DetectiveRed

  We are almost getting to the big trans stuff but in the meantime! Giant robots fighting giant monsters! Drama! Cliffhangers! Cuttlefish! All on today's chapter of Overbearing Overemotional humans!

Unsurprisingly, the monster came back, as they always do. That was fine, it just meant we’d all be getting into our mechs. 

“I need Mountain Devil Power!” I shouted, and the others followed. The ground shook with the weight of the five land-bound mechs bounding towards our location. There was a call from Clay’s magpie that told us it was on the way. I jumped and I was inside Thorny. Was this another teleportation thing? Or had I jumped the full 20 feet? It was always hard to tell as the floor blurred.

The creature in front of us was huge and definitely lived up to its name, which Astrus helpfully provided. Cuttlecopier’s head was like that of a cuttlefish, it flashed with patterns and colour that were almost dizzying to watch and it moved like it was underwater. The body on the other hand was a block, resembling, you guessed it, a copy machine. Where it’s buttons and light up screen would be were flashing along with the light show it’s head was giving off. It’s tentacles flew around like it was trying to dance, it might have been beautiful if it wasn’t so gross. There was a distinct smell of fish in the air. 

“How did you figure it out?” the squid-like creature bellowed.

"Simple, the Goldie I know wouldn't ask for help!" I let out a chuckle as Stella said that. She really just said that in front of the poor guy. 

"Let's just deal with this copycat,” Gold mumbled. One-liners were meant to be snappy and loud but he didn’t seem to have gotten the memo. He sounded exhausted after beating that thing half to death, and he had just quit. Maybe he needed to sit this fight out, but unfortunately, we didn’t have the luxury of being down a ranger. Making sure he was okay had to wait until after. 

There was always a period of time in battles like this where you don’t know what your opponent is capable of. Sometimes when they get bigger they unlock new abilities, and sometimes you only get to see one ability because it was disguised the whole time! Tentacles usually mean it will try to restrain, but its skin pulsing likely meant it was trying something new, and all we could do was wait. 

There was a flash of light and I felt my mech lurch forward. Had it grabbed me? The viewing screen of Thorny was bright white like it had been totally glitched out. Guess we know what to avoid if this goes on longer. 

“Red, are you okay?” Gold asked.  

“I can’t see it. What’s happening?”

I tried moving the giant lizard, to no effect. Each joint was being restricted, likely by its tentacles. Sometimes I wished Dysphorus would forget that tentacles exist.

“Everyone’s tangled.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It’s tentacles have everyone restrained. I’m doing what I can to avoid him  but I don’t know how to get anyone out of it.” He sounded distraught. He might be aloof but he was looking for me for instructions, I needed to help him. I needed to be a leader. 

“Can you tell me how things look from the outside?”

“I can try. It’s got one of its tentacles wrapped around your mech’s head. I think it's trying to pull it apart.”

“I can’t feel anything going on.” Usually, I would receive feedback. Like the mech was connected to my nervous system. I’d never feel the full brunt of whatever it took, but I could still feel something. Now there was no feedback, nothing to help me get a grip on my surroundings.

“I think it somehow made the mech numb,” Alex interjected. Good, communications were still working between the mechs that were tangled.

“Maybe we could combine? Would that break its hold?” Blain asked. The beginning of the process was simple, each of us just had to press a button and the 5 mechs would combine into one mega mech. It was automatic, meaning hopefully being numb wouldn’t hurt calibrations. 

“I don’t know. It’s worth a shot, but we’ll need a distraction. Justin, do you think you can handle that?” I needed to trust he could do it.

“Justin? Like quiet, back of the class Justin? That’s Gold?” 

“Not the time, Blain.”

“I can do it,” Justin replied. 

------

I couldn’t mess this up. There was no conceivable way to mess this up. I just had to hit the creepy squid and they’d be able to finish it off without me. I could feel each hop of my mech bounding towards the weird tentacle creature, the smile on its face too wide. Its eyes seemed dead, and unfortunately familiar. Its skin rippled gold and white. I hated it. I hated that it had tried to hurt my teammates. Why was it still trying to look like me? My screen flashed and a cackle rang out through the battlefield. I needed to deal with this thing. The tentacle was coming for me and my mech, so we made like a kangaroo and jumped. This had to work. It had to. 

We didn’t land on the solid ground, I could tell that much. if I had to guess we’d landed on the tentacle that was coming for us. Perfect. I instructed the giant robot to jump forward; if I was lucky, that’s where the creature was and I had to be lucky if I didn’t want to fail again. 

“What the--” the creature screamed.

----

The ground shook, and my vision cleared. 

“I got him!” Justin sounded excited. Well, more excited than I’d ever heard him.

“Good job! Now let’s finish this,” I shouted. We weren’t going to let this draw out any further. “Gold, can you try to combine with us? We need that extra power.”

“I can try.”

“You can do it, Justin,” Stella said. “Your kangaroo knows what to do.”

You would think giant robots would be hard to control, but fortunately, they seemed to have a mind of their own. Around me, I could see the shifting panels, and through the screen, the ground became further away. A calm washed over me. The giant robot knew what to do, and so did I. To my left was Blain, excitement flowed through my cockpit, his quokka mech helped power up the entire thing, all of the mech’s energies were starting to flow into one place. To the right was Alex, whose mech uploaded the weak points for the creature in front of us. Behind me was Clay, giving us a birdseye view of the battlefield, and holding us all up was Stella. It didn’t feel complete yet, though. We stood at least two hundred feet off the ground. Were we going to get taller? 

“Gold, get up here,” I said, looking down at the gold kangaroo that was still on the ground after tackling the Cuttle Copier. 

“Sorry, I think he’s got me a little tied up.”

The tentacles were wrapping around him, and his mech, we needed to be careful if we were going to defeat this thing without hurting him.

“Are you okay?” Stella asked.

“I’m fine, just finish him off.”

“Make sure you’re not in the way. We don’t want you getting hurt.” Stella sounded so concerned. I had to trust he would get out of the way like when we fought brain drain.

“I’ll be fine!”

We pulled one of the swords from Clay’s mech. Gold needed to get out of there and we needed to help.

“Hey squid, we’re gonna make you into calamari!” Blain shouted. 

As we drove the sword through the creature's chest. I heard the terrible sound of grinding metal followed by a mech screaming,  followed by an explosion.  Where was Goldie?

DetectiveRed

Hahaha, cliffhangers. This story is my first attempts at writing action, so any feedback is greatly appreciated. Additionally, feel free to comment, favourite and review if you like the story, it helps a lot!