Fight for Power

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<]-Mithril-[>

This "Upsilon" is probably not one of ours. After all, he's not wearing a Hero Band, and he's rather decidedly not dead. He's also rather decidedly stronger than ours; judging by the huge-as-all-hell fizz field of his that we're currently inside.

The question of "what the hell is is this 'Upsilon's' deal" must come later, alas. Orvtre and hir friendship beam powers aren't here right now, so any chance of this "Upsilon" returning to sanity via friendship beams or whatever is not happening. Tbh this kind of reminds me of that time where the Thetas used their "blackout twin power" and the time where Trombe got Epsilon's Marksman's Eye after crushing Epsilon's orb. Could this current weirdness with this "Upsilon" be related somehow?

Anyways I decided to put some distance between us and back away while generating clones and blasting away at "Upsilon" at range with various projectiles. Sigma also did not want to engage in melee combat with the electrical freak with tons of voltage, so he cut away at range via monomolecular blades. Libera put up his Super Spiral Shield and rushed in to try and hit him with some kind of drill attack.

This was when the zappy freak possibly known as Upsilon screeched again and let loose a lot of electrical blasts. It melted a lot of the projectiles I threw at him, and forced Sigma to zip away and dodge with his blade trick. It also took out a lot of my clones and a lot of the lightning rods I put up to divert that electricity.

At this point I was imbuing the metal with cold to make it more resistant to melting. Libera also decided to join in on the projectile fun by firing a bunch of drill missiles at the electrical freak. However, maybe Upsilon seized on them with what appears to be electromagnetism, and then fired them back at Libera like a railgun. Possibly Upsilon also tried to use that electromagnetic trick on my metal projectiles, but I have metal control and I'm not letting him use them against me; all he accomplished with that was diverting most of said metal projectiles away from us.

This was when the zappy freak who is potentially an alternate version of Upsilon zapped on down right where one of my clones was, before grabbing another clone and electrocuting it. He then unleashed a torrent of electrical blasts to take out more clones. He decided to try and be cheeky with melee again, however I nailed him with a kamikaze explosion using one of my clones when he tried that a second time, and then saturated the immediate area he was in with frost blasts in an attempt to slow him down.

The electrical freak's next trick was pulling up a huge cloud of iron sand from the ground, blocking some of the cold attacks for a bit... before my clones fired a bunch of rust-colored shockwaves at said iron to destroy them. Libera fired a Getter beam from his mechanical arm at the maybe Upsilon. As the zappy freak turned his attention towards Libera, I prepared my next barrage of attacks...

<Libera>

I can't shake a very odd feeling, fighting... whatever this is. It has Upsilon's fizz field, but it's too strong. And what's up with that flower...?

But there's no time to consider it right now, as more clumps of iron sand flew up from the ground. Rather than forming a cloud, he instead coalesced them into little balls and launched them at me at high speed, forcing me to put up my Super Spiral Shield again.

I couldn't even react to what he did next, as he zipped in upon a bolt of lightning, paused at close range, and then zipped back out, allowing the blast of thunder to hit me face first, whereupon I discovered my Super Spiral Shield doesn't protect my ears from sound so much. As I reeled back from the blast, I saw but didn't hear Sigma zip through Upsilon's return path, a plume of blood erupting from the Yellow Pikmin as he passed. Upsilon turned on him instantly and, dispensing with anything fancy, just blasted him with a bolt of electricity. I immediately lost sight of him amidst the storm.

"Platinum Piledriver!" came Mithril's voice bellowing through the storm's noise, as she lanced out of the darkness, arm transformed into a pile bunker and sparking wildly. Upsilon still reacting with eerie speed, spun to face her and held up both hands, and to my immense surprise she slowed down as she approached, clearly struggling against something in order to punch through. Magnetism... Gotta distract him!

"Giga Drill Break!" I called out, spinning up a large drill in a hurry and blasting towards the rogue Yellow. Much like Mithril, I too found myself slowing to a halt as I approached, though the drill continued spinning. A strained expression came over Upsilon's face before the ribbons extending from his back aligned to either side of Mithril, and then with an explosive noise she was very abruptly out of sight.

'He fired Mithril herself like a railgun projectile?!' I gaped as the ribbons realigned to do the same to me, which was right about when a huge shadow stepped out of the rain and swung at him. The massive hammer, which I identified as Juggernaut's, also ground to a halt before it could make contact. What, does he have eyes in the back of his head too?

"Rubidium Railgun!" came another thunderous roar from the distance, and then something moving very fast came exploding through the rain before also grinding to a halt at close range, clearly taxing Upsilon to his limit.

That was when a second projectile, this one Mithril herself, dropped from above and slammed into him, releasing us from Upsilon's magnetic grip. Upsilon slammed into the ground, a huge burst of electricity discharging in all directions and lighting up the entire area for a second.

The greasy feeling in the air becoming even thicker than before was the only warning I had to what came next. Lacking the time to give a warning, I pounced towards Juggernaut and threw up a Spiral Shield just seconds before five hundred billion volts of electricity came crashing down on us.

Five hundred billion volts of electricity, incidentally, looks less like a lightning strike and more like a thirty foot wide beam of electricity descending from the heavens. Even my Spiral Shield couldn't hold up against it, and as the blast hit the ground the explosive shockwave that resulted was less a sound and more a physical wall, sending both Juggernaut and myself tumbling like we were nothing more than feathers. I could feel my entire left arm buzzing with electricity, every inch of my skin screaming. Pulling my head up from the mud, I expected to be unable to see anything through the storm. I kinda wish I'd been right.

Upsilon stood in the sky, glowing like the goddamn sun, clearly visible even through the gloom. His extremities had turned black, the horns on his head seemed to have curled over his forehead to form a singular horn, and I could now see a second set of those ribbons, seeming to sprout from his elbows. He pointed one finger down towards the huge crater the lightning blast had left, and a black orb formed on his fingertip. Whatever that is, I have no interest in finding out. I extended drills from every part of my body, opened the grains, grew more drills, and opened the tips on all of them.

"MAELSTROM CANNON!" I roared, firing an enormous barrage of Spiral beams in Upsilon's direction. He abandoned his attack immediately, evading with literal lightning speed, bolts of electricity crackling in his wake. I withdrew my drills as the beams continued to chase after him. My ears may still be ringing from the lightning blast, but I can at least find everyone and regroup before that thing comes back for another round.

<]-Mithril-[>

Damn, that escalated quickly.

I am very glad that I activated Metal Gate right before I decided to go into melee range. Unfortunately, the electrical freak has now become even freakier, and is almost certainly stronger as well. There is, however, a brief reprieve for us before we'll have to continue dealing with maybe Upsilon.

I was currently surrounded by a lake of melted metal, the remains of a frigid Iron Maiden and a multitude of frozen lightning rods I had sent up from the ground to divert as much of the electricity I could. Having gotten into close range with the possibly Upsilon right before he unleashed that absurd amount of electricity, I managed to get a quick glance at his power... before the "e-book" metaphorically and literally exploded in a titanic burst of electricity.

Functionally, the freak's power seems very similar to Upsilon's, but amped WAY up. The fizz field is far more dense in addition to being much, much larger, which is what's causing the storm. Given that Upsilon's fizz field would get thinner and thus weaker if he expanded it, it speaks to some fundamental difference in how this freak projects it, or he's simply got THAT MUCH more of an electric charge in him. That said, what I know about Upsilon's power basically comes from Orvtre... I'll have to ask the two of them about this when we meet up again.

Status update on how Sigma and Juggernaut are doing in the aftermath of that titantic electric blast: Sigma was far enough that he was mostly just flung away by the shockwave, though he's describing his nerves as feeling like they're on fire. Juggernaut is dealing with some serious muscle spasms and a few electrical burns, but Libera blocked the worst of it. Much like Orvtre Juggernaut doesn't feel pain, which he's probably pretty grateful for at the moment.

Anyways, since we have the aforementioned brief reprieve before we have to deal with maybe alternate Upsilon, we (minus Sigma) took this opportunity to charge up mighty attacks. It wasn't too much of an opportunity though, since the electrical freak then flew in at absurd speed. Sigma used his monomolecular blades, Juggernaut went for a huge whirling strike, and Libera used a Giga Drill Maximum. Of course the possibly Upsilon evaded and/or halted most of those attacks, but then I unleashed MINE.

"Dolomite Downpour! Silver Star Smasher!" I yelled, unleashing a deluge of metal projectiles alongside a powerful multi-hit larger one. This resulted in landing what was actual significant damage to our electrical opponent, but the good news stopped when he rushed up into my face and blasted me with electricity at point-blank, before bouncing around and doing it to the others as well.

I attempted to create some clones to dilute his targets, firing said clones as projectiles at high speed in all directions, forcing him to spread out further and further if he wanted to stop my charged attacks.

A while ago, I noted that the electrical freak had a tell: When he moves, an electrical charge moves ahead of him, seeking the endpoint. That meant that he was effectively telegraphing his moves ahead of time. Obviously I had tried to grab him during all of this bouncing, but my initial attempts proved fruitless because of his very fast reflexes. Eventually, between all the potential charged attacks and clone projectiles splitting his attention and power, I finally succeeded in grabbing the possibly Upsilon by the face, blasting as much energy as I could in said face, and then slamming him down into the ground in a powerful...

"Silver Strongarm!" I roared, slamming him down into the ground with enough force to create a huge crater and shockwave.

<Sigma>

She actually hit him. Color me impressed; it takes some effort to hit something moving at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light.

She was not, however, fast enough to escape Upsilon's counterattack, which came as a pitch black explosion with electricity crackling around it. The blast flung her skyward, electricity coiling in her wake, before the glowing Yellow Pikmin suddenly arrived above her to launch her into the ground. As she impacted, widening the crater she'd made hitting him, Upsilon pointed a finger at her and produced a small black orb at his fingertip. My mind kinda blanked as I caught sight of it; whatever it is, it's not of this universe.

"Buster Beam!" Libera's voice rang out, a thin white line lancing up at Upsilon's form. This time, though, he fired off the orb before evading, losing one of the ribbons trailing him for the delay.

"Split!" Libera shouted once more, pulling the beam in two, swinging one at Upsilon and the other at the orb. He caught the orb first, slicing it in two and releasing a massive black explosion that briefly cleared the clouds above it and dried the ground beneath. The other beam, however, wasn't able to catch Upsilon, as he weaved around it on his way to slam a fist into Libera's chest. In the brief moment that he paused to do that, I zipped across the distance myself and sliced into his back, severing the other ribbon that had been present there. This earned us an ear-s***tering shriek of pain that was abruptly silenced when Juggernaut slammed his hammer down atop the Yellow, smashing him into the mud.

The silence didn't last long. I didn't even see whatever happened; there was a flash and suddenly all three of us were flung away at high speed. When I looked back, the sky was alight. Lightning coiled through the clouds and down to the ground, where Upsilon - or whatever that thing is - had changed shape again. The horns and ribbons were gone; now his head was pitch black, almost like it'd been burned, and the blackened parts of his limbs had grown further up his body. Rather more distressingly, he now had an ominous black aura coiling about him. A black aura with stars flickering through it.

It flicked a finger in my direction, and only my honed instincts telling me to move saved me from instant death as a black line lanced through the storm, straight through where I'd been. It didn't even cause an explosion; everything in the beam's path simply ceased to be. That's not an electrical phenomenon of any variety. The bolt of lightning and accompanying blast of thunder that followed were, though.

"TITANSLAYER!" came Mithril's voice over the noise, a massive metallic spear launching out of the darkness; apparently the time we'd bought was enough for her to charge it up. It swirled through the rain, trailing purple light, slammed into Upsilon... and just kinda evaporated. Which was a bit alarming, cause I'm pretty sure that purple light was Mithril's power nullifier, and he just ignored it.

Even more alarmingly, a part of his aura swirled together above him, coalesced into a ten-foot-wide black sphere crackling with electricity, and launched in Mithril's direction, a stream of nonexistence trailing in its wake. I could only watch. I don't know if there's anything I could do against an attack like that.

<]-Mithril-[>

Dot, line, square, cube, tesseract, ......

I think the best defense against the attack that the electrical freak launched would be... not being in my current location. Metal Gate: Accel Shift, and one teleport later, and I was safely out of the path of the aforementioned attack.

"If any of you have any ideas better than killing this electrical freak, speak up NOW. At this point, we're basically forced to kill him," I noted.

"What the hell haven't we tried?!" Libera replied.

"We haven't tried that signal jammer that we used on Seraph in Shadow's Cove. There is a chance that he's getting power from an outside source," I suggested, commenting on how odd it was for this maybe Upsilon to be powering up so quickly.

"I think it's worth trying anything and everything at this point," said Sigma.

"If this doesn't result in an immediate powerdown for the electrical freak or some other obvious reaction, I'm going nuclear," I replied, blasting our opponent with the aforementioned signal jammer.

Unsurprisingly, this didn't really do enough to justify not going nuclear at this stage. However, it didn't do nothing; the signal jammer caused something to brightly shine within the electrical freak, that something looking a lot like that glowing shard that Alternate Omicron picked up.

Anyways, it's nuke time. I activated my nuclear mode right as the possibly Upsilon fired more of those black spheres. Still using Accel Shift, I teleported around to dodge, firing a multitude of clones as projectiles, planning to use the threat and actuality of charged attacks to create an opening. Even though the Titanslayer seemed like a failure to outside viewers, it helped me gain important data. I just need to make some adjustments here and there...

As an aside, I always found it kind of peculiar how the mono-elemental Seraphim and Fiends become omnielemental Archangels and Archfiends once they hit a certain power level. Our opponent here seems have gone from a mono-elemental electrical freak to his current more than electrical type of freak. That, along with the starry aura, is why I've thought up a certain hypothesis: That this possibly Upsilon was an attempt to make an artificial Archangel or Archfiend... or something of that nature. Of course, I could be wildly off the mark.

One of my charged attacks finally hit home, this time resulting in a scream from the maybe Upsilon and the black aura receding a bit. In response, he sent several black lines sent at us that we had to avoid.

This is probably the best chance we have to end this. Libera decides to go for quantity and fires a load of Buster and Drill missiles. Sigma zips in from behind several times to feign attacks before actually committing to one, and Juggernaut fires up the rocket on his hammer to maximum strength to make one huge swing the moment Sigma goes in for real.

Of course the electrical freak has enough magnetism to stop a lot of that, evading what he couldn't stop with his absurd speed. However, when possibly Upsilon tried to halt my advance, I fired my arm-mounted rocket-propelled blade, impaling him in the gut.

"Dolomite Divider!" I roared, as the blade, stabbing right through the shard, split into multiple blades, slicing our opponent into several pieces, a screech resounding through the area as the shard clattered to the ground.

I am not giving that freak a chance to regenerate or recover from that; I'm going to launch another wave of attacks to annihilate the threat.

<Libera>

No sooner had the pieces landed than a high-pitched sound emerged from each of them, and a series of lightning bolts jumped between each of the severed bits. With a thunderous snap, they all pulled together once more, into a Pikmin that was nearly completely blackened save the crystalline flower on his head.

Mithril swore; she hadn't had time to prepare a full attack. Before she could even launch what she'd already charged up, though, Upsilon let out another high-pitched shriek as electricity began to coil around him in rapidly increasing amounts, from the clouds to the ground to random points in the air. That shriek sounded like something in pain, and underneath it was an ominous whine.

"I uh... I think it's time to de-ass the area with a quickness!" Sigma shouted before immediately zipping away. I agreed, grabbing hold of Juggernaut and teleporting the two of us a fair distance away. A blast signalled Mithril distancing herself as well, and none too soon.

All sound seemed to vanish as the distant, electrified figure exploded, a black and white dome of force blasting up from his location. The clouds in the sky and rain pouring from them were all blown away in an instant, as the four of us put up whatever defenses we could to ride out the shockwave that followed. In the middle of it, I saw Juggernaut perk up his head, reach out one of his massive hands, and catch hold of something very small that was moving very fast.

Once the massive shockwave had passed, I peeked out at the now very dry wasteland of a crater. The storm had been blown away completely; everything outside the crater was still soaking wet, but the crater looked bone dry.

"The hell was that?" Mithril groused, emerging from her defenses. A tiny glow in her hand showed she still had the shard.

"I think... I think he destabilized without the shard," I ventured, before turning to Juggernaut and seeing him inspecting the object he'd caught. "Whatcha got there, big guy?"

Juggernaut tilted his head down, then lowered his hand so we could see what he held. Situated in the middle of his palm was... a transluscent yellow orb.

Sigma and I stared at it for a moment, before Sigma wordlessly zipped back into the crater. I wasn't far behind him, and I heard Juggernaut and Mithril move to follow as well. In the middle of the crater, very much unconscious but largely unharmed, was a yellow Pikmin wearing the tattered remnants of some black, metallic armor.

He had a spiked yellow orb at the end of his stalk.

"Striker?!" I hissed in surprise. "That was Striker the whole time?!"

"Not quite, I think," Sigma replied, kneeling down by the unconscious yellow. "Whatever that thing was, I don't think Striker had any control of it."

"The denser fizz field..." Mithril muttered, the two of us turning our gazes upon her. "His fizz field was large, like Upsilon's, but dense close to his body, like Striker's... it was a combination, just like what happened to Trombe near the end."

"Okay, but that doesn't explain the black energy. What was that about?" I questioned. Any potential reply was cut off by an audible cracking sound, as cracks emerged from the shard in Mithril's hand. She glared at it accusingly.

"I guess we're not exactly going to get to ask, now are we?" she commented drily, as the world seemed to s***ter around us.
______
Next stage in next post...

Elsewhen...

"Oh my. What a curious sensation! Very... very hard to describe, actually."

Orvtre blinked hir eyes open, finding hirself staring at a dark sky. Shi didn't feel pain, but somehow it still felt like shi'd been hit in the head with a bus. The good news was that there was no giant moon eyeball up there.

The bad news was that there didn't seem to be any moon up there, nor any stars. Looking closer, that seemed to be because of the thick cloud cover, so that was good.

"Oh, are you awake?" came the voice again, as Omicron - the other Omicron - tilted his head into hir line of view. "We seem to have been ah... displaced?"

Orvtre pushed hirself up, feeling sand as shi did. "Are we still in Dusty Desert...?" shi asked, before getting a good look at their surroundings.

"Well yes! But actually no," the alternate Omicron replied, looking down at the silver sand they were surrounded by. "At least, not the same Dusty Desert, anyway. Maybe a different one! Though this one doesn't seem very dusty. Doesn't seem to be much wind at all, really."

It was much too dark here, Orvtre decided, casting a light spell. This got an immediate reaction from something nearby, which squealed in pain and reeled away from the sudden light source, immediately gaining the attention of both Pikmin.

Whatever it was, it was... indistinct, which was about all either of them could decipher from it. The only real trait either could clearly see were a pair of glowing eyes leering out of the darkness at them, as the whatever-it-was crept around the edge of Orvtre's light spell, emitting a low growl. Probably not friendly, and the vibe it gave off was enough for Orvtre to not even bother with the friendship beam; shi could tell it wouldn't work. Eventually, the thing's eyes turned away and it vanished into the darkness.

"Very curious indeed..." Omicron muttered. Orvtre turned toward the dune behind her and started climbing, a fact Omicron only noticed when the light started moving away from him.

"There's probably more out here like that. We need to find out where - or maybe when - we are," Orvtre commented, climbing to the top of the dune... and then pausing in shock at the view. Omicron peeked around hir as he arrived as well.

"Oh my. I wonder what happened there?" he asked, surveying the damage below.

It was, undeniably, Omicron's colony. Or at least what was left of it. The broken-open husk of the main biosphere, partially submerged in the sand, was surrounded by similarly broken smaller biospheres. At the very least it was lit up; clearly people still lived here. Trails of lights extended out from the central group, towards more distant crashed spheres. A few incomplete trails were extending out towards even more distant spheres; they were still trying to recover everything they could.

"How...?" Orvtre whispered as shi began to descend the dune. If there were still people alive here, they should have answers. Omicron followed at a sedate pace, maintaining only enough speed to stay within the light.

"Did... I build this...?" Omicron asked quietly, prompting Orvtre to stare at him. How the hell had he figured that out? Omicron tilted his head. "The design... yes, of course..." he began muttering under his breath, and then just kept going, the rest of his body seemingly on autopilot. Orvtre shook hir head. If no one here could provide answers, then maybe Omicron - an Omicron - could.

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