Bouncy Bouncy Djinni

The armor Djinni was wearing had now broken in several positions after the attack against it, showing parts of her skin to any viewers. The Navi, however, was satisfied with the fact she had not received any damage despite the lack of speed from its weight. "Hey Na'im!" Djinni shouted as she waved at her Operator, "This chip isn't bad! But how about some attacking now?"

"We'll go for the usual attacks," Na'im muttered, taking out the two Machinegun chips from the pack of chips. But with those in his hand, he could now see the chip that had been underneath the two. "Oh, it's that chip I traded to supplement Djinni's sand attacks..." he muttered, away from the microphone so no one could hear him not rhyming, "I can count on Jared to command Broadside to finish off any stragglers, but..." Before slotting any chips, he took a good look at the screen and paid attention to Broadside's new form which was the result of Djinni's friendship with him. He rubbed the patch of hair on his chin and decided to check if any other Navis had achieved this status with Djinni. "These symbols are..." he began as the window was revealed, showing Broadside's emblem and Eternalis' emblem side by side. There was, however, another emblem on the page which seemed as if it was trying to gain clearance to complete but couldn't get through the verification system of the PET. "If I am not mistaken, this symbol is of that sword-wielding Navi," Na'im said and made the window vanish to look back at the current battle while slotting in the chips for Djinni to attack. "I wonder where she could be," Na'im continued muttering to himself, but then started giving commands to Djinni in rhyme.

With a bored expression on her face, Djinni just listened to Na'im's explanations as it went into one receiver and immediately left through the other one. Whenever she thought he wasn't looking at her, she imitated his mouth with her right hand only to smile innocently as her veil had become with the armor and therefore didn't cover her lower side of her face. After Na'im finished, Djinni turned to Broadside and examined his new form. With a wide grin, she showed him a thumbs up and began to talk to him, "Looking good, but that's no surprise as the system is based on me. And it's good to see you in your full strength." She swept her feet across the lava in a circle as she spun around and looked upwards. "Let's finish this then," she said and from the lava came a strong wave that launched Djinni into the sky after which she continued to fly on her own strength.

Swept along the wave, although unplanned, was Fhyre who was now once again above the surface. The core swept around as Fhyre was adjusting her sight to the new surroundings and lack of enemies she had seen before. Djinni was in the sky, everywhere was lava and, while she could have gone back into the lava, she decided that she might as well stick around in case someone needed a protector. It was at this time Fhyre could see little pieces falling from the sky which were part of Djinni's magma armor. Swiftly she waved her arms around in a panicking way, trying to alert Djinni of the fact that her armor was incapable of taking much more damage.

While her left hand was visible once again, her right hand was still covered in the rocks with which she formed a gun and aimed at the unharmed Spikeys that were once above her. But this time they were on the same level, maybe even lower than her, and became the target for Djinni. The magma gun started to blaze as a flurry of bullets were shot in quick succession at the group, while empty shells fell from the gun towards the ground. As soon as 18 bullets were shot, the gun immediatelly ceased functioning even though Djinni attempted to get a few more bullets out. The armor from her right hand then crumbled and fell towards the ground as well, while her original outfit was still not visible.

"Now the third chip Na'im sent," Djinni sent with confidence in her voice and loaded the image data and battle data, but swiftly stopped the progress as she realized what she was given. "Hold on, hold on," she said and loaded the image data just to check what she was dealing with, "You're jostling me, aren't you? Why am I using this!?" With a deep sigh, she also loaded the battle data and held her hands out, away from her body and as far as possible. A thick crimson worm with a substance similar to a meteor and easily half the size of Djinni appeared in her hands. It had no eyes, just a large hole with teeth aligned in a circle. "This... This isn't so bad..." Djinni said, laughing gently as if she was about to go insane and freak out badly, "He's not... Not slimy at all... Hahahaha." It then latched onto her face. With the fiercest movements she could muster, she pulled the worm off of her face and threw it at the ground in a way space would send their meteors at earth. "That is your target!" Djinni growled angrily, pointing at one of the Drixols. As soon as the worm hit the ground, it submerged into the lava and made a quick curve to end up behind the Drixol virus. With its teeth primed and mouth open wide, the worm revealed itself again and aimed at the Drixol's behind.

Djinni.EXE [Fire/Cursor] [AirShoes/FloatShoes]
1. Fly above the Drixols in the 'behind area'.
2. Machinegun1 [30 DMG; 9 Shots; Special: Spray Fire; D Accuracy; Ranged] + [Cursor Accuracy] @ Middle SpikeyEX of Left Canyon.
3. Machinegun1 [30 DMG; 9 Shots; Special: Spray Fire; D Accuracy; Ranged] + [Cursor Accuracy] @ Middle SpikeyEX of Left Canyon.
4. SandWorm1 [80 DMG; Impact; +50 Sand Boost; Back Stab; B Accuracy; Virus] @ DrixolD

Fhyre.SP [Fire/Shield]
1. Get out of the lava.
As Broadside's armor repaired itself and the Aegis Defense system projected a fresh barrier around Djinni, Nadia pulled the data for MetalZone from the PET's transfer link. Once she had the file, she activated it, triggering a sudden shift in the immediate area's terrain from molten Lava to hardened Metal plates.

As the effect of the MetalZone spread out, Broadside spun around to face the undamaged pair of Drixols. As soon as the two drill-tipped viruses came into view, Broadside brought up his main missile battery's targeting protocols, and proceeded to light up each of the viruses with 20 individual missile locks in under a second. He switched the fire control system's attack parameters to vertical launch/attack, and sent the command to fire. Both of the torso mounted missile batteries sprang suddenly open, and a double salvo of plasma missiles took to the sky. They arced up, killed their boosters, spun around with a quick flare of their maneuvering jets, then re-ignited their boosters to come crashing down from an extreme high-angle. Both viruses vanished from view as the rain of plasma warheads obscured the general vicinity.

While Broadside dealt with the Drixols, Rosa and Ro turned their attentions to the heavily injured Spikey EX. They waited a moment for the MetalZone to finish fully expanding before raising their Guard Rifles. The two SPs then fired Meason rifle bolts in an alternating pattern at the remaining hell hound from two widely separated positions that would reduce the virus' defensive options considerably.

With the first round of attacks launched at their respective targets, Broadside and his squad all turned towards the two remaining Drixol from the other group of viruses. Nadia raised her twin blaster pistols and unloaded on the Drixol nearest her. Ro followed her example a moment later and chimed in with a couple of shots from his heavier rifle, with Rosa chiming in with a pair of Meason bolts of her own. Broadside, on the other hand, targeted the other Drixol with one of the two back-mounted pod launchers. The launcher had risen a few feet, then swung down to rest upon the mecha Navi's right shoulder. The front end of the 3 meter long weapon pod opened as soon as the targeting system had a solid lock-on tone, and an impeller-drive cruise missile shot from the launcher at escape velocity. It was an insane move to use this kind of weapon at this distance, but Broadside frankly didn't care as long as the virus was reduced to a smoking crater by the kinetic weapon. An explosive warhead would have been redundant in this case.

Not leaving anything to chance, Broadside retracted the launcher to its storage position, then began scanning for targets. As he did so, he thrust is arm out, and a 9-tube dumb-fire rocket pod popped up out of his left forearm. The weapon was crude and somewhat inaccurate, but at these ranges, that really didn't matter. The plasma tipped rockets would most assuredly make up for their tracking issues with both their sheer salvo density and the enhanced firepower each of the modified warheads were packing. He would be careful not to shoot his allies, but any collateral damage beyond that didn't mean a thing to him.

<!-- THE SUMMARY -->
Broadside: -- Refresh Armor: 20 HP Casing on Broadside
Broadside: -- Aegis Defense EX: Project 25 HP Barrier on Djinni
Broadside: -- Marksmanship: +1 Accuracy w/ Guns, may exceed A-Rank.
Nadia: -- All-For-One: Download MetalZone
Nadia:1: MetalZone (Large Area Metal Terrain Change)
Broadside:1: Missile Barrage L @ DrixolA (5 Elec x 20 Missiles + Homing Attack + Seeking + Blast1, Side Effect: Slow, 4 TCD)
Broadside:2: Missile Barrage R @ DrixolB (5 Elec x 20 Missiles + Homing Attack + Seeking + Blast1, Side Effect: Slow, 4 TCD)
Ro:1: Double Meason Shot @ Spikey EXD (10 Elec x 2 Shots)
Rosa:1: Double Meason Shot @ Spikey EXD (10 Elec x 2 Shots)
--
Nadia:2: Double Autofire @ DrixolD (5 Elec x 2 Shots per gun)
Ro:2: Double Meason Shot @ DrixolD (10 Elec x 2 Shots)
Rosa:2: Double Meason Shot @ DrixolD (10 Elec x 2 Shots)
Broadside:3: Magnum1 @ DrixolC (120 Fire + Break + Panel Break + A+ Accuracy)
--
Broadside: -- ImbueElec: Machinegun1 (Broadside)
Broadside:4: Machinegun1 @ Any Surviving Virus(es) (30 Elec + Spread Fire x 9 shots + C Accuracy)

---Signatures---
Broadside: Towering Guard: Ready
Broadside: Missile Barrage L: Activated
Broadside: Missile Barrage R: Activated
Broadside: Bunker Buster MK-II: Unavailable
Broadside: Ifrit Missile: Ready
Nadia: "Armor UP!": 1 TCD
Rosa: Hammer Space Help?: Ready
Before anyone could blink, casing, barriers, and new terrain were created. The Spikey and Drixol didn't like that, but then again, neither Navi really cared whether or not the viruses approved.

After some adjustment of her position, Djinni managed to whip out a machine gun and began peppering the SpikeyEX with some bullets...lots and lots of bullets. Seriously, that was a lot of bullets in such a small timespan. Unfortunately for her, one of the dogs managed to realize what was happening before the others, and was able to move away in time before resembling a certain kind of cheese. The other two, however, became cannonized, seeing as how they had become incredibly holey.

Speaking of holey, however, the Drixol realized that a Navi was directly beneath them. That meant they could fly up and prove that they were very good at boreing things to death. However, before they could, Broadside shot forth missiles at a certain pair of drill squid...thingys, and completely destroyed them before they could react.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the pair below Djinni, and so they leapt up to try and drill some unsense into her. One fortunately missed, but the other gave her a very good lesson on what it felt like to have a drill forcefully inserted into your body. ...Or at least it would've, but a certain barrier allowed her to avoid the horrific penetration. Both then found a nice, empty space to bore holes into, allowing them to attack again from second locations. ...But in another lucky break, the same Drixol that missed the first time managed to screw up again. Apparently, even some viruses could use a pair of glasses. The second, however, managed to hit its mark, destroying the rest of the barrier, and drilled through the fiery scales surrounding the genie Navi like wood. And not the kind resistant to drilling, either. More like...plywood. Even though that's not really a type of wood. Not that she cared, because it was still rather painful.

But painful couldn't begin to describe the final fate of the drill viruses, as various forms of artillery tore the very holes they loved to create into them, and subsequently their deletion. Revenge at its finest. ...Well, maybe not its finest, but it was pretty handy timing. Not quite handy enough to avoid the drilling, but...yeah.

And that left one, slightly less than intact Spikey to deal with. Its growling indicated it wasn't going down without a fight, but was its effort going to be in vain? ...Most likely. But who knew?

Apparently, a SnakeArm that suddenly popped up to greet it with a gritty chomp. Its aim was unfortunately less than stellar, but the dog virus completely failed to notice it, allowing it to make a mid-air adjustment to give it a nice, hearty bite. With a howl, the last Spikey became junk data, allowing the fight to finally draw to a close.

-Left Canyon-
Spikey EXA: DELETED
Spikey EXB: DELETED
Spikey EXC: DELETED

-Right Canyon-
Spikey EXD: DELETED
Spikey EXE: DELETED
Spikey EXF: DELETED

-Front-
DrixolA: DELETED
DrixolB: DELETED
SkarabC: DELETED
SkarabD: DELETED

-Behind-
SkarabA: DELETED
SkarabB: DELETED
DrixolC: DELETED
DrixolD: DELETED

Terrain:
100% Free of Viruses

Djinni.EXE: 170 HP
Fhyre.SP: 70 HP
Broadside.EXE: 200 HP (DjinniCross) (20 HP Casing)
Ro.SP: 70HP (1-hit shield)
Nadia.SP: 40 HP
Rosa.SP: 40 HP
Candle1: 100 HP

=================

- BATTLE FOUR, OVER
= SO MANY SPS...

=================

Rewards:
- Broadside: Skully1, 1500z, 43 BugFrags (7 FXP)
- Djinni: Skully1, 1500z, 43 BugFrags (7 FXP)
Once Broadside realized he was out of targets, the mecha Navi disarmed his weapons systems and allowed himself to float slowly to a stop. Once he was no longer in motion, Broadside slowly reduced power to the turbines keeping him aloft. As the roar of the jets died down, so too did the roiling cloud of kicked up debris, flames, and intense heat distortion. Eventually, the Navi set down on the hardened metal platform with a metallic ker-thud, and the whine of the turbines faded into silence as the Mecha form stood solidly upon its own two feet... which both glowed a dull orange color for a moment before they and the long armored skirt around Broadside's legs managed to dissipate the enormous amounts of heat they'd been subjected to during the battle.

"Well that's a new one on me." Nadia remarked as she watched Broadside.

"Didn't Djinni do something similar earlier?"

"Yeah. and while it kicked ass..." The two SPs looked at each other, each thinking the same thing. "Give it a sec?"

"Yeah, give it a sec."

Right about the time the armor began to cool off, the processes driving the Cross erred, and Broadside's form went through the process of reverting back to WhiteGuard. While it did so, his program uninstalled the Cross and restored itself to its last known stable state. When his form solidified, Broadside found himself looking up at the sky. He blinked, wondering why he was doing that, and immediately looked around for viruses that weren't there. All he could see was his SPs, Fhyre, and Djinni. He could not account for their apparent current status, as the last thing he remembered was getting ready to fight several groups of viruses.

"That was a positive letdown." Ro muttered. "How does that even work?"

"Ask Her Ladyship later. Since he's not face down in the somewhat dead position, I think he'll be fine. And..." Nadia pointed towards where Rosa was already gathering data. "I'm gonna join Space Cadet Rosa over there."

"Sounds like a plan." Ro added as the two of them took off in Rosa's direction.

A moment later and a window with Jared in it opened next to Broadside. When the Netopian operator spoke, he did not sound particularly happy. "Na'im, I'm going to have to jack Broadside out of the network. There's a bunch of errors popping up on my end, and this network is too hostile to safely troubleshoot the problem here. I've never seen Navigator programming act like this, so it's probably going to take me several hours to figure this one out." Jared paused as he looked off screen for a moment. He continued speaking after facing the screen again. "It also looks like my flight will be landing shortly, so I don't think we'll be available again until tomorrow afternoon. I was wondering, though, would you and Djinni be interested in accompanying us to the NetSquare later this week to look into this E-Mail we got from the NetPolice?"
Slowly Djinni descended while taking a look at Broadside's form and eventual transformation. She could see the SPs of Broadside going their own way and talking with each other and smiled faintly before landing close to Broadside. She walked over to him, kind of noticing he was off in thoughts or his own little world, and stopped in front of him while looking at his visor curiously. Playfully she poked Broadside's cheek and grinned behind her veil as she began to talk. "You look good in a skirt," she said jokingly, "And we beat the viruses splendidly!" Still standing in front of Broadside, she glanced at Ro and tilted her head for a second or two.

Elsewhere, Fhyre was also gathering bits and pieces that had fallen from the viral menaces. Along her way she encountered Rosa who was doing the same and she waved for a moment before turning away quickly and continueing, which seemed to be somewhat awkward and shy behavior.

A virtual window opened next to Djinni with Na'im's face in it, looking as if he had gone through several days without sleep. "Just like on your side, we should head out. No errors here, but we've had quite a bout. Djinni ought to be weary at this point and I need some rest. We will return to the real world and sleep within our nest. We will surely be there for the meeting regarding the NetPolice mail, definitely without fail," he said, then took a quick glance at Broadside before focusing his attention on Jared again, "I am looking forward to seeing the two of you again and your cohorts. We will be relying on you again for supports."

But with the two windows staring at the two Navis, Djinni felt a sudden surge of stage fright as she had moved her arms in a pose as if she was thinking of embrace Broadside tightly. In an instant she moved her arms back to her sides and coughed loud as if to distract those looking at her. Her usual face then got a bit sadder as she realized it was time to say goodbye. "We will see each other again, won't we?" she said as she looked at Broadside, but felt that Na'im had already initiated the Jack-Out process. She quickly looked around to find her SP, but it seemed like she had already left for the PET. Djinni swiftly leaned towards Broadside and tilted her head towards his cheek. In a quick move, she raised her veil and pursed her lips. But before she could place a gentle kiss on Broadside's cheek, she merely vanished and all that could still be seen from her was an upwards crimson beam going through the sky.

[Jack Out]
Djinni's poke to Broadside's cheek brought him out of his reverie. He looked directly at her as she began to speak, but he didn't understand what she was saying. Look good in a skirt... what? Defeated the viruses? What viruses? He had no memory whatsoever of defeating the viruses. In fact... He wasn't sure how he had come to be here in the first place. The idea that a piece of his life was missing disturbed him greatly.

-----

Nearby, Ro and Nadia were making it a point to face away from Djinni and Broadside as they collected the data left scattered about. Broadside hadn't shut off his squad-com, so they could hear everything. They were careful to pretend they couldn't, though, as they slowly picked up the frags and Zenny data.

Ro glanced over his shoulder to see Djinni looking his way. He nodded as he reached up and tapped the side of his helmet, shutting his com off. He then tapped Nadia's helmet, shutting her com off as well before giving Djinni a thumbs up and turning away again.

-----

Rosa could also hear what was being said, but she ignored it. Her progress in gathering data was actually faster than that of Ro and Nadia combined, owing to her having no reason to make a show of it. She ran across Fhyre as she went, and saw the fellow SP wave at her. Rosa smiled and waved back quietly. She continued to smile happily even as Fhyre turned away and scurried off suddenly. She still thought the little fire SP was the cutest thing in the world.

-----

Djinni coughed, drawing Broadside's attention away from the conversation Jared and Na'im were having and back to her. For some reason, the expression Djinni wore on her face as she spoke made Broadside unhappy. He didn't quite understand why it made him unhappy, though. Her question didn't make much sense to him either, as their operators had just made an agreement to meet up again later. Not knowing what exactly the issue here was, Broadside decided to go ahead and state the obvious as Djinni turned away to look around: "Of course--" His response ended abruptly as Djinni surprised him by leaning her face close to his very suddenly and pulling her veil up. What? He froze in place, not sure how to react to such odd behavior...

Broadside was spared from having to come up with an appropriate reaction as Djinni jacked out of the net before she managed to kiss him. He looked over at his SPs with a confused expression that made Ro and Nadia both face-palm. Rosa just smiled. There was never any telling what she was really thinking....

Jared pretended he'd seen nothing as he issued the recall command, and the entire group jacked out of the net.

[Jack Out]