but not big enough. Say hello to the ‘Finished Air Buster Ultimate: Laser Offensive Utilizing Sentinel’!”

“Fabulous… really?” Groaned out Pom with a loud sigh.

“Why yes, it is!” The annoying fluffy little smart guy chuckled lazily while his chair lowered the two arms on it into the large hunk of metal and it came to life. Said chair slotted into place as the guy lazily wave at us as he became enclosed in the large machine which brought up four large mechanical arms and it’s head had a glowing rectangular red eye as it looked down of all of us. The semi-circle bottom half of the machine inflated and it started hovering, the thing was practically covered in cannons and missile launchers. “You’ll be fighting it, while I get a new high score in Gyrus and will be relaxing inside of it. I may deign to even actively control it to fight you if you prove troublesome… you have exactly sixty minutes to beat me or else Moon Cell will get its biggest win.”

“I’m betting you calculated the fact that it would take more than hour for Castle Alexander to escape the realm.” Glancing at Pom.

What she was saying is if we don’t beat this guy in that amount of time… well nothing like adding on the heat and pressure.

“Quite right, which is why I had these floating billboards manufactured, they’ll hover around and will be keeping you updated on time and the score between us.” Ugh, this guy was annoying. The billboards were brightly lit enough that we could see them in the rain being cared by drones. They all had fifty nine fifty nine on them, they weren’t counting down yet. “If you prove to be too much of a bother or your allies finally get here from whatever it is they are trying to accomplish, then expect the aerial forces to be called in to deal with you swiftly. Please do at least entertain me somewhat before you all die, once I’m finished with you I might just blow up the realm anyway to deal those eldritch monster things.”

Pom held the paralance forward and there was a sharp pointy tip on the lance. I got ready with my board and our robot feline held out her claws to the side and they were charging up with electricity.

My heart was pounding in my chest in fear and excitement, this would be quite an awesome battle to tell my family about... if we even get through this intact.

-Pom-

“One last question, are you a Caster?” I just had to ask to confirm it.

“Yes, servant Caster Merak is what Moon Cell calls me, though unfortunately I don’t understand the significance of such a title considering the fact that my favorite Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game isn’t available in this realm and I don’t have an MP bar to use against you. Didn't even give me any spells at all or anything, so what was the point of even giving me the Caster class?” Merak’s machine wasn’t yet actively attacking us yet. “That soul sucking computer could have given me at least some extra abilities and not just an army of machines to play with. I swear, at least upgrade my adept powers if you’re going to have me fight your enemies at least!”

I’m not sure Merak even knew how Moon Cell worked or even how to use magic like Peppercat brought up. If he had known how to use magic, then this would likely be about three times harder to survive.

My eyes roamed over the machine sitting opposite of us on the changed roof that became a wide flat arena with nowhere to hide except for the staircase we came up. Yep, that thing definitely has the hallmarks of the Magitek design philosophy, plus whatever else Merak put into it on top of that. Very glad he didn’t have magic as Magitek tends to be stronger with magic assisting it.

It started producing barrier drones immediately, it likely had a diffusion laser in the chest, those four arms on the biped like upper torso looked to be built to be far stronger mechanically than the grappling limbs the Einhanders had. It had many various weapon systems, likely flamethrowers, missiles, bending lasers… not to mention what kind of armor it had looked like it surpassed anything this realm should feasibly have in it.

This thing was a large mechanical monster from Tartarus, and it was currently pointed at us.

It’s like he took all the best stuff from every single last Manufactured he had sent at me and then rolled it all up to put it all together into one highly intimidating machine.

According to Merak, he would be safely sitting inside the torso of the thing the entire time and barely even controlling it.

Even if we defeated it, Merak still had his hovering combat chair to take out too, plus I can’t forget his ability to make portals anywhere he can see and I’m sure that thing gives him three hundred and sixty degree vision somehow.

“Peppercat, Dolly, focus on survival!” I stated as the thing with a hovercraft for a lower body began to move and its four large mechanical arms point at us threateningly and the rectangular red eye lit up brightly with the backdrop of the storm clouds and lighting rumbling in the sky.

The four barrier drones immediately started making it impervious to damage before we could even close in.

It was going to be one of 'those' fights.

Author's Note

Note noting notes.

Was this the most obvious outcome of Merak having access to Magitek technology?

Even if he can't use magic, he at least understands the technology enough to modify it to his own ends and may have a limited understanding of the less benign Magitek energy sources (IE Souls in the form of MAKO or Materia).

He already has a floating throne in Gunvolt to do all his fighting for him, this is just making him less likely to be punted off of said throne immediately by a high speed Pom.

In this case he's got his throne as back up and FABU:LOUS to do all the fighting.

Caster Class gets a bad rap in the fate series, Saber and Berserker Class are always hyped up... Saber generally gets to the end of a holy grail war or are usually designated protagonist servants.

It doesn't help that Caster Class characters usually do odd things like kill their masters or cause a massive mess.