Fighting in Ruins 17

>Adaptrix<

Opponent has activated some variety of power boost. Weighing options...

... Analysis: Continue at current output level. Let's see how far I can push this.

Coagulating back into a coherent mass, I rose up into the air and shifted into a missile, immediately launching myself at Mithril.

"Really? Haven't we done this one before?" she asked, firing a bolt of metal energy at me. The missile exploded... into about a thousand more missiles.

"Yeah, this too," Mithril continued, launching dozen more bolts.

"Plasma Zanber," I called out, and each and every missile promptly turned into a huge plasma sword, slicing through the incoming barrage like so much paper.

Mithril looked around at the incoming hail of blades before saying, "... Okay, I'll grant that that one is new."

She then simply dodged the entire barrage, leaving a long trail of plasma blades sticking into the ground in her wake.

"But still not very amazing."

Every sword popped up from the ground and came in swinging.

"Sliceity-slice, diceity-dice, chop chop chop chop chop!" I said in a sing-song voice, hundreds of blades swinging in every direction.

"Okay that's just creepy now," Mithril said, punching several swords out of her way. I generated two more for each she destroyed, just to be a pain in the ass. That cycle continued for a minute until I rather suddenly found myself without much room to maneuver swords in, what with the pile of wreckage surrounding Mithril and the dozens of blades vying for a spot to attack from. So I shifted the entire pile of wrecked swords into little ceramic bombs.

I'd call that blast kinda impressive, though Mithril simply flew out of the smoke largely unharmed, followed by a massive fleet of plasma swords. Also a bunch of plasma guns, which I began shifting the stragglers into. Great fun, right up until Mithril abruptly stopped and spun in place, demolishing most of my swords. I shifted the wrecked blades into blaster bits on a spot and unleashed a massive torrent of raw mana in her face.

The eruption of metal projectiles said that that only served to tick her off, so I generated a few dozen artillery cannons off in the distance as a distraction while I prepped something a bit better, pulling my remaining blades and plasma guns back.

Mithril made rather short work of the artillery, unfortunately, so I had to divert a bit of effort to make more distractions. Distractions like the giant robot dinosaur. The one with nuclear breath. Always a crowd favorite. At least when it doesn't get trashed immediately, like Mithril did to it. What did that dinosaur do to you?

"Quit wasting time!" Mithril yelled, charging back across the arena at my assortment of hovering weaponry.

"Okay," I replied, the weapons parting to reveal an unassuming-looking staff. An unassuming-looking staff with gunmetal gray wings of pure mana extending from the head and a huge runic circle in front of it. "Starbreaker."

The resultant beam of grey energy could be described as "cataclysmic."

<]-Mithril-[>

"See, now that's better. With fights like these, eventually I can work my way up to Omega's level and beyond," I explained.

Though now that I think about it... huge energy beam. Runic circle? Looks like Omicron's been up to some WITCHCRAFT after all. Or maybe it's just Omega, who knows.

Oh, and I should probably do something about said magic beam. Okay, "Platinum Phalanx." And with that said, there was now a huge eyesore in front of me, a humongous metal mass with spears jutting out everywhere. As a bonus, it flowed together nicely with my power nullifier, which aided in the defense part of the move.

Platinum Phalanx also has an offensive side to it, spewing out exploding spears at Adaptrix so he can't just sit there nice and pretty. Overall, the humongous wall combined with power nullifier (which jammed at least part of the beam) meant that I at least avoided the worst of the beam. Burrowing underground to prep for my next move may have also played a part.

If Adaptrix can split things off himself like I can, I should just use more moves that cover a wide area. I guess that would make it a good time to test out another something, one which may have use against Silver Scythe...

"Rust Rapid!" I screamed, letting loose a torrent of rust-colored bolts from below. A little something to use against rival metal people, just in case. Any of the weapons hit by the bolts immediately rusted over and disintegrated.

Adaptrix immediately moved to protect the magic staff, even sacrificing some of his other weapons to do so. Of course, he promptly moved to fire again, so I needed to respond aggressively.

"Iron Starkiller," I stated. A legion of spiked metal orbs, cones, cylinders, and other shapes erupted from the ground, some going after the staff, some protecting me, and some going after Adaptrix. This is to try and create some sort of opening, because goddamn I cannot win on defense alone.

Okay, now for something that I can really only do in Metal Gate, at least for now. Triple combo time.

"BY THE POWER OF... stuff I just came up with right this hour," I declared, outreaching my hands to my sides. In my left hand was a rust-colored glow. In my right hand was my power nullifier. I dramatically slammed them together with the force of a mini-shockwave, creating a fused orb with both.

"Rust Rampage!" I yelled, slamming the orb into the floor. This resulted in a horde of cars, trucks, and automobiles armed to the teeth with spikes, guns, and yes, teeth trampling and lazering any and all of Adaptrix in their way. Made me feel better on spending so much time on the nullifier and power synergy, to boot.

>Adaptrix<

I've noticed a few differences between myself and Mithril, in the very short time I've known her. For instance, she requires a "main" body. Though she creates clones and weapons much like I can, there is still one that is, well, her. She simply controls them with her own will.

By comparison, I am a collective of nanomachines. When I make duplicates or weapons, they're made of those same nanomachines, so I don't so much control them as I am them. They are as much a part of me as your own arms or legs. Therefore, I do not necessarily require a main body or even a Pikminoid form.

That's basically a roundabout way of saying that if you want to smash my constructs, you need to do it thoroughly, or else there's still nanomachines laying on it. Nanomachines that I can use to re-purpose the wreckage of the construct. Like the artillery and the giant dinosaur.

Now I'm sure you're thinking that using a few billion nanomachines and a buttload of mana merely as a distraction is overkill. This is because you've never seen me fight Omega, where doing things like this fifteen to twenty times - each - was par for the course.

So with the wreckage of the giant dinosaur I made I huge wall to obscure Mithril's vision - provided she actually noticed what with the horrible slaughter that she was executing on my weapons and staff - so that I could make two more staves and twenty blaster bits out of the artillery guns. And then start producing miniature mecha from the wall, because that was roughly when Mithril noticed it and sent her army of laser-spewing death trucks at it. My response is dinosaur mechs with hydrogen lance cannons.

That continued for a moment before Mithril simply blasted forth and straight through my wall, apparently curious about what was on the other side. What was on the other side, of course, was two staves with ten blaster bits each at point blank range.

"Starlight Crusher," said one staff, it and its blaster bits firing grey beams from all directions.

"Trident Smasher," said the other, firing a triple-pronged electric beam along with its own blaster bits.

<]-Mithril-[>

Note to self: Obliterate any of Adaptrix's things. Set tazers to annihilation. Or at least set them there until I can use a sealing technique like Iron Maiden, or something. Wonder whether it'll work wonders with my power nullifier...

...

Hey-o. More staves. Because I'm not an idiot, I came prepared. Sorta.

"Platinum Rocket Fists!" I yelled, firing my fists at each of the staves. Cue huge explosion. I put up a metal shield and stepped back into the revolving door I just made, attempting to warp away to strike at another angle.

Warp lagggggg, so I still got partially hit by the staves. Though what came from the other end of the door were more of my trusty killer trucks. I myself obliterated some of his dinos on the way back with laser punches. Good, now it's time for me to charge up some neat stuff.

Before that, though, I need to recalibrate my vision, because apparently, I've been missing things. My eyes gave off a glow for a brief instant before I adjusted to better see all of Adaptrix. I saw all the little bits of him now... so I fired some homing bolts at the stragglers trying to hide away, obliterating them.

"No more backups for you," I stated, as I began the preparations for my charge. Beams still fired from beyond the wall, so I sent more trucks to stall for a bit.

...

Now... "Silver Sabre," I intoned, generating a powered blade from my arm. I stabbed it into the ground, causing huge platinum beams to erupt from below. Any of Adaptrix's little bits caught in the beams were instantly destroyed, which meant that some of his dinos went extinct.

Unfortunately, his two staves still weren't destroyed, so I was forced to do a bit more parrying action, deflecting some of the grey beams with power nullifier slashes and using lightning rods to mitigate the other one. Even more unfortunately, I still got hit more than a bit.

That's because I was trying to charge up something else, something in the vein of what Strosek used. Warping back in point-blank range (of the staves, anyways) through the door of a truck that had found an opening, I generated a rust-glowing power scythe and merged it with my nullifier sword, creating a wicked bladed weapon.

Once again, in the name of stuff I came up with just this hour...

"Rust Reaper!", I shouted, slamming the bladed sword-scythe... thing into the ground. This resulted in a huge-ass pulse explosion covering the whole room, vaporizing the seats and HD tv, and even knocking me flat on my back, despite my resistance to my own power.

You know how normally this arena has excellent tremor dampeners? Built in so they can't feel our ruckus? Well I THINK THEY MIGHT'VE FELT THAT ONE.

>Adaptrix<

Re... establishing... connection...

I slowly coalesced back into a pikminoid shape, sparks jumping all over as nanites reconnected to the network.

The room's a wreck, Mithril's managed to hurt herself somewhat with her own attack, but I imagine I'm the worse for wear here. I suppose I've got no choice then.

"I guess this is the part where I have to step it up," I muttered, running through the checklist. All systems nominal, let's do this.

"Finally decided to get serious, then?" Mithril asked, preparing something of her own.

"Disengage output inhibitors. All systems: full capacity. Activate Oversoll Mode."

Six paper-thin, gunmetal grey diamond-shaped wings popped into existence behind me, three to each side, hovering about six inches behind my back. I don't need to use a Pikminoid form... but this looks much cooler when I do. Drawing out what looked like the head of a trident from my being, I extended a pole from it to grip and produced an energy blade from the trident itself.

"Arc Saber," I proclaimed it and was rather suddenly within melee range of Mithril, who abandoned her prepared attack to block my own, catching blade in her hands. That was when part of the wall melted and produced a goddamn ion cannon.

"By the way, stealth nanos," I said as the huge cannon began charging. Mithril split off and clone and kamikazed it into the cannon, blowing it to smithereens before it could fire. I pulled my blade free of her grip and resumed my assault, producing two more ion cannons from the walls of the arena. Mithril managed to catch a bit of distance from me just long enough to fire two large blasts, demolishing both ion cannons.

"Rust Buster!" Mithril yelled, forming and firing a huge attack before I could close the distance. Not a problem, not anymore.

"Arc Reave," I replied, cutting clear through the huge beam and taking Mithril's right arm with it. She produced another Silver Sabre from her left hand to block my attack, and I formed three new ion cannons. A trio of massive metal plugs appeared and slammed themselves into the barrels of each of them, once more reducing all three to scattered pieces. Enough of this noise. I turned the entire outer edge of the room into ion cannons.

"You have GOT to be kidding me," Mithril said, looking around. Attempting to destroy them before they fired was a futile gesture. She instead went straight for bulking up her defenses with everything she had.

"Hahaha. Ion Catastrophe!" I roared, firing all of them... directly into my Arc Saber. Mithril poked a hole in her defense just briefly to see what I'd done.

What I'd done was extend the Arc Saber in the opposite direction, so far it'd simply pierced through the wall and kept going. Mithril rather immediately closed the hole back up.

"Eat this! DIMENSION CLEAVING BLADE!" I roared, swinging the huge thing around, horizontally bisecting the entire arena.
______
Above...

A massive blade of energy tears through Libera's personal room. Then Quicksilver and Juggernaut's room. Then Orvtre's room. Then Beta's room. Then the main area as well, and it just keeps going.

Libera poked his head out into the main area.

"Holy crap! Did anybody else feel that?"
______

Adaptrix knelt on the arena floor, venting steam. A little message in the corner of his vision blinks urgently.

"Force Parameters exceeded...?"

Oh. Right. Not fighting Omega. This could be a problem.

<]-Mithril-[>

Okay, status. Damage taken... ?

I asked myself this as one of my "legs" slightly wobbled. I gave it a few slaps, which calmed it down.

... Pretty damn close to significant, if not already there. Anyways, first step: those damn stealth nanos. Deep Scan, I muttered in my head, to no one else but me. Remember that thing I used to "find" Rho's village? This is not quite it.

This is more like an instantaneous, specific power boost. Instantaneous, because I can't maintain it for too long without overextending. This spent a precious few moments after Adaptrix used that dimension blade thing, and it was worth it because I immediately had what was left of my huge metal cocoon balloon up and explode, generating (explodingRust!) shrapnel that wrecked the outer ring of the arena, destroying anything there.

Remember those instantaneous boosts? They'll be key, so I need to do this efficiently. For starters, Boost #2 was used when I burst out of the cocoon, appearing right in Adaptrix's face.

"Platinum Pain," I called out, firing a huge-ass platinum beam at Adaptrix, who partially blocked it... but still staggered a bit from it. That's acceptable; I can work with that.

"Platinum Skullripper!" I yelled, following up with Boost #3. I made sure to only boost the attacking arm, which promptly capitalized on it by obliterating Adaptrix's head and part of his upper body. Adaptrix promptly responded by removing the offending arm... and generating a crapton more ion cannons.

I, for my part, tried to defend optimally. What I mean by that is I highly doubt I can get through this without taking major damage, so I took the losses that would hurt me the least. I generated a partial Platinum Phalanx, blocking the worst of Adaptrix's onslaught, before I was ready to use my next boost.

"Force Parameters exceeded...?" Adaptrix asked again, apparently somewhat concerned that I had several holes blown in me, and that I generally looked worse the wear.

"Probably... but I'm not gonna get much stronger fighting easy opponents!" I roared, readying Boost #4.

Adaptrix nodded, before resuming his attack. Instead of blocking, I sacrificed my other arm, clasping his blade with it. Said arm violently exploded, giving me an opening.

Using said opening, I leapt into the air out of my old skin, doing one of those fancy acrobatic flips, arms mending. There, I activated Boost #4... and also, for only an instant, Metal Gate: Aggro Shift.

"Metal. Kaiser."

There, by my heel, was the metal orb. Said orb AND heel slammed Adaptrix right into the floor, and what would've resulted in the arena disintegrating wasn't because I had just focused all that power straight towards Adaptrix.

?-Orvtre-?

Elsewhere, in Hero Squad HQ...

Libera's question was promptly answered by a brisk-walking Orvtre, who had prepared for such an eventuality. Grav had been moved to a safe place and was under constant surveillance by Upsilon and others. It was unlikely that he would be... "disturbed" by events such as these in his current location, but it couldn't hurt to be safe. So far, Upsilon is reporting in: Grav is fine.

"Of course, Mithril. Bringing in people like this..." Orvtre muttered, sighing. The cloaked 'min knew that it was for the sake for getting stronger, but that still didn't make the dimension patchwork any easier.

Orvtre surveyed the damage. Said dimensional blade had even cut partway into Rune's room, though it thankfully failed to uncover the private sections of Mithril's and Orvtre's rooms. But for now, the priority was Rune. She was bound to be unhappy to be disturbed during her work.

Orvtre strolled past Libera's room, past the absurd G3 robot contained with the equally absurd action-figure packaging, past Beta's room, past Juggernaut and Quicksilver's room, before finally approaching the doorstep of Rune's room.

"Hey... Rune? Everything okay?" Orvtre asked.

Rune poked her head out of the door. "Yes... though I greatly dislike being disturbed while I'm working. What is it?"

"I just wanted to see if you were okay," Orvtre replied.

"... No, that's not quite it. You are here for another reason, and oh! I think I should be a tad more discreet here..." Rune muttered. "Come in, come in."

"What are you guys doing?" a voice called out. "It sounds mysterious." Both Pikmin turned towards the source of the voice.

"Beta, was it? ... All I can say is that in less than two months, there will be a major crisis, and preparation is necessary to avert it. I'm sorry, but at this time, we really can't elaborate further," Rune explained.

"That's fine, I just wanted to see if you two were okay," Beta pointed out, before strolling off.

"... Hurry up and get the dimension leak fixed, Orvtre," stated Rune in a huff. "I do not trust Omicron, and, however unlikely this may be, this might be an attempt of his to breach our defenses. Both this and the possible trojans in the robots."

"Didn't our scans turn up negative? Repeatedly?" Orvtre asked.

"... Omicron is not to be trusted. And I damn well know that he was at least partially behind Silver Scythe," Rune stated, before opening a portal to let Orvtre in.

Orvtre and Rune both knew: This was going to be a longggggggggg talk.

>Adaptrix<

Maybe I should explain what a force parameter is. Namely, it's a calculation I make - constantly - during a fight to determine how much force I can reasonably be using against my opponent without causing serious harm. There's supposed to be a failsafe in place to keep me from doing that, but I guess the code for it doesn't work properly. In retrospect, maybe that's because it was never tested, seeing as prior to this I have only ever fought Omega, whose force parameter was effectively infinity. The guy was stronger than me, I couldn't hurt him if I tried.

So, that attack. I managed to avoid most of it - 51% counts as most, right? - by disengaging my input inhibitors and simply absorbing the energy from the blast. That's really just trading external damage for internal, though; between that and using a dense ion shield to eat some of the remaining force, I've eaten most of my power supply. I'm running on fumes here. Mostly my own fault, what with the ion cannon spam. I have about half an hour of combat-level supply left, though that's about to get a lot shorter.

I sacrificed the Arc Saber in defending against that attack, so by the time all the smoke cleared, what Mithril got an eyeful of was me, with my right hand replaced with a stream of ionic energy.

"Ion Edge," was the only thing I said, using it to slice through both of Mithril's legs. I have about two minutes of power left with this thing out. Mithril moved back, her limbs regenerating slowly. I think she was counting on that to end the fight, which to be fair it pretty much would have if I weren't running Oversoll mode. Mithril produced some blade of her own - didn't hear the name - which didn't do her a lot of good, as I cut through it and her arm like rice paper. No more fancy shmancy here, just all of my remaining energy output as a sword.

A few additional attacks flew my way, though nothing quite as powerful as that Metal Kaiser thing she'd hit me with. I sliced through everything like so much paper, counting the seconds until I'm out. About a minute.

I dashed in, blowing through another huge attack by slamming my left arm through it. The arm came off and I didn't bother reforming it, not enough time. Mithril shouted something, probably another attack - my sound input isn't working anymore. I cut through that as well. Thirty seconds.

One last defensive wall came up before me, and I cut it like it were air. Mithril's fist hit me in the face, denting it. No time to reform it, cut her arm off, jam the blade through her torso. A few very heavy blows smashed into me, don't give a damn. Nine seconds.

I split the blade into eight blades and folded them backward toward myself, slicing Mithril into eight pieces, then I twisted my wrist, shredding those as well. Against Omega, I usually had a followup for that, but I simply haven't got the power output left. I disengaged the Ion Edge with about a second to spare. Got about two minutes of civilian level power left. My Oversoll wings flickered out. My vision got shorted when Mithril slammed her fist into my face about five or six times, so all I can see is a little message helpfully informing me that I've exceeded force parameters by a factor of about five. Gee, thanks.

... I need to see about fixing the failsafe code for those force parameters, now.

<]-Mithril-[>

I ducked and weaved underneath some of Adaptrix's parting shots, punching his face in all the while. Huh, his blows are less accurate. Is he going blind??? Oh, you know what that means??? It looks like things are ready to be wrapped up!

"Finish him," boomed a massive voice throughout the arena.

Oh yeah, I programmed that into the arena waaaaaaayyyyyyyy back, didn't I? Buried it underneath a chockload of... so many layers of... whatever it was, so long ago. Good times, man. Good times. Say, I'm surprised that thing survived our carnage, though it's always the stupidly useless cosmetic things, isn't it?

Well enough of that tangent, time for a Metal Gate-powered, nullifier-boosted...

"Iron Maiden!"

...which entombed him in a tomb of spiky, slicy, nullifier metal. There was a few knocks on the metal coffin and such, but they stopped after several seconds.

"Victory: MITHRIL!" boomed the massive voice again, this time with accompanying fireworks. Yeah, this was reallllllllllllllly long ago.

I took a few moments to bask in the glory of this victory, all while being alert of the possibility of Adaptrix trying a sneak attack after the fact.

But those few moments subsided without further fighting, and then I decided it was time to bring forth the OFFER. I strolled over to a wall and ripped out an intact speaker system thing, which survived due to rule of stupidly useless convenience, and channeled my voice into it.

"HEY ADAPTRIX, WANNA BE MY TRAINING BUDDY AND NEW HERO SQUAD PERSON... !!!" I yelled, slapping Adaptrix's potential new Hero Band on the Iron Maiden. No response.

Is he deaf now too??? Well then this calls for more extreme measures. It's time for IRON MAIDEN MORSE CODE.

DOT DOT DOT DOT whatever I'm doing this cause my handwriting sucks after all of this DOT yeah I actually know Morse Code right brahs DASH DOT DASH DASH

That spells HEY. Just a carpload more letters to go. And now that I think about it, in the very likely case he's unconscious I should just poke and carve it onto his body so he can read it later. So I did just that.

After that... GUESS WHAT I DID??? Well I just shrugged and walked away.

...

Oh and a few of the fire jets from up top came loose, fell down, and lit the entire arena ablaze, but meh, he'll live.

>Adaptrix<

I cannot say that particularly appreciate being stuck in a tomb of some variety and then having Morse code poked into repeatedly while I have absolutely no power supply left. Probably should have gone for something other than the Ion Edge. Note to self, don't use that when I'm on bingo fuel.

Though, once again, I do not particularly need a main body. What I do need is some variety of fuel. The upshot, of course, is that carbon counts as fuel. I imagine any onlookers would have been a mite surprised to see whatever metal object was surrounding me simply dissolve as I shredded all of the carbon in it to make more nanites, the ground around it following. Enough to repair myself, my sound processing, and my vision, with plenty enough energy to spare for my very eloquent reply.

So it was that I simply hovered - slowly, don't want to waste power - out of the arena and back topside, met immediately by the one-armed Libera.

"You lost too, eh?"

"I'm a training robot, Libera, my purpose is not to 'win'," I replied. Libera just grinned. Where's Mithril in the mess?

Taking a few minutes to locate my erstwhile sparring partner - Libera tagging along, presumably to see the exchange - I finally found her, seated on what appeared to be a lounge chair.

"Impressive fight, though by far not the biggest I've been in. I give you an A-. Also, my response to your question," I rattled off, and then split my face into a massive mouth with a pair of googly eyes on top.

"BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Lasers and all. I then shut my mouth - to the sound of Libera's explosive laughter - and pointed at the now thoroughly blasted Mithril.

"Keep your guard up and maybe this won't happen!" I bellowed, then turned around and swaggered off without supplying further context. Not to her, anyway.
_____

/Recording playback, time: Ten hours after initial activation/

The room's kinda bland, to be honest. Big cube, criss-crossing lines all throughout, broken up only by a small window built into the wall. I'm told my purpose here is as someone's sparring partner.

Said sparring partner entered from the opposite side of the room I had. An orange Pikmin, no features to speak of save the orange sphere hanging from his stalk. He walked up to me with a big grin on his face and held out a hand.

"Heya, name's Omega. I'll be your sparring partner, alright?"

I glanced at his hand for a second... and then split my face open and blasted the hell out of him with a massive laser.

"Keep your guard up then, sparring partner!"

The intercom in the room buzzed.

"For the record," Omicron said, badly disguising laughter, "I didn't program him to do that."

"SURE YOU DIDN'T," Omega yelled back, then he split his own face open and blasted me with a massive laser as well.

"Your challenge is accepted, Adaptrix!" he yelled. That was the start of a wonderful friendship.

/End playback/