Chapter 15
In any group of people who work together, I'm sure you will always find complainers. We Primes are no exception; I know I have done my share of griping. Of the seven of us, I'd say that Toby is probably the worst offender; he has the dourest personality of any of us (although he has perked up a bit since Angie joined the team).
To tell you the truth, though, even Toby doesn't complain a whole heckuva lot. Let's face it, we Primes live pretty stressful lives -- long stretches of boredom punctuated by bursts of insanely frenetic activity. If we got to complaining too much, we might come to realize just how bad we actually have it.
Regardless, one of Toby's chief complaints of late has been that our debriefings have begun taking longer and longer to get through. It's certainly not Prime Commander's fault; Shelley is smart as a whip and knows how we fight our battles as well as anybody. Nor could one lay it at the feet of Mike or Trina. The two of them have adapted pretty well to the roles of first- and second-in-command, and their narrations have gotten smooth as silk. The problem, I reflected as I took in the scene into which Wizzit had teleported me, was the battles themselves.
Most of our battles lately have been like these multi-threaded storylines -- some of us went out and fought a monster and then we fought another monster somewhere else, and all the while, another group were fighting a third monster in a completely different place. Obviously, the more monsters you fight, the longer your report is going to be, and these days Enclave was sending out up to five at a time.
The scene before me now, though, more resembled a three-ring circus. Mike was still on the back of the giant scorpion, one arm wrapped around the thing's blaster-tail, looking like he was having a grand ol' time. Trina was standing beside him, shooting with one hand and hanging on for dear life with the other. Angie and Padma were between the giant frog and something that looked like a giant snapping turtle with a bad temper, and they were swinging their weapons with wild abandon at anything that moved.
Nicolai had not gone to retrieve his axe when his force shield went live, apparently. Instead, he had kept that spear of his and was absently jabbing it at the beak of Tippy Turtle while keeping a close watch on the black frog's leaps and bounds.
Mayumi, Bill, and Shelley were standing well back from all the monsters to avoid incidental injuries. Shelley and Bill were concentrating their triple-blaster fire on the turtle's legs, while Mayumi was doing her best to draw a bead on the frog. Blaster shots of various kinds were flying around everywhere. I ask you, who the heck could create a detailed narrative report of something like that? I could tell this debriefing was going to be a long one.
"Hi, guys," I called out. "Fresh legs here. Where do you want me to help out?"
"Stay away from the frog," Nicolai said promptly. "I have a plan to deal with it. It will be ready shortly."
"You've been saying that for the past five minutes, Yellow." Mike did not sound amused. "When are we going to see this plan of yours in action?"
"It will be ready shortly," Nicolai repeated stubbornly.
"Here, you can take my place, Blue," Trina said. "Riding monsters is not my idea of fun." She let go of the scorpion's tail and leaped off the monster's back, executing a perfect somersault in the air before landing nimbly on her feet. Yeah, having a fully-powered force shield is the bomb.
I dashed over to the scorpion and jumped on board. "What's our objective here, Red?" I asked him. Trina, I noticed, had run over to the side of the turtle opposite Shelley and Bill. She, too, was concentrating her blaster fire on the thing's legs.
Mike sighed. "Well, my original plan was to use the blaster on this thing's tail to destroy the other monsters," he explained. "The problem is, it's fighting us hard enough to make aiming it a real digger's job. To make things worse, the Mock Turtle over there is vulnerable only beneath that shell of his, and Jumpy the Frog won't sit still."
"So, the scorpion is pretty much useless to us at this point?"
"Aside from the joyriding, yeah. That was a lot of fun, though." He took a fresh grip on the tail with both arms. "Here, lend me a hand. I think it's time to turn on self-destruct mode."
The ground shook, nearly throwing me off; the frog had landed from one of his long leaps again. I righted myself, and between the two of us, we managed to wrestle the scorpion's tail around until it was pointed almost straight down, right towards his own abdomen. The tip of the tail had begun to glow blue again, although it didn't seem as bright as it had earlier. Maybe Scorpie was getting tired.
"He is jumping again," Nicolai called. "Stand clear!"
Seconds later, Mike and I leaped away as Scorpie's tail-blaster fired, blowing him apart and sending monster parts flying in every direction. I rolled to my feet in time to see the frog crash to the ground again. Immediately, it began to bellow as if it were in pain. Seconds later, its Enclave enhancements began to fail, and it dissolved into sparks.
"Yellow, that was brilliant!" Padma gushed.
"Well, I was reasonably certain it would work," Nicolai said modestly.
"Well done, Yellow. I am impressed." That was from Trina, which told me that Nicolai had indeed done something clever. I mean, Nicolai is always modest, and Padma thinks everything he does is brilliant; Trina doesn't hand out too many compliments during battles, though.
"Right, then," Mike said, "let's everyone go after the remaining monster, shall we? Wizzit, you said the underside should be vulnerable, is that right?"
"Ya damn betcha, ol' son! It's just the top shell that's tougher'n a two-dollar steak."
"In that case," Mike went on, pointedly ignoring Wizzit's over-the-top Texas drawl, "I propose we try to flip it onto its back. Orange, Yellow, Blue, Indigo, and Violet, let's all gather on the side that Gold and Blackiron have been shooting at."
"Not Yellow," Trina told him. "Yellow's force shield needs to recharge."
"Again?" Mike said, sounding surprised. He shook his head. "Let's the five of us gather, then."
"Be careful of the mouth," Shelley warned us. "It nearly took a chunk out of my shoulder when I got too close."
"I can help," Bill volunteered. "You just need some muscle, right?"
"As much as we can get," Mike agreed. "Just make sure you don't get yourself hurt."
"Will do."
The rest of the battle went exactly as you might expect. There was nothing clever or interesting or fun about it. The turtle was pretty damn heavy, but there wasn't really anything it could do to attack us on that side, not after the blasting that Shelley and Bill had been giving its feet. We had to have Mayumi, Shelley, and Nicolai come help us, but eventually we got it flipped. The rest was just sheer butchery. We pounded on the turtle's tummy until Wizzit set up the final strike, and then we destroyed it.
Look, I know it was something we had to do, but those kinds of endings to a battle always leave me feeling a little depressed. It doesn't seem fair, somehow, as if we were slaughtering a dumb animal instead of dispatching a human-turned-monster that was trying to destroy us and set up an alien invasion of Earth.