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PokéBattles Foxfire: War Event 2

Burning Down

First published May 30, 2024
pokebattles-foxfire.neocities.org

Terra stared into the glass tube of the machine. It hadn't been his first choice for the final, long-planned step of this process, a process that dated back around a hundred battles by now. This was the perfect opportunity. A chance almost three years in the making.

There was suddenly a very loud VROOM VROOM VROOM noise from outside of the site, as rubber skidded against ground to the point of catching on fire. The startle was enough to cause Terra's B button to actuate, canceling the evolution in process.

And Terra was sent flying through the ceiling and off into the distance as the source of the rapid revving rammed through at high speed.

Elsewhere...

Location: Hospital
Player: Hiber

"It's not jaundice," Moreau said, looking at the test results. "According to the reports, that isn't even possible."

"But ... I've turned yellow," the webmaster replied.

"Look at this diagram," the doctor-like man said. "According to the MRI analysis, you don't even have internal organs. You're made of concentrated hopes and dreams, bad ideas, fluff, a slowly regenerating creativity, terrible ideas, concentrated bluffing, and ... well, there should be a fire right here but it looks like it's burned out."

"So ... it's... "

"Burnout. You're exhausted and in need of rest." And if you don't rest...

Location: Grassy Field of Doom
Player: Jane F. Deer

Around, and around, and around it spun, and fires rose up in its wake. Where they burned, the ground itself began to corrode, raw HTML and binary code and unprogrammed background pages starting to take form in its path. The flames shot out and up from the wheels, and disintegrated a news quadcopter drone.

Location: Hospital
Player: Hiber

And so passed the hospital room CRT TV, in a ball of fire, which Hiber promptly stepped on and absorbed, because even normal Ninetales do that.

Location: Grassy Field of Doom
Player: Jane F. Deer

...and help came.

Out of a dozen or more minor side plots and factions ... some of them showed up. Cthulhu Chuck and Doompuff Dave showed up on precisely opposite sides of the field along with their respective cults, and opened up with their motley array of Lovecraftian beasts and exceptionally dangerous Pokémon, cratering the field with death rays, sanity-bending psychic waves, unknown technology, approximate mimicries of jiggly-death-blasts, and the occasional Sing thrown in for good measure, while their trainers and the entirety of the mafia all opened up with far too many tommy guns and other Prohibition-era firearms. They were joined rapidly by a fusillade of arrows from dozens of micro-abusing mangudai exploiting their attack bonus against siege, weirdly slow boulders and high-lob cannonballs, and a veritable wave of angry huskarls. Drones from the mega corps delivered packages and rockets in equal measure. The entire Royal Navy that Pirate had been afraid of on more than one occasion showed up in their cruisers (being it was landbound, the dual meaning resolved to police cars) and opened up with full broadsides of blackpowder cannons despite the previously stated resolution. The reconstituted Team Rocket showed up and attacked with a musical number, and...

Location: Hospital
Player: Hiber

... And the resting webmaster simply watched, as the second news camera monitored and captured footage of events on the ground. Huskarls lost their arl, mangudai had their horses collapse out from under them (and went down with them, as was the way), anyone with anything resembling a firearm rapidly learned the difference between a cook-out and a cook-off as ammunition magazines exploded, and Mi-go and overevolved formerly-cute Pokémon suddenly went back to pummelling their unnatural enemies (each other) as their trainers, exhausted from the exertion of having to work with their arch-enemies, resumed their brutal cultist gang war.

Location: Grassy Field of Doom
Player: Jane F. Deer

"... You can't be serious," Jane continued. "You can't be that bent on revenge. Do you not see what that thing is doing, it's going to destroy the whole--"

"... Oh, but I am." Iron Mask simply ... watched, from a distance. "Look at it. It's deliciously ironic, isn't it? ... I'd fought so hard to defeat the Webmaster and burn all their work to the ground ... and now they're doing it for me. Who knew all I'd have to do was wait? The main site's been dead for over a month now, and that thing's doing donuts in the CSS."

Abruptly, something fast and blue and green and loudly screaming suddenly plummeted out of the sky directly towards the burning chaos.

The berserk robot screamed violently as the devastating fire attacks which had wreaked havoc on everything else surrounded him, to absolutely no effect. "I! AM! BEYOND! MORTAL! WEAPONRY!" Every word spoken was another blow struck, pounding into the metal hull of the adversary until one punched through, breaching its flame tank and causing the flames to blast out the side. With the protective layer punched through, the flames began to consume their own creator--

And Terra didn't stop either, grabbing the rupture and tearing metal, before grabbing and ripping one of the giant, now flaming, chrome steel rimmed tires clear off the vehicle's side before tossing the burning piece of scrap directly into the third and hopefully final news drone. "AND THIS IS FOR YOU, WEBMASTER YOU FRICKING FRI--"

Location: Hospital
Player: Hiber

This time, the television had not seen fit merely to explode. Rather, the piece of scrap - at approximately the scale it had appeared when thrown - had gone so far as to come clear out of the screen and bash an intently watching Hiber in the face... "... and dammit, they've said I can't have any more TVs after this. So I guess we don't get to see how it ends."

...Hiber turned to find a computer terminal, then twitched an ear and abruptly turned and stared at Doc Moreau. "Wait a minute, what are you doing here? Aren't you barred from--" and was promptly shushed by the not-doctor.

"Shhh! It's a residency thing and they don't know about that!"

Location: Grassy Field of Doom
Player: Jane F. Deer

... Things finally began to calm down as Terra finished the job, looking down over what had become of the enemy Burnout -- torn to pieces not by some allegiance of justice or self-defence, but by raw unrelenting spite and anger quite literally full of sin, his evolution to some sort of super demon lord forestalled by the horrific power of the giant mechanical space flea from nowhere that was the once mighty Burnout. Just ... a really angry would-be overlord. (Being one of the first characters in the version probably didn't hurt either.)

Abruptly, the battle cut out as Hiber shut down the interface.

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