A Different Place

Chapter 51 - Feldynaught Vs. Enarban Fell

Glyde's epicene voice emanated from his vehicle's loudspeaker. "Oh, Tron Bonne, you can't imagine how long I've been waiting for this moment!"

Tron, hanging upside down in her cockpit, tried to stretch for the Feldynaught's controls. No, she still couldn't reach. Maybe if she tried one more time...no! Tron growled and restrained herself from struggling against the restraints, for if they broke, she would take a nasty spill onto the ceiling of her enclosure.

Glyde was currently dangling the helpless Feldynaught by one of its several legs. Tron could still hit the laughing pirate's mech with a well-placed bomb, if only she could reach the control panel. She vainly lunged upward again, to no avail. Tron felt herself being shaken as Glyde jostled her prized combat robot up and down. Tron clenched her fists as she was rattled in her confinement. Once she got out of this, she was going to give Glyde what for, no matter what it took! She'd show that prissy pirate what---

One of Tron's bobbing fists whacked the fire button almost completely incidentally. A bomb launched from the Feldynaught's maw, detonating as it made contact with the other vehicle's armor. Glyde uttered an exclamation of shock through his speaker, and Tron felt, rather than saw, him release the Feldynaught.

Tron was jarred again as she hit the deck. She managed to pull the control stick in the correct direction using only her foot, and then fell back into the pilot's seat as the vehicle finally righted itself. Now, she was ready to resume the offensive.

"Ohh!" Glyde shouted, clearly not realizing that his speaker was still activated. "Put out that fire, you morons! We'll show her what it means to face the Enarban Fell!"

Tron found her resolve renewed. She shifted into full reverse, laying covering fire for herself as she did so. The Feldynaught skittered backward on its many-jointed limbs, bullets spraying from several turrets she'd mounted on it. Responding to a small, nagging voice inside of her, Tron jerked the controls to the right, narrowly missing a punch the Enarban Fell had thrown at her. Since the Feldynaught was already in the proper position, she latched onto the large limb and began climbing up it, firing all she could muster at Glyde.

"Hey!" Glyde said from his own cockpit. "Cut that out!" He waved the arm to which Tron was attached, but was unable to shake the smaller robot from its secure grip.

Tron launched another offensive barrage at the Enarban Fell. Perhaps this strategy would have been enough for Tron to finish the battle, had not a fandom explosion knocked the Feldynaught from its perch atop the massive limb. Tron winced as she realized it was likely some "friendly fire" falling from the Gesellschaft that had hit her. "You need to be more careful up there!" she hollered into the voicelink, not sure if she was even set to the right channel to reach them.

Tron nudged the Feldynaught into a leap, narrowly dodging another powerful punch from her foe. Her eyes flicked downward as she heard a small impact from her underbelly. A Birdbot was aiming a small bazooka at her. Tron focused her cannons on the small robot and fired. The loud, warbled "keh-keh!" the Birdbot emitted as the weapons made contact was quite satisfying to her.

Deplorably, this allowed Tron's opponent to connect with a punishing blow. The Feldynaught flipped over twice as it was again knocked to the skyship's deck. Tron locked the legs into spin mode, eluding a crushing blow from the Enarban Fell which pounded harmlessly into the green roof of the ship. Tron fired another Bonne Bomb at the huge monstrosity; it seemed like her cannons were having little noticeable effect on it.

Gritting her teeth, Tron locked her mech's legs and charged forward. There was no way she was going to give Glyde the satisfaction of winning this fight!

"Maybe we should stop dropping all those bombs," Teisel suggested, leaning forward in the Gesellschaft's command chair. "I think we hit Tron with some of that last bunch."

"Oh," said Number Fifteen, watching his tactical screen closely.

Teisel rapped his fingers on the arm of his chair fretfully. Watching his own display, he saw another barrage of Bonne Bombs fall from the outlined Gesellschaft. The little green dots, representing the bombs, plummeted slowly down the screen and onto the two outlines below, which were standing on top of a third, larger outline, which represented Glyde's skyship. "Hey!" Teisel called. "I said to stop doing that!"

"Ummm, actually, you only said that maybe we should stop dropping the bombs," Number One pointed out correctly. "You never ordered us to."

Teisel groaned. "Okay, I ORDER you to stop dropping those bombs!"

"Roger!" said Number Fifteen, piping the order through his link with the bomb bay.

All activity on Teisel's screen ceased, except for the two-dimensional portrayal of the battle between Glyde and Tron. The display showed Glyde's robot as being far larger than Tron's, which Teisel hoped was only a problem of scale, but suspected that it wasn't. It was hard to tell what was happening, as the visual was not in real-time, nor was it capable of showing all the moves and attacks each combatant was capable of using.

This meant that basically all Teisel could see was the robots moving back and forth, jumping, punching, and occasionally shooting small green dots at one another. It looked like Tron was holding her own, but Glyde was giving as good as he was getting in the fight. Rubbing his chin, Teisel realized that with the cessation of the bombardment of Glyde's ship, his part in this particular battle was reduced to that of observer.

Pounding his fist on the console, he demanded, "Isn't there anything we can do?!"

The bridge Servbots waited a few seconds before offering their opinions.

"We could send in the Draches," said Number Sixteen helpfully.

Number One said, "We could try dropping some more bombs."

"We could play Burple Bowling," offered Number Eleven.

Number Fifteen looked up from his tactical display. "I know! We could order up some food from the kitchen!"

Everyone stared at Number Fifteen.

Ten minutes later, Teisel had a helpful thought, so he stopped stuffing his face from his bowl of noodles. "You know, Number Sixteen, I think you may have had a good idea. We should send Tron some logistical support!" He ripped the communications headset off of Fifteen's face, causing the Servbot to nearly spill his own bowl. "Hey, MegaMan," he called, "can you hear me? Helloooo! Are you there?"

Some static crackled through, then, "Yes, Teisel, what can I do for you?" MegaMan sounded a little rushed, as if he were doing something important at the moment.

"See if you can give Tron some cover fire," said Teisel. "She looks like she needs help down there."

"We already tried that," MegaMan said. Teisel thought he heard the sounds of neaby blaster fire in the background. "She told us she didn't want any help. Right now we're trying to disable their big gun."

"Keep going, then," Teisel said with his mouth full. "Once you've shut it down, report in, and then we'll be able to bring the Gesellschaft into the fight."

"Keep going then," Teisel said. It sounded like he had something in his mouth. "Once you've shut it down, report in, and we'll be able to bring the Gesellschaft into the fight."

"All right," MegaMan replied. He and Dantz were way, way ahead of Teisel's orders. They had already blasted their way into the small bridge on Glyde's ship. Birdbots lay in smoking piles behind them, and the two were already trying to turn the ship around. They had both agreed that steering the ship away from Kattleox City was the first priority, before trying to figure out how the weapon worked.

Dantz was steering the ship. He clearly wasn't very good at it, but MegaMan was forced to admit he would have done even worse, since he had absolutely no experience flying anything but a Drache. Dantz had assumed he would know the controls by instinct, but a few things were different from the layout the Digger was used to, and he had taken a few wrong turns before finally getting the ship a safe distance from the city.

MegaMan looked at the weapon's controls. They didn't seem to be that complicated: an aiming mechanism and the fire button. Still, MegaMan was unsure of what to do. There did not seem to be any need to actually fire it; even if there were, there were no appropriate targets below him.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Dantz looked at him blankly. "I don't know. Maybe we should destroy the weapon, so they can't use it again."

"Sounds good."

"Yeah," Dantz answered. Each was apparently waiting for the other to make some sort of suggestion.

Suddenly, a loud creak vibrated through the deck above them. Dantz was able to hold tightly to the steering wheel, but MegaMan was swept off his feet. He rolled over and re-oriented himself. Gulping, he realized what must have happened on the deck. Tron was in serious trouble! He had to stop fooling around down here and go help her!

"What do you think we should---" Dantz was cut off as MegaMan put his fist through the weapons console, shattering the controls. MegaMan opened his fist and gripped the electronic guts of the control panel, ripping them out as he withdrew his hand.

"I think that should do it," he said, looking down at the ruined console, which looked completely unusuable. He dashed for the ladder motioning for Dantz to follow him. Tron had better be all right, or he'd...what would he do?