-Equus, Airship Mauled, Jaded-

“I don’t know what Silvers is going to grow up to be, but they will always be my bright little chimera. I can assure you of that.” I stated as I held my curled up mixed species chimera daughters close to my chest, they weren’t very responsive at the moment given they were sleepy and comfortable.

I was cuddling them slowly into a nap, hoping Jacky didn’t crash through a window, get blown up nearby or somehow got covered in batter and then fried by Flamberge by accident… for the fourth time.

My adoptive sister Jacky Blackcap Chickadee was lucky in some ways, but in others she was so outrageously unlucky it was a wonder that she was even alive or even managed to keep her head feathers as long as they were.

“… What do you do for a job again?” Lingo asked.

“Mercenary work and ‘security’ consultant.” I said pleasantly. “I’m also a part-time worker for my mother when she needs me… I can’t actually copy her witch based cooking skills, but I do pretty decent when it comes to food. I’m good with various fish dishes at the very least… given she is always making fish jerky… so much fish jerky… if a Pegasus or Thestral Pony ever needed meat then this is a good place to get some for almost free.”

To prove my point Lingo and I watched as Drip passed by chewing on a bit of fish jerky.

“Can you say the word, security, without the odd emphasis?” The bat pony Lingo stated while crossing his front legs on the table and quirking his left eye at me, he was a very good linguistics teacher and he noticed my problem immediately.

“Of course I can say ‘security’ without the odd emphasis… ‘security’…. ‘security’… ‘sec-‘ ‘u’ ’-rity’… okay Lingo I might have a problem. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” I said with a slight bit of worry coming into my voice. Even thinking it added the air quotes emphasis on “security”, and wasn’t that quite an odd thing to notice.

“You can’t actually say that word normally anymore can you?” Lingo stated flatly.

“Nope, I certainly can’t.” I answered honestly, given I’m very good at subverting ‘security’ systems mundane, magical and technological while dodging ‘security’ guards. Sure my Ogres and Oubliettes character dies so often that I’m surprised I’m still alive, while being multi-classed as a Rogue and Sun Priestess self. Reality and games are two entirely different things and thankfully I had tenure as a Sun Priest, even if that didn’t mean much aside from having a long lasting friendship with Celestia who somehow forgave me for the whole Bennu thing. “It’s like how I can’t look at a cake without thinking of the war crimes I’ve committed… so when do you think my daughters will be ready to learn how to talk?”

“Aren’t they still a bit young for that?” Well Lingo my daughters had three minds in one and so far they should be learning to talk soon, since they had recognition of many things… and had somehow potty trained themselves. While my family is grateful for it, we were utterly confused as to how they figured it out. Goodness knows Fizzy and Maries didn’t teach them that and I didn’t either, mom might be a fun grandma, but she didn’t teach them it either and no one I knew taught them so they must have learned to do it themselves. I might be running into danger for Pom soon so… I would at least want to hear them say ‘mom’, ‘momma’ or ‘mommy’ before I ran off to save someone I liked to tease.

“Yeah, but you’ve see how fast Maries is when it comes to thinking things through, they’ve got triple the processing power so they should be fairly smart already and getting close to talking.” Three heads are not always better than one, especially when they aren’t all working together. When you have the combined brain power like Maries and can work together with that, you are slightly more capable than most. “I’m almost expecting it any day… eventually our little wonder is going to stop growling and breathing fire haphazardly, then they will actually start speaking. So how are things going with Macaroni?”

“Can’t complain, we’re trying for foals of our own.” Sometimes people wondered what it was like for Lingo to have to deal with cheese and noodles all the time as Mac’s specialty. “Two stallions on one lady can be a bit much. Anyway, I’d give it five days before your little wonder can start vocalizing, and please don’t shoot the messenger here Jaded, it’ll be a while without them sounding like a wild animal.”

“That’s okay, I’ll only come after you if you absolutely intended insult. Insult me as much as you want, but insult Silvers near and all they’ll find will be teeth depending on the severity of the insult.” Interestingly, Mac’s cutie mark ability of cooking perfect macaroni and cheese didn’t just translate into only cooking macaroni, but encompassed cooking anything with noodles or cheese in it separately or together.

Macaroni really does make a mean vegetable lasagna, but that wouldn’t be as good an example as Huoshan style noodle dishes without cheese or any dish with cheese in its make like cheesecake. Mac usually asks me to pick up a few recipes that might interest her, like pasta salad while I was out and about.

-Moon Cell, Inner Realm, Desert of Devastation, two digital time days later, Castle Alexander, Dormarch-

We have managed to recover all personnel from Grabber tongue bites and the various other injuries we’ve suffered. We also haven’t been able to continue any further forward… we were kind of locked in a stalemate position in our corner funneling enemies for more than twenty four digital hours straight… constantly and without pause.

PLANTs certainly couldn’t keep up with the numbers we were destroying, this was all Moon Cell’s doing.

The people of Aurora that weren’t combatants were still very helpful, medically speaking, even if they weren’t holding back the constant tide of imminent death that was the EPs.

I was worried about relying on the Dubwool, Wooloo, Toxel, Toxtricity, Whismur, Loudred and Explouds… but apparently I didn’t need to worry as they could deal with aerial and ground threats in equal measures. The only problem they had was those nasty Grabbers, otherwise Round, Boom Burst and Uproar were a constant set of moves being used on the defensive line while we set up constant bombardments so that those among us who need sleep can finally get some rest.

We would have to eventually do something absolutely volatile to break the stalemate, one that will end with us losing if we didn’t for a variety of reasons. Ransei and the Digital world were probably doing better than we were at the moment. Taking the brunt of hundreds of thousands of EPs constantly… at this point I’d estimate we’ve destroyed approximately a million EPs over the last two digital days.

Thinking of the endless hordes, Archer Seraphs finally made a comeback as an aerial threat and would be more dangerous if they weren’t as susceptible to sound blasting as any of the other EPs were. We needed a comparable Archer based EP that could also fly naturally, but we would naturally want a more durable unit than the Seraphs. Our Rider Zealots were effectively handling the air assaults we’ve been getting.

I had asked Geoff how he got here, but he said he didn’t know how he did it, but he broke into the reverse world of the local Pokémon space and used that to backdoor into this realm as apparently Moon Cell has a physical presence in the Pokémon world’s reality for what he did to even work. Of course his explanation really didn’t explain much aside from entering a distorted dimension by force and then exiting it, also by force somehow, right on top of us.

Apparently Arceus sends his regards, because he knew we were in trouble and sent help in the form of a cleric he was somewhat in contact with. That cleric was unfortunately Geoff, who has proven himself to be quite competent several times over… now if only he’d stop hitting on my mother.

Cuddlestares Skvader forces were supporting us as much as carrying in supplies we couldn’t naturally generate ourselves. Hi-potions were very popular Midgar item as were Ethers for Pom, Dolly and Ocellus.

I know all Wooloo were perverts, no exceptions except for those who were highly closeted, but did they have to be so persistent about it?

At some point Cleric Geoff had to have broken reality twice to even be here. Not only that, but he brought a lot of much needed reinforcements from the Kingdom of Aurora. Not all the Pokémon in Aurora, but the supporting forces we needed.

Pristi the recently evolved Altaria and Picochi the recently evolved Cincccino, the cleaning combatants who fought over who could clean more helped clear up a lot of the damage for Bidoof and Bibarel workers to get to things repaired over the course of the first twenty four digital hours they showed up.

They evolved at the same time in an accident involving Picochi’s evolution item, called a ‘shiny stone’, and were still as combatively clean as ever… though watching a cloudy dragon bird and an overly tidy mouse flirt was always going to be a little weird.

The Rockruff Brothers or as they were known now, the Lycanroc Brothers, were a powerful addition to our combat capable forces. They broke a number of Moon Cell’s Mystery Dungeon anchors and were now veterans in dealing with EPs. Dolly, mom and I only delved one Mystery Dungeon… I can’t imagine doing that multiple times, much less surviving it long enough to give Moon Cell a black eye the way those three had by dealing with more than half of Aurora’s Moon Cell Mystery Dungeon anchors themselves.

We now had fully working baths thanks to Eriflamb the Braixen. He wasn’t a skilled combatant, but his control over fire had increased by leaps and bounds and he uses a particularly nice looking stick as a focus for his fire abilities. If we needed a warm bath we just had to ask him for help, it felt nice to have at least we didn’t have to heat up an entire cauldron anymore.

One of the few problems that Castle Alexander had before was that we didn’t have normal heated plumbing, yes we had some plumbing without hot water. Plumbing wasn’t exactly the most important thing to focus on when you were fighting for your life and all the lives of two worlds, but we did have the capability to heat up cauldrons with weak flames.

Miltanks were helpful with injuries and medical care, they weren’t any Chansey among the healers that joined Geoff apparently, but they could do in quite a pinch once they knew what they were doing.

I’m still kind of the designated doctor here for many obvious reasons, I couldn’t be risked on the battle front even if I had good combat capabilities.

We were doing pretty well on the front lines, for breaking even that is. We can’t actually press Moon Cell’s core… we didn’t have nearly enough of an offensive force to challenge it entirely unless we wanted to fight while surrounded.

Again, the EP tides had been nigh endless in a constant stream coming at us the entire time. It was to the point we could barely get any sleep to the sound of Castle Alexander and multiple missile trucks constantly bombarding the hordes. The Blumebears were at least dealing with aerial and ground threats in equal measure with their high volume of fire.

After taking out the Zu we didn’t have as much trouble holding our shaky position, though Moon Cell had upped the aerial assaults with Archer Seraphs, Moon Cell Watchers and Heli-troopers afterwards. Moon Cell was working under limitations, it was hard to imagine how limited it actually was with all of its fantastical powerful capabilities seen thus far.

If you were wondering why we didn’t just fly straight for Moon Cells core after defeating the Zu and tried to rush into it… well the first problem is that we’d be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Enemy Programs trying to drop off a small team to get inside. The EPs were quite densely packed and we couldn’t push through the thousands of enemies in our way, but we could hold them off indefinitely until we were read to do such a thing.

If we crashed Castle Alexander into Moon Cell, and we weren’t guaranteed to destroy it, then we’d be surrounded and slowly being worn down to death. At least here in a corner of the realm we could funnel the enemy ground forces, while sporadically dealing with air assaults with relative ease. The composition of the enemy forces varied wildly as Moon Cell kept trying to find a curve ball to throw at us that we couldn’t handle.

We’ve taken a few aerial attacks from the sides, but our production capability had gone way up since the Bidoof and Bibarel joined Welch’s manufacturing section of Castle Alexander.

This meant we’ve quickly recovered our losses as far as rocket trucks, magitek armors and skein flyers were concerned and the castles artillery was firing full speed near constantly now. The Blumebears were useful, but the Grabbers kept sinking them in the sand… at least the Magitek Armors were quick and powerful enough to fly out of sand traps whereas the Blumbears were doomed as soon as they got caught up in said traps. We tended to keep the missile trucks far away from the Grabbers as much as possible.

Skein Flyers were able to be used by any AP or any one, they were really so simple that even Lit could fly one with some difficulty and some webbing.

Now mom was in talks with trying to figure out how to press forward, when doing so on the ground was just as bad with trying to do it from the air. Aside from Peppercat we were lucky to have not suffered a living casualties in a permanent fashion. That isn’t to say our injuries hasn’t been horrible, but I’ve been mostly on top of that as one of the few medical professionals around.

The APs casualties were enormous since we first started generating them, after Cait Sith finished giving us some much needed efficiency upgrades they were more capable in their specialized capabilities. The APs on our side, when properly supplied in the case of the Rider Zealots, still weren’t capable of dealing with the sheer numbers we were facing. In fact Cait Sith’s upgrades were the only reasons our APs lasted as long as they could on the battlefield, they were being taken out much faster before the upgrades.

In the midst of all this we’ve been picking up stray data and have completely discerned Moon Cell’s purpose as a recorder of civilizations, how they rise and how they fell… usually they fell to a Moon Cell summoned Velber unit if they became too powerful.

At least I’m glad to know Moon Cell was never the direct cause of the apocalypses that occurred prior to this current battle. That would be a Velber unit’s job when it deploys Anti-Cells, which is called by Moon Cell and the only why we even had a chance to begin with as neither of those things were around. That there was implied to be more than one of these stupidly powerful omnicidal computers in existence was quite a terrifying thought, what was even more so is that they usually had access to more than one apocalypse causing Velber for them to wield at any given time from an ancient alien civilization just waiting to destroy everything even remotely related to ‘civilization’ on call.

It caused plenty of nightmares among those who understood what it meant, even if we had never seen a Velber… we kind of figured an Anti-Cell would be like the servants we have been facing.

Still, the concerted effort to kill off both the Digital realm and the Pokémon realm was horrifying that Moon Cell could still even manage to be this much of an apocalyptic threat even without a Velber or Anti-Cells. Even Gilgamesh, the Hoopa one, would have had major problems with destroying it.

We’ve come this far, we had to destroy Moon Cell’s core and take down the artificial intelligence there, however we didn’t know what would happen if we actually caused a full system crash while we were inside Moon Cell. At least once we finished dealing with Moon Cell, we just needed to figure out things from there, like how to help the NPCs like Cait Sith that have been under Moon Cell’s control for so long. All easier said than could be accomplished in a timely manner.

“Ocellus…” I stated flatly as I walked up to the love eating bug, I tried to keep my tone professional. “How’s the meeting going?”

“Jeanne, Pom, Canard, the head Gazimon, Artoria and Quetal are all still trying to come up with an idea about how to move forward.” Considering we were basically pinned in place, that wasn’t all too bad Ocellus. “Also Pom told me to keep Geoff away from the meeting, can’t imagine why.”

“Oh good, you’re getting pretty decent at understanding sarcasm and how to use it.” While we couldn’t stay here forever, we could hold out indefinitely with the help of the reinforcements from Aurora.

“Thank you, that’s actually a considerable compliment given how literal minded my people can get.” Ocellus would never be my favorite being, but she was trying to make amends between us and wasn’t actively trying to be hostile. “Peas ‘in a can’ pie just doesn’t work like we thought it would… we only later learned what peacans were… also peacans in a can pie didn’t work so well either.”

For mom’s sake I was willing to swallow my anger towards Ocellus, but I would be keeping our relationship strictly professional at the moment and might be willing to be friendly again. She did help with sending people to cover me while I worked to save our taking of the Midgar realm.

“So what’s the plan?” I snorted slightly at the image of a metal can filled with peacans surrounded by pie crust.

“It’s going to be a forward push into the crystal maze fields, then we spread out and attack from there, using Castle Alexander as a base. We might have to retreat when we are capable of movement depending how the situation goes.” Ocellus looked a little uneasy. “We’re going to fly Castle Alexander over to near Moon Cell’s core and then we’re going to drop the biggest Divine Judgement Castle Alexander has ever done, we’re going to clean ourselves of energy doing it too. After we hit the ground, we deploy our ground forces and try to fight a group towards the core.”

“Before that we’ll probably deploy aerial forces and try to fight through Moon Cell’s aerial units… what are the chances I can be in the battle?” I asked.

“Pretty good actually, everyone is going to be fighting, even Torneko’s mercenary defense unit will try to keep the EPs out of the castle. We’re having Blumebears with Torneko mines to deal with the grabbers and create a perimeter around Castle Alexander.” Well that sounded like an improvement on the Blumebear design Ocellus. “We’re going to be protecting ourselves from all sides all at once. We need every able bodied combatant we can get. We only have three partnered Digimon, which means Dazzle, Canard and Pom are going for the core since a digimon has the best chance at breaking or destroying Moon Cell. Everyone else will hold off the enemy as long as they can.”

“We’re probably going to need reinforcements, what are the chances that the rest of Ransei will get or the digital realm will get here in time?” I asked.

“We don’t know, we might get help from Ransei and the digital realm if we take up all of Moon Cell’s deployable forces. It might give any extra allies we can get the chance to somehow show up like Geoff did.” Ocellus paused and looked thoughtful. “All we’re doing right now is hashing out the logistics. This is going to be quite the fight… and the servants will be on Pom immediately as soon as she takes the battlefield and Moon Cell will be gunning for her with everything it has. Which is why she’s going to be the first one on the field to draw our enemies ire.”

“When does this battle plan start?” Suddenly the castle shook and it started rising into the air.

“Right now.” Ocellus said quietly. “I hope everyone is ready.”

With that Ocellus quickly made her way for the control room of Castle Alexander as the castle itself announced what we were doing.

“This is Castle Alexander. All aerial combat units, prepare for combat.” We didn’t hear Alexander talk much, but when we did it was usually underselling the oncoming trouble we were about to be facing. “The plan is to perform a hot drop into enemy lines, all must fight or we may not survive this battle.”

I nodded to myself.

None of the three main combat digimon in our combat forces had hit Mega level… arguably this is probably the fastest any Digital Destined had raised their Digimon to the strength of Ultimate. Mega was just a step into the beyond, raw power incarnate if I’m understanding what my next evolution might be… I had a feeling mine was going to be ‘BIG’. Like comparable to Wargrowlmon’s giant kaiju cyborg sized big or even bigger.

Mom really didn’t want me to grow up too fast, but it was a little late for that… even if I was still going to be her puppy.

If we needed a Mega level threat on the battlefield, then I can think of none better than Sami, Frizzle or myself hitting that threshold and then helping bring home the battle for our side. Going beyond ultimate… could we do it under the duress we’ve been under?

Sami has been a lot lighter on her feet since transforming into Cargodramon, Frizzle was a raw powerhouse as Wargrowlmon and I’ve been a key helper in fighting as Garummon.

The three of us have all been stressed to our limits and yet we could still go further… we had to. I wanted to become a powerful monster if to protect my mother from everything, which includes herself. The Gazimon couldn’t evolve as fast, but they were already setting up the small turrets on the walls and ready to get into it along with Zealot Riders taking off in Flying Magitek Armor and Skein Flyers.

The Jet Magitek Armor, which was field tested by Dolly before she crashed, were also taking off and flying circles around the flying castle as we moved forward over the ground bound swarms of EPs below.

I felt mom calling for me and I ran up to her side where Dolly was already waiting as well.

“So I’m thinking Aeroga and then immediately downing several Ethers… give us a bit of an edge at the start of the battle.” Dolly said as I approached.

“Save your strength Dolly, this… this is going to be a thing.” Mom said as she started ahead at us approaching the large cube shaped nexus with Moon Cell’s core inside. Most of her legs covered a beautiful golden wool, I would say it looked pretty if mom wasn’t completely upset that her wool was changing color and that it was leading to an imminent death for her. “I’m likely to be at the front of fighting multiple servants at once, we’re all going to need to pace ourselves and I’ve been pretty bad about achieving an even pacing.”

“We’ll be right beside you Pom.” Canard called out as he and Sami moved up next to us.

“Never wanted to be a hero, just wanted a quiet life of singing and dancing.” Dazzle stated forlornly and Frizzle patted her on the back, I remember when Frizzle came in bleeding data from every orifice. Nice to see Frizzle has recovered in that time. “Actually having friends… didn’t know it would all lead to this.”

“We’re to not let anyone in the castle, Artoria and Mash are protecting the throne directly with Fou.” Mom was still a bit iffy on Fou being so tame around Mash. “We are to stop any enemies from getting by us until Castle Alexander launches its Divine Judgment attack, once that happens everyone brace for falling out of the air and into the sands in the middle of the crystal maze. From there we’ll fight our way towards the nexus and try to get through the defenses. Does everyone know what they are doing?”

There was a lot of acknowledgements that we all knew our parts… I was to be in the main forward team with mom and Dolly. Speaking of… where was… oh… Dolly had a Metal Hound 004 now, another jet model.

“Ah, yeah, let’s do this thing woo!” Dolly ‘the ever optimistic’ Danger Dalmatian everyone. I watched as the Magitek Armor pumped a claw as it stood tall before moving forward on said claws and legs like it was walking on all fours. “Also if you need a moment to rest I’ve got room in here for Dormarch and you Pom, maybe others if you want me to pick up and drop off people at the castle.”

-Moon Cell-

Having run the calculations… the enemy was making its move now.

Curiously the chances of victory was at exactly fifty percent… and dropping rapidly the closer the ewe got to the core.

That was just the calculations for the ewe as a threat, none of the other things that would drop the percentage were even factored in yet.

Moon Cancer Class servant BB had to succeed with her summoned servants, for if she didn’t… then that would be trouble.

-Castle Alexander (The Counter Invasion Force) vs. Moon Cell Nexus (With core inside, no chocolate though). Music: Corneria, from Starfox-

The battle started with Castle Alexander leaving an AP force fighting on the ground as it rose into the air and folded up into flight mode before it started forward while picking up speed, it was already charging its Divine Judgement attack. The biggest Divine Judgement it will ever probably do in the war if it got the chance.

The AP force would quickly perish, but they would still fight to the very last. Their defeat would free up Castle Alexander’s summoning capacity. Castle Alexander could approximately field two hundred Rider Zealots at once, slightly less if Dragoon upgrades were involved.

Most of the current forces were Rider Zealots or a myriad of defense involving the other APs available, Copen had brought up the possibility of creating a Gunner type Allie Program to round out their forces. The slayer dragon had thrown in his lot with those fighting against a very powerful machine and with his aid in the situation came Lola the battle pod.

Copen stood at the top of Castle Alexander as wind whipped past his face as he gripped his gun and glared at the incoming aerial assault forced, if the enemy forces still had had the Zu or Moby Dick then this forward flying assault would not even be viable in the slightest.

Lola looked to him and then looked forward as a number of battle pods like her, formed up and started firing lasers or using hard light projections to attack the various incoming enemies. They were better than the Moon Cell Watchers in speed at the very least and avoided the numerous energy beams, bullets and explosives that now slammed into Castle Alexander from all sides and below.

When the incoming flying EPs got close to actually boarding Castle Alexander, with said castle in the middle of charging one last Divine Judgment attack as it flew forth in an attempt to overload Moon Cell’s ability to field a combat force, it unloaded every available ranged projectile and or combat vehicle it could in all directions.

APs in Magitek Armor, on Skein Flyers, Missile trucks firing from within the walls, the mini-turrets that the Gazimon used back in lower city Midgar, they were using everything available to them to pressure Moon Cell into focusing all its efforts on keeping Pom away from it.

Even Dolly took to the skies in the Metal Hound 004 immediately firing everything the walking mech had into the swarms coming for them. Pom gave her the okay to do so as long as she was more careful than what happened during their ill-fated rush assault prior to this mess and the crash that injured her prior to Aurora’s militia medical aid forces showing up.

The air around Castle Alexander quickly became chaos and Pom sat down in the middle of the courtyard to breathe deeply and meditate slightly before she had to take action, she calmly petted Dormarch and his three wagging tails were soon interrupted by Brute being dropped within the fortress walls by the Archer Seraph.

Pom was immediately up and was charging the several brutes alongside Jeanne, with the unique Caerbannog known as Snake priming a holy grenade behind them and acting in support of the two.

More Eps were being dropped into the courtyard by teams of Archer Seraph carrying enemy forces through the air screen as Castle Alexander flew forward without stopping, the aerial defenses around Castle Alexander were all completely busy at the moment.

Hundreds of EPs fell, but more kept coming. Eventually Geoff and specifically the Wooloo joined the courtyard defenses with singing Rounds in units of six each, with the one Muk in particular assisting in his own way under Geoffs unit.

Dubwool, Loudred, Whismur and Explouds were all being held in reserve for when Castle Alexander hit the ground and were currently behind most of the internal defenses. After that they would go out and put up a sound barrier using the move Uproar or use Round to fend off straggler EPs for the assault on Moon Cell after ‘The Divine Judgment’ goes off and to set up defenses for the long haul that was coming.

The Toxtricity Bards were going to be assisting Pom on the frontal assault and were simply waiting in the castle strumming their chest muscle bands waiting to get into the fight once they knew there was a fight to be had. With Toxels being the shock troopers for the larger more evolved Toxtricity.

That was the plan at the very least as Castle Alexander was swarmed and taking lots of damage from all sides by aerial EPs. They had to actually make it to that point to actively have any chance at a direct assault.

Without the Zu to turn Castle Alexander around, Moon Cell was having problems stopping Castle Alexander from getting closer even as it was taking a lot of damage despite the shields the Rider Zealot piloting the flying fortress kept coming back up. Moon Cell was throwing enough firepower at the flying fortress that it was a surprise that Castle Alexander was toughing it out even when the shields failed.

Moon Cell was even fielding all kinds of EPs that have never been seen before, like harpies, monstrous electric flying squirrels that can actually fly, aerial transports of alien make that looked like horseshoes that dropped goofy turtle like EPs all over the castle and more bizarre things like large bug like birds.

Everything and the kitchen sink was being thrown at Castle Alexander and the thing is, it was actually working in slowing down the castles forward momentum and yet it was still going.

Even if it was looking bad for Castle Alexander there were heroes fighting in various points throughout the defenses.

Gazimon were using the small turrets to shred through Archer Seraphs to stop them from dropping EPs into the embattled courtyard of the castle or tried to attack the odd transports.

Dolly was blasting through the air at full speed and avoiding tons of incoming fire, the EPs definitely recognized her piloting style from last time and were trying to stop her from clearing a path for Castle Alexander as brutal dogfights took place around the castles air space.

The guns on the Metal Hound 004 were blazing away as fast as they could tearing through an uncountable number of targets that just kept coming, Dolly was prioritizing the Moon Cell Watcher above all else as their lasers were doing the most damage to Castle Alexander.

Dolly rolled out of the way of some shots from behind as a number of Watchers started chasing her as one of Pom’s familiars she was a target of opportunity as much as Pom was. She swept back towards Castle Alexander for repairs as the jet wings the Magitek Armor was equipped with took a bad hit.

Skein Flyers fell by the dozens, the Bidoof were busy little beaver things that kept the production up with the demand and building was something they lived for.

Any Magitek Armor that fell down to the ground or got shot out of the air and kept battling through the hordes of EPs on the ground, were always eventually swarmed over and consumed by a literal sea of enemies below Castle Alexander. Dolly would eject and take to the sky on her board if it came to it, but until then she was the ace pilot of the aerial forces at the moment and thought it akin to playing a video game, one with deadly and lethal consequences.

Ocellus was orchestrating the battle from the command room asking, but not telling the APs to move to positions she thought would keep up their defenses as the castle was being blasted and started to fall into ruin.

Smolder had an eye on the courtyard and various entrances while Ocellus was trying to keep an eye on the big picture.

A lot of Wooloo were getting injured… but that was okay, the Wooloo enjoyed it and any injury to them was more comical than serious.

Copen was rocketing through the sky on his jetpack and focusing down the Archer Seraph trying to drop heavier EPs onto the flying castle, he blazed through the sky showing his prowess against Moby Dick hadn’t been a fluke as she was defending an entire sector of airspace around Castle Alexander, mostly all by himself.

A blade of energy shot forth form one of the castles walls, Artoria wasn’t sitting back in the battle and was wielding her sword Excalibur to cleave endless number of enemies out of the air. Like Copen the sword wielding blue canine was an ace at protecting an entire sector.

Mash was protecting the rear with a small force, but that was only against enemies that were swing around behind the castle to attack its relatively unprotected backside on the flying dog shaped fortresses by coming up its tail.

“Ocellus, are we around to being over the approximate crystal maze point yet?” Pom asked after smashing her way through an Assassin Reaper.

Moon Cell really wanted to assassinate Pom and wasn’t being subtle about targeting her with Assassin Class Enemy Programs above all other targets the assassins could be going after. Like Castle Alexander’s infrastructure for one.

“I’d say not even close, but we will be soon… Divine Judgement is still charging, once it goes off we won’t have much time to build up defenses after we overload Moon Cell’s ability to produce EPs. Moon Cell might recover from it faster than we think… so be ready for that when you call up the Toxitricity to prepare a forward assault force.” Ocellus responded as the constant fire of Missile Trucks and Blumebear derived Thousand Gunners fire endless amounts of projectiles into the airspace around the castle’s outer walls. “Maybe we can clear the crystal maze and be at the nexus’s doorstep… but that’s wishful thinking. We’ve already planned for how to mess up the crystal maze. I’ll call the Toxitricity Bard forces up when we need them for the forward assault, if we land in the crystal maze they will prove to be a major dungeon bypass by shattering through crystals walls with their Boom Bursts.”

“Dolly how are you doing?” Pom turned and saw the damaged mech flying into the mouth of Castle Alexander’s dog shaped head. There was a lot of firepower in the mouth to prevent the enemy from sneaking in through there.

“It’s like the skies on fire and I can’t see forever because there are so many enemies there are almost enough to blot out the sky, coming in for a landing for repairs. Hope Grape can spare some time to put me back out there sooner rather than later.” Dolly knew APs weren’t the most effective fighting force, but they were a fighting force where numbers or quality could very well change a battle. She actually successfully managed to land as Skein Flyers took out from the mouth and one was immediately destroyed after its shields failed. “Our Skein Flyer buddies are getting chewed up out there… at least the Flying and Jet Armors will last even after they hit the ground, but there are so many EPs down there it’s not survivable for maybe a half a minute before they are swarmed out of existence.”

“Huh, those things have plasma grenades?!” One of the Commandramon had heard the crying of an enemy having gotten a plasma grenade stuck to their head after having shot them precisely as they were going to throw it in Pom’s direction. “Stop those transports from dropping anymore of those EPs on us!”

The Commandramon despite their small numbers were very effective and efficient with their grenades, they were working together and sniping target that tried to get into Castle Alexander near the automated turret towers blazing away with artillery and projectiles.

The Pokémon Companions were idling at the main entrance, Quetal was a little impatient, but Shine snuggled against his side and he took a breath of air as he continued to watch the fighting ready to jump in when needed.

Favela, Dodo and Shanty were ready to dig into the battling too, but they were staying back with the companions until the castle landed… or crashed. Either one was bound to happen any moment now.

Lit was ready to battle and watched as Dolly flew out again into the fray, spewing violence as she did so. The waiting was making the little guy antsy and impatient.

There wasn’t a single being in Castle Alexander that wasn’t awake or waiting to take action, even Patch Cabbage NPC was continuing to work the farms in the middle of battle as the entire Castle shuddered and shook from the violence going on around it.

“How much time do we have on the charging Ocellus?” Elise asked, as she, Cruel and Crazy were all assisting the defense of the courtyard.

“We’ll actually reach full charge status before we get too far over the approximate crystal maze area at this rate. Thankfully Moon Cell can’t bring up walls underneath us or attack us with them directly, only block our way forward if we’re trying to continue our assault on the ground.” Answered Ocellus as she stopped for a moment before she continued to order our forces into positions.

Elise shuddered at the memory of the fast assault and how Moon Cell tried to trap them in the crystal walls, thankfully they had many ways to circumvent the walls aside from just trying to figure out the maze.

“Everyone hold on to something, we’re losing flight power.” Cid’s announcement was heard throughout the entirety of the castle. “I’m expecting a crash instead of a landing, we’ll need to fire off the Divine Judgement before we hit the ground or else we’ll lose the charge.”

“Hold that charge until the last second, we need to get as far as we can!” Pom yelled over the communicator as there were explosions and fighting going on all over the place, she herself dove in to take out a heli-trooper before it can slash up a Gazimon that had been knocked off the castle wall. Said Gazimon quickly climbed back up to the manual small turrets he was working. “We need to hold on a little longer everyone, we need to get as far as we can before we set it off.”

Geoff fired off an Electro-ball and an EP was blasted apart by the explosion of it a second later, it was too bad to him that the EPs were mindless… they’d sure be more interesting to him otherwise. He glanced around and moved to assist some of the APs in the castle with a Brute.

The chaos of the battle around Castle Alexander continued as more Magitek Armor and Skein Flyers were shot down or rammed out of the air by the EPs, replacing them in short order wasn’t easy and took some time. Getting Rider Zealots to pilot them wasn’t a problem at all, it’s the manufacturing of the vehicles themselves that was slow and couldn’t keep up with the AP casualties.

“I have returned.” Announced a familiar green or teal colored Dragoon Fenix that popped into existence, much to Pom’s consternation and it started blasting the horseshoe shaped enemy transports out of the air.

“Is anybody else concerned that he keeps saying that and even said that the first time he appeared?” Pom asked while referencing the fact that Ocellus had wondered why it had said that the first time it appeared.

“Yes, but we’ve got other things to worry about than the oddities happening here!” Jeanne quickly responded as she swept her banner spear and tore apart a number of Saber Knight EPs apart in a single blow. “How’s the damage looking Ocellus?”

“Still surprisingly within expected perimeters, keep them off of us just a little longer and we just might make it over the approximate middle of the crystal maze field.” Ocellus stated as she continued to watch so many things going on around Castle Alexander at the moment. “Let me put stress on the word ‘might’ at the rate we’re taking damage. Charge for the Divine Judgment is at ninety three percent and almost ready. We’ll be able to fire it whenever right now, but it’s going to drain every system Castle Alexander has… except our AP production abilities.”

While Ocellus was saying this, the Blumebears outside the castles front gates were firing wildly into the incoming enemy transports and dropping them before they could get near the head of the flying fortress or the castle sitting on the back to drop off the strange new EPs that apparently had exceedingly dangerous explosives and the accuracy of something that was clearly blind and has the preternatural ability for shooting its allies over the enemy. Some considered these new EPs to be confusing entirely on purpose, that or they were only being used because of their blue glowing grenades that stuck to anything once thrown… even themselves apparently.

“Dolly you have five more minutes then come back in, we’re going to fire the Divine Judgement soon and I’d rather you be in the courtyard with me and Dormarch before it goes off!” Pom eventually called throughout all the fighting, Dormarch was covering her with his Retriever Barks, Wild Barks and even a single Wild Howling that cleared out the entire courtyard by stunning every EP in the area before they could build up their numbers too far.

“Thanks for the warning, but I’m kind of busy out here!” Dolly was in the middle of rolling away form a series of lasers, she turned around and blasted a few shoulder mounted missiles into the chasing Moon Cell Watchers. The magitek armor used its jet wings to start flying backwards as it fired on every other EP in the air around her. “How many of them are there?!”

“The answer is yes Dolly.” Dormarch stated flatly from his position next to Pom in the courtyard. “Ocellus tell the Toxtricitys to move up to the courtyard.”

Four minutes of hectic chaos, projectiles flying every which way, APs taking shots for the more biological members of the castle’s crew or those that would die permanently, hundreds of EPs were dissolved and the injuries were mounting the closer they got to Moon Cell’s core. The time swiftly passed with everyone under constant fire and the smoking Castle Alexander was slowly lowering slowly towards the ground as it got closer to the structure in the distance, but it didn’t turn away from heading towards Moon Cell despite the continued heavy insistence of the EPs that they do so. Dolly eventually came in for a landing and the Metal Hound 004 was moderately damaged as it started chewing through enemies within the castle walls and above it.

“Ready to fire the Divine Judgment we get close enough to the ground, everyone hold on to something, all power is going to cut out when we do and we’ll slam into the ground!” Ocellus announced as they were close enough to the ground that the EPs could almost jump up to grab onto the burning flying castle’s underside.

“This is Canard, we’re firing ‘THE Divine Judgement’ right now. Hold onto something, because we’re going down when we do!” Canard was holding onto Sami as he grabbed a hold of a doorway. “Close your eyes this is going to be bright.

Castle Alexander started to warp as a glowing blade rose up out of the castles back and energy started massing up everywhere at the point. It fired a massive wall of energy that pulsed outward in every direction all at once in a glaringly bright display that would blind any being with searing light.

It looked like a solid mass of energy… but it was in fact trillions of lasers targeting every AP for miles around the fortress as it swiftly lost power and slammed into the ground to start skidding forward behind millions upon millions of lasers clearing a large area around the castle as it went inert and slowly came to a stop on the ground.

Once the divine judgment fell, the entire area around the castle for at least five miles was absolutely cleaned of EPs, practically annihilated from the battle in seconds. Even the grabbers underground were not able to avoid the raw power as the beams penetrated far down into the sands to destroy the underground nuisances.

“Blumbears deploy, minefields all around the back and side of Castle Alexander's current position, we need to get dug in until Castle Alexander can walk again! Toxtricity’s should form up and follow Pom as she heads out for the enemy stronghold.” At least their side communications were still working or else Ocellus wouldn’t be able to order the Blumebears to move out, everything else including main communications were down. The only thing that weren’t down were the turrets the Gazimon were currently wielding and the Allied Program production ability of Castle Alexander. “Everyone prepare we’re in the middle of enemy territory and we don’t know how long it will be until Moon Cell can recuperate the losses.”

It would be a little longer than Ocellus currently thought, Moon Cell had a higher capacity for summoning EPS than an average PLANT would and it would take quite a lot to really disable Moon Cell’s ability to produce APS for a while. Destroy enough EPs and a PLANT would lose its ability for a while, Moon Cell wasn’t quite as vulnerable.

However ‘The Divine Judgment’, as it was called with the emphasis on the word ‘THE’, Moon Cell was having issues with summoning more than the few thousand assault programs for its defense as the trillion wave number of beams had damaged it’s nexus and also destroyed enough EPs to lock its ability down to a trickle. Which was still considerable number instead of the hundreds of thousands it could send at its enemies, it was still enough to fight the forces of the now disabled Castle Alexander after decimating every enemy in a five mile radius.

“Okay everyone going on the offensive, let’s move out Toxtricity at the front we need them for demolition purposes!” Pom called, as Dolly and Dormarch formed up on her and followed behind her as she charged down towards the sands with numerous Blumebears passing her by to set up a defensive perimeter.

The baby dragon like Toxels and the more lizard man like Toxtricity’s were following after Pom as she charged forward and hoped that Moon Cell couldn’t stall them out, the sands shifted in front of Pom making her stop as a wall of crystal spikes rose up in front of her.

“Boom Bursts now, blow them down!” Several of the Toxtricity’s moved forward at Pom’s motioning, as the Toxel’s took up defensive positions. They immediately strummed the chords of muscle on their chest and fired off Boom Bursts that shattered through the crystal wall with one powerful shriek of vibrations.

After five or so walls the forward offensive was stopped by a fireball that slammed into the ground in front of Pom, the next two balls of flames that glasses the sand forced Pom to jump back to avoid them. What followed was a blast of water, lightning, one golden glowing whipping chain made of hearts and then a sudden energy disk from out of nowhere bounced off of Pom’s wool in a golden flash which was promptly caught by the thrower.

The five figure on the other side of the eighth wall stood in the path of Pom’s assault.

“I am Sailor Moon… cell… and I shall punish you with love and justice!” Said a tall white rabbit with the two streaming long locks of hair stated, bracketed by four other girls wearing the same strange uniforms. “In the name of the moon… cell!”

“I am Sailor Venus here to protect the moon… cell… with my chain of love that will strangle you. If you can’t tell I mean to death, then I absolutely mean to death, I just want to be clear on that I’ll be promptly strangling you with my magical light whip.” The tall white furred mink with long blond hair stated as she brushed her blonde locks out of her face. “Also I can do things with light like no other can do.”

“I am Sailor Mars and I will ignite you on fire, you will burn like a witch for attacking the moon… cell!” As Mars spoke, the fox girl seemed highly agitated and Pom was noticing a recurring trend whenever Moon Cell was brought up. There was always a distinctly awkward pause between ‘Moon’ and ‘cell’. “Your soul will burn for an eternity for I am a Miko of great repute and am well liked by everyone and am not overcompensating for something by being extremely loud and violent!”

“I am Sailor Mercury I will wash you away from the moon… cell… ribbit.” Said the blue frog girl as she too started to strike a pose, but she didn’t seem too all into being aggressive. “My computer has no knowledge on you… I’m practically useless then. I mean sure I could use my own intelligence, water and ice powers, but really I only get to do things when it’s down to the wire and everybody else has already done their thing at least once. I'm as smart as jupiter... but I think my intelligence dipped because I got a super computer to do all the thinking for me... that and the friends I keep probably didn't help ribbit.”

“I am Sailor Jupiter here to defend the moon… cell… with my over the top ridiculous powers and super strength on top of that and actual combat ability that the others don’t simply have… much less more than two brain cells to rub together among any of the rest of us.” For the moment none of the girls reacted or even glared at Jupiter for saying that. “Seriously… I have so many powers it’s ridiculous compared to everyone else.”

“… which one of us was the ones that didn’t have brain cells again?” The blonde rabbit girl asked dumbly as she looked at all her friends doing poses. “Oh wait… were we supposed to be doing the Ginyu Force poses today?”

“Darn it Sailor Moon… cell, I thought we practiced this!” Mars stated while catching on fire and clenching her right fist at Moon, continuing the trend of adding ‘cell’ like it was an afterthought.

“I’m getting the distinct feeling that you’re all the bottom barrel of servants that Moon Cell could be throwing at us and there’s a much more powerful servant quite literally behind all of you… since you guys come off as even less of a threat than Merak was without all of his machines.” As Pom said that a dashing wolf in a tuxedo leapt out in the general direction of the stalled offensive force.

“I am here to help my precious Sailor Moon… cell… as Tuxedo Crash and I will…” The tuxedo wolf man promptly slammed into one of the crystal walls in a painful display as his amazing flying leap was stopped cold by said wall made of crystalline pillars. He eventually made his way over to pose with the bunny girl Sailor Moon... cell.

“Hey, wait a minute… I have at least three brain cells!” Venus suddenly yelled, though the admittance caused a few brain cells to kill themselves off in the process. “Which is one more than the rest of you, minus Jupiter because she actually got a degree at college, a mostly happy life with being married and had that whole cake shop franchise… well up until we screwed it all up for her as the horrible friends we are. Like seriously, the rest of us floundered about in our adulthood in a vapid manner while taking over the planet using our ridiculous magical powers and over the top technology in a highly vain manner after Moon took over Moon Cell and eventually destroyed our solar system based civilization after controlling it into trying to let us leave said solar system. How were we supposed to know we weren’t fully in control of Moon Cell and it could summon that Velber thing and basically did a repeat of what destroyed the previous moon civilization the first time around prior to our reincarnation… wow I died a virgin two times despite all my talk about getting people to love me… so… wait… did I say all of that out loud?”

“Okay, that might knock their threat level up a tiny smidge given they actually manage to get Lunar Blood to actually do things for them, even if it did end horribly for them and now they are apparently servants to it.” Blandly stated a barking Dolly as she crossed the Metal Hound 004’s arms, only being understood by a select few that could speak dog.

“A dog! The greatest of evils, I am most certainly not a biased Mau and mascot character to Sailor Moon… cell!” Said a black cat with a moon marking on her forehead. “We shall kung fu fight!”

The black cat turned into a biped and leapt at Metal Hound 004 with a flying kick. Nobody really expected much of the servant like being, they were proven right considering a second later Dolly just smashed the shape changing biped cat into a vibrant EP like dissolving paste with the left claw of her Magitek Armor.

The Metal Hound 004 was a marginal upgrade given it had three claws and a thumb blade with the machine gun built into the palm of the magitek armors arms, the ability to pick up and throw things better. It was the only major difference to the armor as an overall improvement from Metal Hound 003.

“… Hey, that was my familiar… and cat, I like her... but mostly my cat that gave me super powers without explaining all the cool stuff I could do before throwing me into danger multiple times!” Sailor Moon… cell… eventually cried out… after fifteen seconds of blankly staring at the pasted enemy ‘sub-servant’. “If we didn’t have a reason to kill you before… wait, what was all that about two brain cells, were you insulting our intelligences Jupiter?!”

“No.” Jupiter said cheerily with a friendly smile, her eyes told another story.

“Oh okay then…” Moon cheerily accepted the ‘no’ immediately without questioning and turned back to glare at the army on Moon Cell’s doorstep. Moon started toeing the sand and looking about and eventually she turned to her ‘friends’. “What were we doing again? …. Oh right… in the name of the moon… cell… I… er… ‘we’ shall punish you… yeah that’s right, I’m still so very good at this stuff!”

“At this point I’m liable to agree with the brain cell comment, but only one shared among at least five of you.” Pom stated dully as this was going to quickly become a thing and they were kind of in the way of getting to Moon Cell’s core so… “I’m betting you’re all just distractions for the real threat and are meant to stall us until an army of EPs to show up… Boom Burst them!”

“No, wait-wait-wait… talking is supposed to be a free…” Mars the orange and red fox with a fire motif tried while ignited her hands, only for five of the six enemy threats to be sent flying. “Actiooooon-…”

Only Jupiter was left standing her spot, she was apparently smart enough to brace herself for the incoming sound wave attack. Not only that, she had weathered it perfectly without injury to herself and had covered her ears protectively while generating a wall of sound absorbing sand in front of herself by stomping her right foot.

“Sailor Venus, get up and fight with love in your heart for the moon… cell!” Now there was a male white cat trying to spur Venus into standing up. She actually did so, but not because the cat was acting like a sycophant cheerleader that stared at her chest a lot, but mostly because she recovered from the attack quickly and Sailor Moon… cell… apparently had healing powers to help with their magic armor that were all short skirts.

Even Geoff wasn’t staring as hard as the white cat had been, he looked less and less curious as the situation carried on and that was an amazing thing for him in particular that his standards were winning out.

Dolly groaned out audibly and then quickly plastered the white cat ‘sub-servant’ by firing the right machine cannon of Metal Hound 004 into it, because he sounded to be almost as annoying as the unnamed black cat had been.

-Nearby, BB-

…

“Should have went with the outers…” BB stated quietly after a moment while dragging her palm slowly down her face. “At least Jupiter is competent… probably why she’s their coordinator in the first place.”

They were stalling the enemy forces with their… fake comedy act, sure let’s call it that.

So that was successful at the very least!

Author's Note

Currently Distracted by: Building weird gundams in Gundam Breaker 4. Stark Jegan for life.

Distraction coming soon: Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.