“Oh. Right. I still forget sometimes, here in the cockpit they’re just images,” realized an unharmed Matt. “Okay, panic over. Panther, how are you holding up? That’s good, but still, we can’t just let them keep this up. SABRE pilot to Artemis command. Give my apologies to the good people of Crosby Robotics, I’m going to have to wreck their robots just a little.” He reached up his hands to the two wolves directly on top of Panther, and slammed them together. Panther’s claws lit up with hot plasma and sliced deep into two more. As he got to his feet, he punched and kicked the drones until all seven units lay on the ground unable to move.
Jennifer and Cassandra continued to fight, the arms and legs of both of them now covered with minor cuts, but neither managing to strike a solid hit. Jennifer dodged the glaive and swung her pike wildly. The blade cut across Cassandra’s top, and the gash opened into a wide cleavage window that showed a good portion of her large breasts. She yelped and jumped back. She glowered at Jennifer, then glanced at Panther standing over the remains of the wolf pack, and said, “I can see I’m going to have to step up my game if I want to claim what’s mine. Alright, then! No more holding back! Gimme a W! O! L! V! E! S! What’s that spell? Wolves!!”
On the final word she her uniform burst into a swirling cloud of silver sparkles that levitated her off the ground. The fallen wolf robots shook, and pieces flew off of them and into her transformative whirlwind.
When the sparkles lowered her to the ground and dissipated, she was wearing white armor that was patterned after Jennifer’s Panther armor, but themed after the wolf pack. The helmet bore a canine face design with glowing red eyes, and the tooth-edged visor was light blue. Written across the front of the armored crop top, outlined in glowing light blue, was the word “Wolves”. From the back of the armored skirt’s waistband hung a wide white tail.
“That hypocritical bitch, she went and saw our movie!” Matt muttered.
“What the fuck! She can’t do that! She’s never seen those wolf robots until today! Can she do that?” Jennifer protested.
“No, don’t you get it? She doesn’t have powers similar to yours because they come from the same place,” Matt explained. “She has powers similar to yours because she’s copying you. She’s just a knock-off!”
Cassandra flexed her fingers and watched her movements get copied by the armor’s giant robotic hands with shimmering ice claws at their fingertip. She adjusted her stance, testing the weight of her knee-high boots with toes shaped like wolf paws. “Yeeeess, that’s more like it! Now you’re going down!” she said, and charged at Jennifer with claws up.
“Baton Twirl Blazing Shield!” Jennifer yelled. The extra length of the pike faded away as she spun it to create the barrier. Cassandra’s claws hit the shield hard, sparks and steam flying as cold met hot. Cassandra leaned in hard, pushing her advantage against the shield. Jennifer resisted as best she could, but her knees slowly gave way under the force, and finally she fell onto her back. Somehow she kept the baton spinning, but Cassandra didn’t let up, and immediately started slashing at the shield, alternating between her left and right hands in rapid succession.
Despite the completion of Cassandra’s armor, the wolf robots continued to shake, and then moved together, pulled by an unseen force. Three of them aligned side by side, with their heads together. The other four attached themselves to that group by their tail end, in an arrangement suggesting arm and legs, with the heads as the hands and feet. Then it stood up. “Oh, look at you! Coming back for another round, I see!” Matt said. With its six eyes glowing red, the merged wolf pack reached its right jaw-hand forward. The wolf tails flew into its grip and connected end to end, shaping themselves into a sword with a curved blade that shined with an icy edge, and a full hand guard reaching from the crossguard to the pommel. “Oh, very cute. A sabre sword. Alright, then, let’s go!” Matt said, and reached behind him to retrieve Panther’s axe as it unfolded for battle. The two metal giants advanced on each other, weapons swinging.
Jennifer strained under the ongoing assault against her shield. Deciding she couldn’t hold out like that for much longer, she abandoned the baton and rolled to the side to get away. She couldn’t escape the extended reach of the wolf armor, however, and screamed out as Cassandra clawed her back, leaving four icy slash marks. Laughing, Cassandra grabbed Jennifer’s legs in one hand and flung her through a large glass store window.
“Pom-poms! Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst! Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst! Fighting Spirit Fiery Burst!” Jennifer started shouting, and a series of fireballs shot out from inside the store. They struck harmlessly against the back of Cassandra’s hand as she calmly walked into the store. Jennifer kept up the futile barrage until Cassandra got too close, and then switched instead to yelling, “Pom-pom Flaming Punch!” Cassandra caught the punch in her hand, the robotic fingers wrapping around half of Jennifer’s arm. She turned and flung Jennifer right back out through the broken window.
Panther and the wolf-mech traded blows back and forth, each one scoring a few minor hits but mostly parrying each other’s strikes as their blades clashed, gaining and losing ground in equal measure. Matt spared himself a few sideways glances towards the girls below. “Jennifer, how are you holding up?” he asked, worried.
“It’s taking everything I’ve got just to avoid half of her attacks,” Jennifer answered. Bruises were now evident all over her body, and her hair was coming undone from its braid. Once again she couldn’t dodge fast enough, and Cassandra landed an oversized punch straight into her face. In the brief moment of flying through the air from the impact, before she hit the ground, Jennifer noticed that her helmet’s visor was now riddled with cracks.
Matt took a wild backhanded swing with Panther’s axe into the wolf-mech’s sword, and it paid off. The impact broke the blade in two near the hilt, and the sharp length landed well out of reach. The small victory was short-lived, however. The move left Panther wide open, and the wolf-mech took full advantage, dropping the sword hilt and reaching up to clamp down on Panther’s left arm with its jaw-hand. “Ah! Let go!” Matt yelped, but instead it reached in with its other hand, too, crushing Panther’s arm with the wolf jaws. Matt struggled, but was only able to fall back when the arm finally sheared off just below the shoulder.
“Fuck!” Matt exclaimed as his opponent dropped the now useless limb to the ground. “Alright, that’s a point to you. But I’ll have you know, out of the four options, that’s the limb I’ll miss the least. In fact… Panther, help me the aim on this kick. Jennifer, heads up!” Matt lunged at the wolf-mech, pushing it back with axe strike to its chest, and then kicked the severed arm towards the other fight. It bounced a couple of times but then rolled the rest of the way. Jennifer was bracing herself for another attack as Cassandra approached, but was spared when the arm suddenly collided with Cassandra and rolled right over her, leaving her flat on the ground.
Jennifer looked up at Panther, and then back down at the arm, confirming what had happened. She allowed a smile to form across her face. “Oh, it’s on, now. Gimme a P! A! N! T! H! E! R! What’s that spell? Panther!!” On the final word she thrust her fist into the air, and her uniform burst into a swirling cloud of golden sparkles that levitated her off the ground. Glowing green plasma, a sparkling silver dust of repair nanites, and chunks of black armor and internal mechanisms streamed out of the severed limb and joined the cloud. When the sparkles lowered her to the ground and dissipated, she was in the Panther armor, and her cuts and bruises were gone.
“So you’ve armored up now, too,” Cassandra said, once again on her feet. “No matter! I will still crush you!”
“Bring it on, bitch! It’s time to be aggressive. B, E, aggressive,” Jennifer declared.
“Shut up and fight!” Cassandra shouted, rushing in and throwing a punch. Rather than block or dodge, Jennifer threw a punch of her own. The punches landed at the same time, but the two opponents barely flinched from the impact. What followed was a flurry of punches, claw strikes, and kicks as the two of them rushed at each other again and again with their mechanically enhanced speed and power, bashing each other over and over, and spreading collateral damage all over the street as they went.
Panther’s opponent had settled into alternating between close-up fisticuffs and shooting from a distance using the on-board cannons in it arms. Panther countered with his axe and antimatter cannons to devastating effect, but the wolf-mech still endured and kept fighting. Jennifer hurled Cassandra into a parked car, causing much more damage to the car, and said, “I guess the Crosby guys will be happy. If the super robot they designed has lasted this long against you and Panther, the army’s going to want a fleet of them!”
“Don’t be silly. Nobody would design a robot this way, and nobody would want one,” Matt replied.
“Don’t give me that. I’ve seen your toys. You have all sorts of big robots that put together from little robots,” Jennifer protested.
“A foot tall and made out of plastic, sure! But on a full size battle mecha? Easy disassembly and holding up in a fight are mutually exclusive requirements!” Matt explained. “The only reason this thing is even standing is that it’s got magic holding it together! In fact it’s quite frustrating, none of the damage I’m doing matters one bit.”
Jennifer caught Cassandra’s leg in mid-kick, heaved her up into the air over her head, and slammed her down into the pavement behind her. Then she asked, “Wait, so it’s nothing but a big monster made out of magic?”
“Well sure, of course!” Matt said. “Oh. Oh, right. Well, by all means. He’s all yours.”
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