Chapter 225: Grind

“Tammy, are you alright?” Dixon called over his watch’s intercom. “The signal flair has been launched. We need you back here, now!”

There was an uncomfortable pause as only a hiss of background noise followed. Normally Tammy would reply to him immediately. He tried repeating the message again, but nothing happened. He was feeling a bit worried and was about to try again when Tammy’s voice answered back.

“I see it now. I am a bit tied up at the moment. This woodland terrain is uneven and hard to move around in. Why you…” The communication seemed to breakdown as a series of scuffling and heavy grunt noises broke out. Then Tammy’s panting voice returned. “Sorry, these Plain Striders are hard to kill without any bullets. I keep having to fend them off by jabbing my sword at them or tacking them and tossing them out of the way before the next one charges out from the woods. I am only at thirty percent power too. Hold on, here comes another! Got you… I’m on my way, Dixon… just give me some time…”

Dixon lowered his watch and lifted his rifle to rest it over his shoulder. “56, I am going to put you on the green roof. I will be going across the river to help.”

56 emptied the last round from his magazine. “You are the boss. I’ll do what I can for now.”

Dixon wheeled his hover bike around and slowed down just enough to let 56 jump off. 56 hurriedly grabbed two boxes of ammo from the hover trailer before Dixon speed off over the dam to assist Lisa. As he came closer, Dixon became worried about the Land Octopus’s recalling the last time he faced them and chose to gain altitude.

Coming to a stop at a safe distance he aimed his rifle down to where the flair had originated from. He was intrigued to see a faint neon green glow through the foliage. Zooming his scope in, he was surprised to see that the glow was actually Lisa herself.

“Huh, so she uses an Altercation: cyborg type. That would explain her confidence and a few other things. Never seen this model type before. It looks complex.” Dixon then raise his rifle’s scope to look for Tammy’s Party Badger.

There was a clear path of entry in the woods nearby the river where the Party Badger and Plain Striders had leveled trees and bushes. However, the path wound back and forth through the trees and quickly became impossible to follow. There was no sign of her Hunter Mech poking above the trees either. She must have been trying to put a lot of distance between herself and the Plain Striders to lose them in the forest.

Putting the rifle scope down, Dixon glanced to see if Lisa or the Twisted had made any moves on each other. To his surprise Lisa had bolted out from the woods and was already engaging the baby Hoard Mother during the few seconds from when he had looked away. If there would have been a caption for what he was now witnessing it would say, ‘Don’t blink’!

…

Lisa jumped and spun a double axel over a black spear attack from a single Land Octopus and landed heavily in the sand on one knee just as another biological spear came soaring towards her. Raising her halfway extended katana she braced herself to deflect the blow and caused it to travel right over her shoulder. The blackened blade and the solid tentacle grated harshly but neither yielded.

The ridged Land Octopus’s tentacle continued to grate noisily past her for a moment when it suddenly softened and went slack. As it did, a double row of centipede like legs emerged out from the tentacles underside with an unsavory juicy sound. All these black writing pen sized legs could easily shred and tear her apart if they made contact.

Surprised by their appearance Lisa tried to jump away but the tentacle receded and began to curl around her from behind. Desperate, Lisa ventured to chop at the slack tentacle. Her katana sunk halfway into the rubbery black and red flesh, causing the Land Octopus to react and harden itself to prevent further damage. Taking advantage of the frozen state of the tentacle, Lisa made her escape by running away.

Lisa dodged another tentacle spear as she verbally insulted the Land Octopus. “Not today, not today buddy! I am not into tentacle porn. So, there is no way you are going to catch me in one of those wriggling arms of yours!”

As if attempting to deny her request three more tentacle spears were sent flying her way all at once. Lisa then took a sharp turn inwards towards the baby Hoard Mother to avoid the assault and prepared to take on the white beast again. This time she was going after the allegator like head of the baby Hoard Mother. With no hair to cover the scales on the Twisted neck, she hoped that her katana’s blade would be able to inflict more damage.

The baby Hoard Mother was keeping a close eye on the small human attacking it now. Unlike last time it was ready for her. Its three hairy, bone tipped, scorpion shaped tails came arcing over its back and to strike at Lisa. Lisa was then forced to give up her assault and focus on dodging. The three tails kept stabbing at her over and over, making any chance for her to get closer impossible as she danced around these attacks.

Lisa then tried to slash at these segmented tails as they came for her, but it was useless. As soon as she dodged a tail and then went to swing at it, the tail was already receding. She could only manage to just bare nick a tail every other time they came to stab her.

Lisa then began to converse with the Hoard Mother as she dodged its attacks. “At this rate… I’ll never be… able to… make any… progress. Come on… just let me… hit you!”

Just then she felt a presence approaching from behind and ducked. A Land Octopus tentacle zoomed over her head to barely miss her. It then stopped and went limp to release its sharp tipped centipede legs directly above her. Lisa’s silver eyes flashed knowing the danger she was in and rolled out from under the tentacle.

“Thump!”

The heavy tentacle thwacked the dusty ground right next to her. Lisa was about to rise and attack the tentacle when a heavy object slammed into her side. The blow knocked her to the ground once more and she could feel a jolt of pain rock her ribs right where she had been injured before during the triplets Match Fight. The baby Hoard Mother had stabbed down on either side of the tentacle with two of its tails aiming for where Lisa might appear and timed it just right.

Lisa rolled onto her back and looked up to see she had no time to move as the third bone tipped tail was already coming right at her center. Raising both her arms up, she activated her arm shields just in time to shield herself. There was a sharp metal ring as the bone tipped tail struck her shield and glanced away leaving a light indentation in the metal.

In the process of being stuck, the force was much greater than any bullet she had ever blocked before, and her arms were knocked away to expose her body. She was completely vulnerable for just a moment and the baby Hoard Mother seized that moment to stab at her again. Unable to do much, Lisa rolled to one side to barely miss the full brunt of the tails strike. Instead, it grazed her lower back and knocked her tumbling away across the sand.

Seeing that it had missed her again, the baby Hoard Mother struck at her with its third hairy tail. Lisa was in pain but knew that the next tail would be coming. So, instead of stopping her rolling, she tried to continue rolling and avoid being hit. This caught the baby Hoard Mother off guard and the third strike landed right behind her creating a large puff of dust.

Feeling the heavy thud of the tail missing her, Lisa pushed off the ground like she was doing a push up and broke out into a run. She had started running without looking up and when she did, she saw that she was about to collide with a Land Octopus! Unable to stop running, change direction, or use her katana to attack with, Lisa braced herself and tacked the beast around its bulbus head.

The Land Octopus was still under the control of the baby Hoard Mother and as such, had its eyes closed. The Twisted was taken by surprise, not only because it was being tackled but that Lisa had picked it up and was now carrying out from the defensive line! The size of this Octopus should have been over three metric tons, yet she was carrying it lake a sack of flower over her shoulder.

Being in such an unaccustomed position the Land Octopus panicked and started to break free from the baby Hoard Mothers control. This time the baby Hoard Mother did not try to stop it. The tackled Land Octopus’s tried to defend itself by wrapping it’s arms around Lisa and crush her with a hug.

Felling the tentacles beginning to wrap around her, Lisa shouted, “Not so fast!”

Lisa then dropped her shoulder to body slam the Twisted into the ground. Unprepared to be hit in such a manner, the Land Octopus was squashed like chewed gum under a shoe. Lisa released her grip to stand upright, and in the process, she twirled her katana high above her to point it downwards. Without hesitation, she sent it plunging into the dazed eye of the Land Octopus. Its arms wriggled and thrashed furiously as it slowly died.

Lisa had no time to watch as the creature died and immediately wrenched her bloodied blade from the oozing red eye to face the remaining Twisted. She locked eye contact with the baby Hoard Mother and for a moment the two of them glared at each other trying to plan out their next move.

Neither were making any good progress. Lisa was only whittling down the other Twisted’s numbers and had caused no damage to the real threating monster. While in turn the baby Hoard Mother had only slightly harmed Lisa. Something had to change or either side had to slipup for a winner to become clear.

Then faintly at first, from beyond the road, came a repeating crashing noise. As it slowly got closer and the crashing more frequent, both Lisa and the Hoard Mother glanced that way. At the edge of the tree line a large pine tree suddenly fell flat and standing atop its trunk was a Mechs foot. Party Badger had returned.

“Ah, finally back and ready to rumble!” Party Badger’s electronic voice announced.

“About time!” Lisa called back. “Do you remember the plan still?”

“Yep!” Party Badger replied while slamming her Mech’s fist into her other hand. “Lets give this Hoard Mother a bath!”