-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar, far side of the city, Copen the Slayer Dragon-

Perched on top of the building my gun held tightly in my grip, I kept it pointed at the whale that was still thrashing as I continued to fire blast after blast into its massive form.

Why wouldn’t it die?! It was full of holes, I had ruined its ability to fly and I’ve blown out half its brain already! Also I noted I was dealing with a creature made of data… which was a curious thing considering I seemed to be made of the same stuff as well according to Lola.

With final wail, the whale finally, FINALLY, decided to die as it slowl ybroke apart into a burning mass of data that couldn’t disappear quickly enough for my taste.

I shot it so full of holes that it shouldn’t have been able to keep producing so many enemies to throw at me, yet even now it kept firing jellyfish, krakens, those annoying post death flying sharks that I had to obliterate to be safe from and a whole number of other things.

Even after it died it was still a problem!

It was like ten minutes later and after using my battle pods to deal with the rest of the swarm, of which Lola was gladly able to burn down as I continued to tear apart what should be a brain dead whale to get it to stop generating things… it all finally stopped.

The battle had been quite arduous, but I had finally won against the unholy thing.

Now I had to go seek out my next opponent, but before that I downed a refreshing Hi-potion. Drank about twenty three of those over the course of my fight with the monstrosity. I jetted my way up the side of a building and then landed on the roof, I checked my jet systems and saw that quite a few things needed repairs.

I looked around in the rain as I felt something was off, I used my battle pods to enhance my sight of the various areas here in the upper city by creating a square magnifying screen of hard light. In the distance on the far side of the city there was a thing with checkerboard patterns, tentacles and mouths…

Yeah I’ve hit my quota of dealing with large monstrous things today and that thing… was eating the buildings and getting even bigger.

I’m not dealing with that unholy abomination until it absolutely becomes my problem, no thanks!

Normally I’d be all about righteous burning of eldritch things, as well as the destruction of all things abnormal, but in this situation I’d rather get more information after going through hell with that whale coming after me.

Also I didn’t like the implications of the many smaller checkerboard things around it that were eating buildings in a distorted manner.

Instead I looked at the curious moving dog… castle… thing… that was much closer and moving more in this direction and away from those monstrosities.

I’m sadly in some kind of wonderland and I didn’t have an electricity spewing blue wearing person to shoot at.

They were battling the local enemies and I saw several flying vehicles with figures on them taking off from the castle flying high for a little bit and then stopped to head low when they got to the edges of the inner cities defenses that started firing on them with an insane volume of firepower. Said firepower was concentrating more on the checkerboard creatures.

“Lola, set those checkerboard creatures to extreme threat level.” I stated flatly as those checkerboard mollusks were not dying easily even when being constantly hit by multiple artillery shells directly.

I was curious enough to try and figure out what was going on there, with the flying transports I mean. If there were flying transports that meant that there were more intelligent beings around here, like that strange sheep like thing in that jury rigged mech I crossed paths with.

Why wasn’t it a sheep though? It looked very much like a sheep, but I strongly felt like it was sheep adjacent in the extreme and it was oddly pervasive to not think of the ewe as a sheep… but can still be called an ewe without setting off the feeling of ‘not sheep’?

-Center of the city, top of Shinra Tower, Pom-

Here I stand at the top of a tall tower, which had mechanically spread out its floor space to create a large circular arena, with a giant four armed death machine and am reminded of how badly Gilgamesh went… this time should go better.

Since this guy wasn’t nearly as stupidly powerful, though his currently invulnerable machine was going to make up that difference. As long as it couldn’t be repaired in the middle of the fight, they could wear it down for other people to scrape up their bodies after it was done with them. Not that I wouldn’t be fighting as hard as I could to make sure that didn’t happen.

The countdown started.

-Red Lightning Cat Robot, Spotted Magical Skateboard Dog and a Lambkin Chrysomallus vs. Merak and FABU:LOUS (Finished Air Buster Ultimate: Laser Offensive Utilizing Sentinel. Music: Airbuster Theme, FF7.)-

Pom started the fight off by launching herself at the lower right hovering barrier drone using her wool and missed as it simply flew up in the air out of range. She followed up her miss by rolling and twisting her body to launch at the side of the machine.

Dolly managed to land a hit on it a second later by landing on the barrier drone, she did a quickly three sixty degree spin to scuff the slightly dented metal before kicking off to avoid several lasers from the Air Buster’s upper left arm’s hand.

It was quickly noted that the mechanical hands fired the lasers from their fingers.

The Dalmatian only lightly damaged the barrier drone with her impact, these barrier drones were made of sterner stuff than the ones that were protecting The Arsenal.

While Dolly was avoiding being hit with lasers by the upper left arm, the lower left arm deflected Pom’s next charge and knocked her back in the air with a swift back hand. The lower left arm followed that up by opening its palm towards her and spewing a massive cone of fire making Pom back away rapidly with several hops.

This allowed Peppercat to get close enough to start scratching at the barrier on the lower hovercraft like half of the body with her electrically covered claws in the hopes of bypassing the barrier with raw energy. She had to dodge back when the two right hands started spewing lasers at her from the fingers.

“Welcome to hell, as you know well, I hope I’m not going too easy on you~!” As Merak Two pipes rose up on the back of the Air Buster and fired, into a portal above it, nine much larger portals opened around the arena and the enhanced sized missiles started exploding all over the roof top. “So let me show off my machine, have you even ever seen, this mechanical marvel from my dreams~?”

Forcing Pom, Dolly and Peppercat to dodge for their lives as the explosions the missiles gave off were as enhanced as their sizes.

“How long can you dodge, you look like a bunch of frogs, unlike me you don’t have time to be slacking off~!” Merak was adding insult to injury as several machine cannons in the lower torso started spewing projectiles and spinning independently of the upper torso, the three were entirely ignoring the bright glowing countdown timers hovering around in the air around them as the Air Buster too much of a threat to take their eyes off of for too long. “How long can you last, we’ll have quite a blast, I know there’s only so much you really can do~!”

Dolly immediately had her board up, but the impacts actually knocked her back with each direct hit. Pom managed to stay standing in place as she braced the paralance against the wet rooftop. Peppercat started to run on all fours like a cat to avoid the spray of projectiles heading her way, the projectiles only had a limited range of fire given the small ports around the lower hovercraft torso. While the guns couldn’t aim very high, they could definitely sweep a row of infantry in seconds.

Pom started using Fleet Cunning Doe to leap through the projectile fire while deflecting most of it with the paralance, she immediately crouched down and looked to be going for the lower right barrier drone again as she closed up the lance. Only for Pom to immediately spring up and damage the upper left floating drone as the bottom right actually moved downward intending to make Pom overshoot it.

“Let me show you why machines are built fast, that they are made to last, so I can be as lazy as I want to be~!” Merak stated with a happy go lucky tone as the upper right arm suddenly bent at an odd angle to spew flames at Peppercat who was trying to get behind the hovercraft machine. Two pipes rose up on the back and fired a blast of metallic chunks in the form of flak. “You’re crazy dance, watching your lance, it’s really quite all amazing to me~!”

Despite not getting directly hit, the pressure of the blast almost sent Peppercat sailing off the roof. She tried to dig her claws into the top of the roof only to find she couldn’t get much purchase, apparently the roof had been heavily armored to survive all of Air Busters attacks and was slick with the water raining from the sky.

“That you’d waste your precious time, exercising all the time, not having to lift a finger is the dream~!” Merak was likely grinning inside the machine, even as the left upper arm fired at Pom as she pulled the paralance free and kicked off. She narrowly avoided the beams as she flipped and opened the paralance up to take the next few beams aimed at her by the lower left arm. “Mechanical might is great, this machine will leave you in such a state, don’t you recognize too late that your loss is already fate~?”

“I-~” Dolly sang as she slid by several projectile from the machine cannons, before popping the board into the air and throwing the stone bone with as much of her momentum power behind the throw as she can. It flew fast and hit ridiculously hard as it damaged the upper left drone again and she avoided a flash of the flamethrowers aimed her by one of the lower arms. “Cannot fry-~.”

“You’ll still be the first to die~!” Several enlarged missiles rained down as Merak continued to hassle them with song while still lazily playing away at his game inside the machine’s body. He was genius enough to be doing all of it at the same time and watching the progress of the fight as well.

“Oh, just you wait and see-~” Dolly growled as she casts ‘Aero’ silently without saying it and suddenly wind barriers rose up swirling around herself, Pom and Peppercat. It was interesting that Dolly had a feel for using magic naturally now without having to voice it. “You may think I’m weak just because I’m somewhat small, then let me give you a lesson… in history-~!”

Pom went on the attack ignoring the physical projectiles as they were deflected away the wind barrier and missed striking the upper left drone with the spear as it hovered out of the way, but that wasn’t her target. She spat a bark buster directly onto the lower left drone, from her perspective, to the right of the Air Buster as she passed over it and it promptly was blown into the ground by the detonating liquid magic.

Peppercat managed to get back into the fight despite being slightly damaged and fired an Electroball Special into the lower right drone, the one to the left of air busters facing. The drone sparked and sputtered and dropped to the ground, it was still projecting the barrier but it was vulnerable.

“Oh the little mutt can sing, so what do you bring to this whole fight, your pathetic little bark and small bite~?” Merak moved to protect the two damaged barrier drones.

“I wouldn’t be talking ‘stuck on the toilet seat boy’ if I were anything quite like you~!” Dolly spun around as she caught the stone bone while popping her board up into the air and threw it again using the centripetal force to add more oomph to the attack, but it wasn’t aimed at anything in particular so Merak let it sail on by. “I’m not the dog you should be messing with and I’m going to be telling you the why and exactly who~!”

Dolly slapped her paws on the ground and several spikes of ice rose up and slammed into the lower hovering barrier drones damaging them, the ice magic got enhanced by the rain. It also stopped the air buster in place surrounding its lower half with ice, even if it wasn’t damaged by the ice magic Dolly just performed.

“So the little dog has a few tricks, here all I thought you had was a bunch of fleas and ticks~!” The lower two arms start melting the ice so that the Air buster could move.

“Oh keep laughing it up rodent boy, while I just keep getting in my licks~!” Dolly stated enraged as a burst of fire erupted around the heavily damaged drone Dolly pointed to, the upper left drone promptly exploded while she was bracing herself behind the skateboard to absorb a spray of machine cannon fire that pushed her towards the edge of the arena again. “Call me Dolly D. of the Dalmatian family, you’d be amazed at the size of my adoptive ancestry tree~!”

The stone bone came in and bounced off the lower right drone destroying it and Dolly used the catching of the bone to do a leaping twirl out of the way of a bombardment of missiles. The dog did so with a stylish twirl that had visible mystical green sparks in the shape of triangles coming off of her body as she spun out of the way of the various explosions.

“You’re so far below my station, so I say farewell to thee~.” The Airbuster, sent blasts of flames as Dolly hopped and started hovering at the flames and pushing back against them by gliding into the jets of flame on purpose.

Several more missiles fired straight up into the portal above the battlefield and several large explosive missiles rained down from the other portals mostly at where Dolly currently was.

With a flash Dolly started glowing white and suddenly zipped out of the way of the missiles that turned and tried to crash into her and she led one into hitting the upper right barrier drone as she flashed by it, using her Counter Rave to evade more than attack.

“What was that missile hitting the barrier drone exactly supposed to do to me~?” Dolly taunted as she finished up her ten high speed dashes, hitting the barrier drones a few times before landing her skateboard.

She used her board to hydroplane around on the roof while avoiding machine cannon fire the nicked at her fur once or twice.

“Yes, well, that was a miscalculation you see, maybe you’re a bigger problem than can be~.” Merak admitted flustered as Pom fired a bark blast that blew up the lower left drone and the one on the upper right move to the left and the lower right floated up to hovering to the left and right side of the Air Buster’s midsection. “I do not truly underestimate my enemies, as you’ll soon see~!”

“All I see is a hiding reclining guy, that this Peppercat is going to stir fry~! Pepper cat avoided the lasers, machine cannon fire as she lit up her right claw and a blade made of electricity formed and she leapt over the burst of flames from the lower two arms to straight at the drone to the left of the Air Buster.

“Sit still, lie down and just die~!” A burst of orange lasers fanned out and curved in every direction from the Air Buster as Peppercat landed a damaging blow on the drone.

Peppercat took some nasty damage to her left shoulder as a laser tore through it. Pom barely avoided the lasers as they slammed into the roof around her and what she didn’t dodge she blocked with the paralance. Dolly got slightly singed, as she continued to move and even actively hopped up to block a few laser blasts to build up some magic.

“Something I kind of wished I could do, but first we need to finish this fight with you~!” Came back Pom as she launched herself forward with her hind legs through another array of twisting and bending lasers, machine cannon fire, raining missiles and brought the paralance down in an overhead strike to smash the drone on the Air Busters right into the ground.

The attack didn’t destroy it and Pom had to quickly evade by doing a leaping roll away from a mass of fire blasted her way, both literal and projectile along with missiles raining from above. She couldn’t dodge it all and after overwhelming her Aero Barrier completely, a few projectiles punctured through all of her legs several times knocking her to the ground.

Even with the wind barriers, the volume of fire coming from the Air Buster was tearing through the projectile redirecting ‘Aero’ barriers that mostly only diverted the physical projectiles. While quite useful for the machine cannon fire, Dolly and Peppercat were not relying entirely on it because they were quite aware the deflection wasn’t perfect or one hundred percent as Pom just showed them.

The bending lasers were barely redirected by the quickly failing wind barriers, but the rain was reducing their overall damage upon hit. At least Pom could effectively dodge almost everything coming at her, Dolly and Peppercat were much slower.

Peppercat moved in to distract Merak from attacking Pom any further with focused fire and tried to destroy the drone to the Air Busters left and was blocked by the lower left arm acting to protect the drone quite easily.

The Digibot Cat was angry, but wasn’t giving into her rage against such a powerful thing after taking such a hit. Peppercat would become more cautious from here on.

While this was happening, Pom was quickly downing a Hi-Potion as quickly as she could, using her wool to even get the potion to her mouth.

“I’m getting quite tired, of this ferret guys quire, let’s call on the big guy of the pyre, I’m going to call on and start getting real by ‘summoning fire’~!” Dolly stopped and clutched at her helmet as the red jewel on it burned brightly.

As an incoming wall of death shot at Dolly, a wall of flames erupted in a circle around her and blocked all the incoming projectiles.

The broadly grinning fire beast Ifrit held his fire axe protectively in front of his summoner as he came out of the flame like a big protective brother. As Ifrit surged forward, Pom launched herself over Dolly.

The Dalmatian grabbed the falling Ether out of the air with a paw thanks to Pom drawing her attention to it mentally.

Quietly thanking Pom, Dolly quickly drank the Ether down to immediately soothe her painful, magically induced, migraine.

The explosions, lasers, hundreds of machine cannon projectiles and fire didn’t do anything to Ifrit. In fact the flamethrowers emboldened the fiery beast that was Ifrit as he lunged forward with a horizontal slash to take out the barrier drone on left, wiping it out in a single swing and he started to attack the other one.

The barrier drone was quickly retreated by the Air Buster as it interposed itself to block Ifrit’s attack without damage, not only that it caught his weapon with its lower arms and then punched him in the face with the upper right arm in a hook that staggered him.

A portion of the lower torso twisted independently of the upper torso and fired a high powered explosive shell that sent Peppercat sprawling as she was going in for another series of attacks. The blast scorched the top of the roof and damaged the nearby staircase.

While this was happening the lasers doggedly followed and bent at Pom who kept dodging them until they ran out of steam or were weak enough that they’d basically do no harm while blocking the ones she could.

The fight wasn’t going swimmingly for Pom, Dolly or Peppercat.

Peppercat had to avoid being blown entirely off the tower as explosions followed after her, at least the small artillery bomb shot from the lower torso had a slow charge up for the powerful outcome. The red cat bots real trouble was the machine cannons trying to chew through her armor.

The Air Buster was dealing with Pom and Peppercat without trying, even Dolly was wary of getting close.

Speaking of Dolly, she was trying to lay low get at the last barrier drone in sight and hoping that Merak didn’t have too many more of the things once it was dealt with. So far the fight was more like a one sided massacre in the lemmings favor.

Even if Ifrit could not currently damage the Air Buster, he could still fend it off and might be able to do some damage when they do eventually bring down the barrier.

Dolly used ice magic to freeze the drone with a snap, it dropped to the ground frozen, but was still producing a barrier.

The Air Buster tried to turn and help unfreeze it when Peppercat lunged forward and jammed her claw through the barrier drones weakened body. She through the sparking machine at the Air Buster where it exploded and the barrier fell immediately.

Ifrit took advantage and slammed the machine with his axe. It actually dealt some damage, but it was only a scratch for how much power Ifrit put into the attack.

“Machines will rule, you guys aren’t cool, you’re barely even standing up me~!” Merak could be heard grinning from his floating chair throne inside the machine. “Those fight further might, want to build up for the fight, now I’ll show you my power alright~!”

The two upper arms went holding themselves straight out, while the lower arms defended and attack Ifrit to keep him and his axe busy.

The upper arms launched off their fist into two small portals that opened up at both sides of the machine, then they flying rocket fists came out several times larger in the much bigger portals above the small ones.

“Say hello to my master plan, a crazy and master hand, I’ve still got more to throw at you~!” Both the large fist clenched and one slapped Ifrit across the arena to the point that half his upper torso was hanging off the side of the building. The other fired lasers at varying angles as it pointed in Pom and Peppercat’s direct. “Machines for everything grand, machines for every plan, there’s no way you can’t see my genius and…”

The lower torso was focusing machine cannon fire and the short range artillery bombs on Dolly. The lower arms on the upper torso was trying to tag Pom as she bouncing left and right towards the Air Buster trying to wind up for a massive upwards swing.

“Oh shut up why don’t you~!” Dolly braved the machine cannon fire with her board and then managed to stand up to the pummeling projectiles long enough to start a Counter Rave where she avoided getting smashed by a big palm of the left giant mechanical hand.

Dolly smacked the lower arms and the fists on them several times with her board as she flashed past them and then quickly glided off and away as the flying giant mechanical left hand gave chase to her while firing it’s finger lasers.

The giant flying right mechanical hand tried to grasp Peppercat and she ran away avoiding getting crushed by the intimidating massive metal mitt. She frantically dodged as it tried to grab her, smash her and fire massive artillery shells at her.

Pom managed to get below the front of the machine’s blaring red eye staring down on her, with gritted teeth the ewe used all the wool on the rear half of her body to spring upwards. She wasn’t relying on her physical muscles for the following swing and the blow she landed actually knocked the upper torso backwards so hard that the singular red eye was looking to the sky.

Kicking off the chest and back flipping while opening the paralance, Pom managed to fend off the retaliatory flamethrowers. Only for the two upper limbs, the ones the now giant hands used to be attached to, both turned forward and started glowing and were aimed at either side of Pom.

Pom was confused as to why they weren’t aimed at her, but then she realized that the machine hadn’t fired its small bending orange lasers for a bit. Her eyes widened as two brilliant blue beams fired off to either side of her, then a number of beams came out of the two large beams directly at Pom from both sides, they started criss crossing as she quickly dodged backwards as numerous beams passed between the two constant beams that didn’t extend too far beyond the roof.

It didn’t take long for Pom to realize she was going to back off the roof entirely… not that it’d be a problem for her and leapt off the edge and yanked herself to the extended edges of the roof with a bit of wire wool action. Once the beams ended she clambered back up and saw Ifrit slamming his axe up into the flying left fist and saw Peppercat was in trouble with the flying right fist.

Pom quickly sprang towards Peppercat and managed to tackle her out of the path of a spread missiles she had missed coming for her while the large right hand was trying to crush her with its fingers.

Managing to block the missiles, Pom tried to roll away from the hand flying up and slapping down against the roof.

While Pom managed to successfully avoid getting directly hit, the force of the impact sent her flailing into the air from the shockwave. The fist immediately reoriented rocketed up into her and sent her flailing, spiraling into the roof where her wool reflexively covered her whole body. If it hadn’t she would have smashed her face in.

Pom quickly rolled onto her hooves and immediately sprang away as several lasers blasted the roof where she just was and started giving chase as missiles, orange bending lasers and more machine cannon fire was blasting at her.

Dolly was trying to figure out what to do, should she summon ice? Should she attack the giant mechanical hands or the main body which was quite well armored and a skateboard definitely wasn’t going to literally cut through metal that thick. She mostly stayed close to Ifrit and couldn’t think of much to help him with the giant flying mechanical hand. She was actually getting too terrified to do anything other than protect herself or evade, alongside occasionally throwing the stone bone to do some safe damage at a distance.

Peppercat was the one actually clocking some damage on the main torso while clambering on the lower torso, she was trying to avoid the flame throwers, the splitting shoulder lasers that could turn at a ninety degree angle in varying portions at a time, the lower arms and the many arcing orange lasers along with the various artillery missiles that were fired into the portals and redirected around the Air Buster as needed.

It didn’t help that machine cannon fire was being redirected at them from the portals and any that hit the Air Buster basically did nothing to its armor.

The red cat watched as Pom came in and jammed her spear into the side and avoided the lasers that followed after her, the Air Buster was apparently built with being impervious to its own lasers in mind or it was just built to be that ridiculously tough. Even if the Paralance did some damage, the armor stood up to the impact fairly well against the mysterious weapon.

Both Peppercat and Pom, who swiftly pulled the lance free, quickly ran together as the giant flying right fist came after them both along with the Air Buster itself. In the background the other fist could be hitting Ifrit harshly.

“Is this your best, where are the rest, I thought there were more of you lot~!” Sang Merak as he continued to only use portals to assist the projectile spewing machine that didn’t seem to stop to cycle ammunition and likely didn’t need to at the rate it was going. “How can I show I’m superior, when there is nothing but the biological inferior, I’ve yet to really have to try here~!”

“Survive to the last, we need some help fast, we can’t take more of his laser salvo~!” As Pom sang this, she noticed that the flying mechanical fist started gang up on Ifrit while the Air Buster started focusing on her, Dolly and Peppercat. “Dodging left and right, is this even a real fight, we need to survive and I could use some aloe~!”

“Getting knocked around is no fun, we’re on the run, my parts are failing~!” Peppercat was thrown a hi-potion by Pom and the digibot the liquids against her body and it started repairing the damage as she ran, leapt and dodge through the projectile hell.

“Well-, it seems like you will all fail~!” One of the massive mechanical hands separated from Ifrit and rammed Pom into the roof and only her wool was preventing her from being crushed. “Starting with you, you’re all through, I’ve had plenty of fun, but this time ewe, you are done~!”

Dolly was quickly attacking the left mechanical hand to try and save Pom, as Ifrit was kept at bay by the right hand. Peppercat was kept away by the Air Buster properly, there was so much death coming from one machine that Peppercat couldn’t get over to the hand free Pom from where she was pinned.

Pom was struggling under the massive mechanical hand that was using its jet to keep her pressured against the roof. She tried to use a bark breaker and it didn’t work as apparently the giant mechanical hands, detached or not, had the same protections as The Arsenal. It wouldn’t be hard to infer that the Air Buster had those protections as well.

They heard a shout and saw Peppercat almost go sliding off the roof and she clutched onto the slippery edge with rain water threatening to drop her off the side, that wasn’t the problem what was is that the Air Buster made its way over to Pom and Dolly unhindered.

It raised the left arm and tried to smash down on Dolly and then ignited flames at her trying to force her away from helping Pom.

Dolly narrowed her eyes and stayed firmly next to her friend and stood her ground.

“Oh screw the horse you road in on big mac, there’s no way I’m letting you get off your next attack, so help me I’m not moving back~!” Stated Dolly as she brandished her board and bone while standing in front of Dolly.

“Then this is the part where you finally die for the power to defeat me you certainly lack~!” The chest opened up and a massive buildup of energy could be seen in the chest aimed at them.

Pom recognized the diffusion beam from The Arsenal, she mentally contacted Dormarch and got a status report.

It was not looking good, Dormarch was quite busy and the two other teams were swamped with EPs, but they had at least located the computers to access the plate drop and mako reactor detonations.

Pom heard shouting in her ear from Ocellus to do something or at least try anything from the slightly battered visor, this one was made with Pom in mind by Welch.

The beam was about to fire from the Air Buster and lightning lit up the dark sky and Pom was going to die here wet and miserable… and Dolly was planning to bravely go with her.

Pom looked up above Air Buster and blinked as a massive amount of energy began gathering incredibly fast, a massive bolt from the dark slammed down on top of the Air Busters chest and threw off the diffusion beam. Said beam knocked the massive mechanical hand away and the sky was partially parted by the massive beam, for about five seconds.

A wide eyed Pom and Dolly watched as the large mechanical hand reoriented itself in the air and went into an idle hover, looking only badly damaged across the top of it where the diffusion beam struck it. It was still quite viable for combat as far as Pom could tell.

The Air Buster had definitely taken some damage from that seemingly sporadic lightning bolt as it currently wasn't attacking at the moment.

“What the freak, it’s that little pipsqueak, how the hell did that thing even get near, how did he even survive the explosions that he flew into to even end up all the way up here~?!” On the ground in front of Pom and Dolly was a bloated, sickly looking, Lit.

“Squeurrrgghhhh…” Lit looked quite unnaturally round and was gurgling painfully. Despite having little idea of what was going on, he knew Dolly and Pom were in trouble and thus he showed up to save the day like a little hero.

This was despite Lit feeling incredibly sick to his stomach… the little bug Pokémon finally admitted that maybe he had gotten a little bit too greedy for energy and finally decided to maybe do what his body has been telling him all along since he went nuts with power.

“Bleargeeaakkkagaggggh!” They all stared as a yellow orb came out of Lit’s body in a disturbing manner and his sickly form looked so much better afterwards and returned to normal size, all four of his little blue eyes twitch badly.

At least the little guy was still alive… if not feeling particularly fond of consuming stupidly powerful sources of energy all of the sudden. If the reasons weren’t obvious, Lit learned a lesson the lesson the hard way. All that was energy was not always a happy stomach.

It was around the time that they collected their thoughts that the temporarily disabled Air Buster finally managed to get back in gear after the massive blow that left a large scorch mark on the front of its whole body.

Dolly dove for the materia Lit just spewed up and Pom quickly scooped Lit up with a hoof and they both dodged in the opposite direction to avoid the splitter shoulder cannon fire from the Air Buster and the subsequent ninety degree outward splitting off the main beams in their direction. This along with more raining missiles, a barrage of wildly curving orange lasers and it even added electrical energy pulses.

“Squeee…” Lit whined pitifully as Pom stuck him safely to her wool and kept moving.

Once Lit was ready to help more, Pom would welcome his tiny assistance in not dying here completely drenched and miserable fighting a death machine on a roof that she could barely damage even when its barrier was down. It didn’t help that said machine also launched off its upper hands and turned them into giant attack fists.

Dolly quickly slotted the yellow sparking materia into her helmet and figured lighting was good against machines right? At least that’s what Cumin Kitten seemed to show when she shocked her way through a lot of drones, crawlers and other mechanical enemies. Well she assumed it was lightning and hoped she could learn how to use it before the battle got any worse for them, Jerkak had yet to throw his air forces guarding the tower at them.

The Dalmatian was quite happy to see Lit and that he was alright after looking so sickly. Dolly made a note to herself that no matter how much materia looked like candy, it wasn’t safe to eat and obviously couldn’t be digested no matter how much you tried... to think she was wondering if the ice materia tasted like snow cones.

Author's Note

Sorry I've been taking a break and playing some Monster Hunter...

Bazelguese really needs to stop ambushing me, it doesn't end well for it.

So yes, Merak is not really doing much aside from using portals and a modified Air Buster, but he's able to hold off Ifrit, Pom, Dolly and Peppercat without much trouble.

Lit's back... but he's not quite up to fighting right now.