It's Thursday of an off-week, and I've been trying to do a week of posts while trying to finish my Nintendo fan/ parody novel (see Demos 1 and 2) in an insane amount of time. As part of this, I went ahead and let out some very spoiler-ish material for what I wrote as the "final battle" part (as a "song fic"...), so I made the further decision to post that and a little more here, plus some autoshape sketches of what the setting is supposed to look like, the version that looks good above and the one that's more accurate further down. Long story short, it's a star fort on a floating Sky Island, and this is still my Metroid-parody heroine. Also a reminder, I used to write a series called Exotroopers, and I started this blog with a story where the protagonist cuts off his own leg...
Meliboia opened fire on
two advancing Myrmidons with her 7.5mm rifle from what cover the caryatid on
the left side provided. One of the attackers fell with a shattered visor. She
activated her shoulder pods, and promptly launched an anti-armor rocket from
the righthand pod at the pair who operated their own launcher from cover. The
blast blew out a gout of rock and rubble. The Hoplite reloading the launcher
staggered, either stunned or blinded, and then fell with a cry. The one with
the launcher popped up again, only to find himself exposed. A three-shot burst
shattered his helmet. Mel pivoted, just as a fighter came out of the clouds.
From her left pod, she launched a single anti-aircraft missile. An engine burst
into flames with the blast, and the left wing twisted off at the rear as the craft
pitched and rolled out of sight, its weapons still blazing. A single bolt
obliterated a section of the upper balcony, leaving the right caryatid
supporting only crumbling entablature. Then another, much larger craft rose up
from below. “Euphonia,” she said. She retreated as the chorus played…
There is only the bill left to pay
Let the Fool rise
When Amphion falls!”
The bolts of the Euphonia’s starboard medium plasma
cannon sailed through the Keep, occasionally detonating with the force of
concussion grenades against the columns and walls. As often as not, they sailed
straight out the other side of the deceptively porous fortification. An
incendiary rocket detonated against the hull next to the gun, only briefly
fouling the alignment of the gun. “All Hells!” Mel shrieked from behind a
column. “Fire a missile already!” Then she glimpsed the incoming parasite
craft. She hefted a translucent ammunition cannister over her shoulder, racking
five rockets directly into the conjoined muzzles of the launcher. Already, the
transport was shifting, giving the unseen gunner a more favorable angle. Before
the next shot could come, the transport banked and swerved, too late. Its
portside wing was struck by the bottom wing of the out-of-control fighter,
catastrophically damaging both craft. As the parent craft reeled, the loops on
the far side flickered with the silhouette of the approaching parasite. She
fired the full load of rockets through a sally port and ran up the stairs to
the upper balcony. The craft disintegrated as the chorus replayed…
“It is the end of the day
There is only the Boatman to pay
Let the Fool rise
When Amphion falls!”
Mel emerged outside the door of the uppermost structure where she and Ajax had spent what she counted as their true honeymoon. She came almost immediately under fire. She activated the shoulder pods for suppressing fire. On the right, her reconfigured 6mm rifle raked the balcony with bursts of fire, felling one of the two Hoplites who came vaulting over. On the left, her grenade launcher fired down at another who had topped the corner battlement. She raised the 7.5mm for what she was sure would be an attack from the center. She still froze as a final parasite craft rose into view, with two Hoplites clinging to the weapons racks. She leaped backward through a window behind the bed, just before they opened fire.
Meliboia crashed down on top of the nuptial bed, propelled by the blasts behind her. Her rifle flew from her hands. She kept rolling, crushing already splintered wood. The sheet and blankets wound around her, tearing where they met rough edges. She frantically tried to deploy the pods, producing only urgent warnings to withdraw for repairs. The final verse of her challenge was all she could hear over the ringing in her ears…
“Behold the old gods have fallen,
Their idols are cast to the flames!
Now let us worship
The Fool, our new God,
He is better than no God at all!”
Two Hoplites burst in the door to the left of
the bed, melee blades drawn. An apparition came rushing to meet them, trailing
streamers of cloth like an unwinding shroud. The first had only a glimpse of
the shape before a leaf-shaped blade drove under his breastplate. The second
parried over the body of the fallen companion, then delivered a stroke that was
parried in turn by a blade that sprang from Meliboia’s left wrist. Then a
bedsheet fell over the adversary’s head and torso, to be wound tight enough to
haul him off his feet as the apparition circled behind. Her sword drove into
his lower back, and her wrist blade laid open his throat. The apparition rose,
now crimson, at a pounding at the door. Just before it smashed to pieces, a
grenade plowed through, catching her in the chest.
The force of the concussion grenade threw
Meliboia back to the wall. She rose to hands and knees, to look through a
spiderwebbed visor. “Autolycos,” she said. “You’re an ass, but you are my
brother. Walk away.”
“Oh, all Hells, Mel!” he exclaimed. “You think
you can tell me that? I’ll tell you one last time, baby girl, just because
Aeacus makes us play nice with you doesn’t mean you’re one of us.”
“No,” she said, “I suppose not.” As she spoke, she completed an emergency
override, just before she realized exactly what she was activating.
Her second anti-aircraft missile launched. It
did not go even five times its length before it hit Autolycos in either the
belly or the groin. It blasted him straight off the balcony, past the corner of
the bastion, before its overstrained mechanisms exploded at a fraction of its
intended minimum range. She had a brief, searing glimpse of his upper body
flung upward as his legs dropped to either side.
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