Izurich
StrosivadanCourier 6 and Ratchet and Jak & Daxter
Level 5 - (43/50) EXP (+3), Level 5 - (10/50) (+3), Level 2 - (8/20) (+3)
Location: Land of Adventure - Coral Highlands, Redgraccoon City - Charnal Lane
Word Count:2824
The journey to where these wigglers were hanging around wasn’t too long, especially considering his new stead, and allowed the Courier to survey the land quite a bit. With the map on his pip-boy updating automatically with the landscape around him, it was only a matter of time before he had a much more accurate and impressive lay of the land than that rudimentary, not-to-scale paper drawing they had found in the castle. Maybe he could sell copies of it to the guild or other locals as he continually updated it?
Thoughts of an easy buck aside, he had to marvel at the wondrous landscaping around him. Rolling hills were one thing to a man used to a flat desert, but hills made of coral? No sight had ever compared before, not even the beautiful canyons and trees of Zion Park, where he had met Joshua Graham. Coral, he wasn’t sure what it was at first. Instinct told him it was some manner of alien land, but the more he looked it over the more he recognized it was very much an earthborn phenomena. He had been to the oceans of California, swam in the waters and seen coral, but very little of it remained after the Great War. It took a few minutes to click what it all was around him, but once he understood plenty of options raced through his mind. He would take some samples of the coral to place in his pack, no doubt he’d be able to craft some nice chems with it, as well as grabbing some fungus and moss along the way. Once he got past the lowlands, that was.
His stead seemed a bit hesitant to cross through, wary of something. ”What’s the matter, Drumstick?” he asked, assigning the chocobo a name. It shook its head, feathers a bit ruffled, but continued to march forward at his insistence. He knew to keep a lookout, what with this animal’s instincts recognizing danger. He just didn’t expect that danger to take the form of giant living bullets with guns of their own, merrily taking potshots and just about everything in sight!
The first sign of these bizarre creatures came from the gunshots. Soon as he heard that, the Courier was put on high alert. ”What in the hell?” he mumbled, stopping his chocobo in its tracks. ”I’ve tangled with aliens, mutants, ghouls, magic, ghosts, an’ all manner o’crazy shit, but I never thought I’d see the day a bullet pulled the trigger itself.”
Some of the bullet creatures caught sight of him, and that meant going on the defensive. With their big handguns they fired, but thankfully the distance meant their sidearms couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. The Courier dove off Drumstick and urged it behind a big rock, where it dutifully followed.
Scoping out the situation, he had to make some choices. ”I could probably take a bunch of hits if’n I just charged in, but could get overwhelmed. At this distance my revolver and shotgun won’t hit shit, and that machine gun I got from Gaige chews through ammo so fast I’m already close to bein’ out. Luckily…” 6 pulled out his Ratslayer rifle and the spare box of rifle ammo from that loot box Peach had demonstrated earlier that day, more than enough to take out all the targets pinning him down and still keep going. He brought up his rifle, aimed down the scope, and fired.
BLAM!
The first of the bullet creatures died without any fanfare, and its companions didn’t stop to mourn. It was as though these creatures were utterly obsessed with just blasting away anything and everything they could with those big goofy smiles, like taking lives was a fun pass time. He didn’t much care for that. Blam! Blam! Two more down, the second scoring a critical hit.
With the threat neutralized, at least for now, 6 stood up from his cover position and signalled for Drumstick to follow. He moved slowly and methodically rather than riding his oversized bird, so as to not be a larger target and attract the attention of more bullet creatures. A few dozen meters through the foothills and something new caught his watchful gaze, just before the coral hills. A wild Pokemon! At least that’s what he assumed it to be. It had the same “feel” to it as the other Pokemon he had come across so far. It was surrounded by bullets, pelting it with constant barrage of… Well, little bullets. Gah, these creatures made keeping a straight line of thought impossible!
This absolutely couldn’t stand! Still keeping the element of surprise, 6 deployed his eradishield generator, not for himself, but in order to keep Drumstick safe from any stray gunfire. He had no intentions of staying out of the fray. ”YEE-FUCKING-HAW!” he cried out, charging forward with his shotgun in hand, pokeball in the other.
”Heracross! Throw me up!” he yelled, throwing the ball a little ways ahead of himself. Heracross, having had time to rest and recover from its earlier fight, popped out raring and ready to go! The Courier jumped up on the back of the giant bug’s shell, who launched him high into the air with its horn! BANG! BANG! Two shots went off from the shotgun taking out two bullets.
”Let’s go, Bastion!” he cried, still in freefall. The robot striker manifested around the Courier, allowing him to ride atop its shoulder. It landed on the ground with a heavy, shaking THUD, gun in hand. Bastion recognized the threat against a beautiful creature of nature and unloaded its firepower into the bullets, spraying around in an arc. Many fell, but others were nimbled and dodged around, taking their own potshots.
Most of the bullets failed to do any real damage to Bastion, while a couple hit the Courier. He winced in pain, getting shot was never pleasant, but he was used to it and his sub-dermal armor protected him from most of the injuries. The donphan was clearly surprised at the sudden arrival, but it didn’t attack or lash out at the robot or man now standing directly in front of it, recognizing the Courier as a friend and ally. Instead the donphan narrowed its eyes on the nearest bullet, curled up into a ball, and began spinning like a revving motor. Faster and faster, but not moving anywhere. Then suddenly, as though someone had just taken off the brakes, the donphan rolled out, trampling the bullet into the ground.
The fight was far from over, and many of the bullets remained. Happily, insanely dodging around and shooting, a stray bullet hit the Courier in his neck, where the armor was weakest. ”Gah!” he gasped, clenching the wound. Careless, he had been too careless. That little bastard had done pissed him off and that was the last mistake he’d ever make. Responding to his mental commands, Bastion threw the Courier at the offending bullet. Just before colliding, the Courier swung his Equalizer pickaxe with all the force he could muster, piercing the creature through and planting it firmly in the ground to die.
Another bullet hopped up right in front of the Courier’s face, absurd happy grin that it had, and planted its gun right up against his forehead. In that instant the Courier flashed back to that night Benny had kidnapped him, shot him in the head twice and buried him in a shallow grave. Could he survive a third bullet to the head? As fate would have it, he wouldn’t need to find out. Heracross came from nowhere and swung its arm at the bullet like it was doing some sort of karate move, like it was trying to do some sort of Brick Break. The bullet died in an instant, chopped in half by the large beetle protecting its trainer.
”Good on ya, Heracross!” 6 commented, tilting his hat up. ”I should give ya a name, shouldn’t I? How about Bugfoot?” Bugfoot danced happily, apparently ecstatic at the new name.
Courier 6 took a glance around to measure the state of the battle, only to find there was no more battle. The bullets were all dead, each and every one. The donphan and Bastion were busy cleaning up the rest while he was congratulating Bugfoot. Even Drumstick recognized the danger had passed and come out from the cover of the eradishield. ”Good work, y’all,” he assured. Bastion vanished, becoming a spirit once more.
6 approached the donphan, holding out a stimpack. ”I reckon ya could use some healin’, an’ so could I. We’re not hurt too badly, so this one should be able to cover us both. What do ya say?” The donphan nodded in acceptance, though it seemed to be rather disappointed at having to take his generosity. The creature seemed to be a very proud one, very self-reliant. Still, it was nothing but relieved as its wounds closed up with the use of the stimpack.
With both of them healed up, the Courier pulled out his second, and last, pokeball. ”Yer a pretty tenacious one, ain’t ya? Remind me a bit o’myself. Want to join my posse?” The donphan looked from the pokeball to the heracross and narrowed its eyes on the giant bug. It let out a grumbling roar and lifted its trunk up, as if to challenge Bugfoot. The normally happy and eager heracross recognized the challenge and pounded its fists together, then took what could only be described as some sort of fighting stance. ”Oh, so y’all wanna fight each other, do ya?” Both Pokemon gave what sounded like a positive response. ”Well I wouldn’t mind lettin’ y’all have a brawl together here’n there, so long as we got the time and place, but this ain’t neither right now.”
Both Pokemon looked back to the Courier, then to one another, holding their gaze for another moment until, ultimately, they relaxed themselves. The Courier casually tossed his pokeball at the donphan, who didn’t struggle or fight against it one bit. He officially had his second Pokemon partner. ”I’ll name ya Ivories.”
He then looked all around at the fading spirits of the bullet creatures, placing the pokeball on his belt. ”Awright, time to get crushing these spirits.”
”Don’t worry, I can keep them off your back!” Ratchet called out, determined to prevent any of the zombies from interrupting Nero and the others’ efforts in rescuing the van. With the bombuilder’s limited ammo regeneration he decided it would be better to, for the moment, switch to another weapon. He pulled out the handcannon. ”Ew, this thing is gross,” he commented, feeling the warm fleshy weapon in his hands. He took aim at the nearest undead shambling its way over and pulled the trigger. Less of a machine setting off and more of a biological retching, it fired out a long shard of some sort of bone which pierced through the zombie. ”Bingo bongo, and that’s one out!”
But of course, more were coming. Quickly he stuck another tooth-like shard into the gun and fired. Then again, and again. They pierced with remarkable power, sticking through multiple zombies and upping his death toll. ”We’ll catch up to Jak in no time!” he happily exclaimed. Only, uh oh, he ran out of shards to fire off. Well something like that never took Ratchet out of a fight! He pulled out the small pistol and removed its clip, tossing the handgun back into the hammerspace from whence it came, then loaded the bullets into his handcannon. No doubt this biological gun had far more firepower than that tiny pissant gun anyway.
Blam! Blam! Blam! Bullets fired out, casing and all, striking the zombies as they approached. Just as he expected, they were fired off with more power than the little sidearm they were originally made for. Unfortunately zombies were swarming in on his position in greater numbers than he could take down with this weapon. That was, until Gene insulted them which somehow attracted the attention of most of the swarm. ”Huh. Guess he’s so annoying that even the brainless don’t like him.” Ratchet shrugged and swapped back to the bombuilder. So long as they were all converging on Gene, they’d tear him to shreds the second his invincibility ran out. Two proximity bombs were fired into the amassing group, blasting them to smithereens by the dozens! But that only left enough charge in the bombuilder for 1 more proximity bomb. Not even enough for a remote detonator.
Dark Jak crashed into a tombstone and stopped moving, leaving deep cracks in the rock. A four armed uppercut from the suffering would have, and should have, killed him if it weren’t for Mar’s armor, but that didn’t mean he was feeling great. Hell, if it were his regular form and not Dark Jak that took the blow, the armor wouldn’t have been enough to save his life. Bottom line, he was lucky to have both on his side at the moment of impact, but bones were definitely broken. Dark eco leaked from cuts and open wounds, arcing out his body, utterly destroying the nearby plantlife. Jak was breathing heavily as Daxter sat on his shoulder, watching in silent open-mouthed terror as two skeletons conversed nearby.
Daxter couldn’t hear what the bone heads were talking about, they weren’t close enough for that, but skeletons too? Oh great. Wait, what was going on? One of them was charging in? ”Watch out! There’s a skeleton coming to-”
“Here to help!” Lightning blasted a zombie, then another and another.
”Nevermind!” Daxter shook his head in disbelief. What a day, am I right? ”Alright Jak, we’ve gotta get you back in the fight! Now… How exactly are we gonna do that?” Daxter tapped his chin, looking over his injured best friend. Still in Dark form, Jak wasn’t much for conversation or ideas, but clearly he was too injured to get up and charge back into the fray. ”I got it!”
Daxter crawled behind Jak to where the jet board was holstered on his back and activated it. The advanced machine expanded outward, hovering above the ground, now with Jak sitting atop it. The little ottsel grabbed the base of the board and adjusted it, aiming just right until it was facing the horde of zombies and, more importantly, the suffering. Then Daxter slammed his palm on the “turbo” button, sending the jet board flying across the graveyard like a racecar!
”Have a nice trip, Jak!” he called out, waving. Whew, that was a lot of work. But now nobody could say he didn’t help out, right? And he got to stay out of trouble too! Beaming with self-assuredness, Daxter almost missed the saliva dripping onto his shoulder from behind. ”What, now it’s raining? Who said it could rain toda-YAAAAAH! Wait for me, Jak!” Daxter barely dodged out of the grasp of a zombie, running away with both arms above his head.
Meanwhile, the jet board did its job of zooming Jak straight into the fray. Injured and unable to run around, Jak could still move his arms without a problem. He steered the jet board up into the crowd, bouncing off a zombie’s back, then threw himself off it in middair right above the suffering he had tangoed with a moment ago! ”I SAID DIE!” Dark Jak landed atop the beast, which reacted to his presence with a roar and a buck, but Jak wouldn’t be so easily tossed off. Already he sank his dark eco claws into the suffering. With his other hand he tore at the demon’s flesh, ripping out large chunks and tossing them aside, dark eco flooding the wounds with every slash of claw. After only a few seconds Jak pierced into the suffering’s brain and the demon let out its final death throes. It collapsed in a heap as Jak rolled off the side, his body shrinking, his skin returning to normal color.
Jak was left surrounded by enemies utterly exhausted, devoid of his dark eco powerup, his partner scrambling around in fear.
”Uh-oh. Clank!”
“Right away, Ratchet!” Clank manifested with his jet boosters and took off to help out Jak. Small and weak he may be, his metal body would at least keep him safe from the zombies.
