A Werewolf In Under-Town

Shaggy and his friends stared down at the chaos below. The giant robots stood well over a hundred feet tall and they were crashing their way through the city. Pummeling the ground as they went. Korrigan’s mages were still sending fireballs and icicle showers raining down across everything. The players and robots were fighting like mad while trying to dodge the footsteps and metal fists from the gigantic robots.

“Y’know, all things considered, this is a killer view.” Ren smirked.

“You’re not wrong. But we have to do something. How long can the players keep this up. One swipe from the Giganto bots and we lose dozens of people.” Shaggy said as he used a column to steady himself.

Ren shrugged as fireballs and energy beams slammed into the giant bot’s legs. The players and bombardment were doing damage. Just not enough to quickly take out the bots. Not with the factories still turning out generic robots every second. Shaggy scanned the city as he tried to find the smokestacks that signified Cog’s massive automated factories. He could see a few from where their giant robot was. But they didn’t have a view of the streets down there.

The giant robot they were riding bent low to swipe it’s arm across the street. Shaggy spotted several players trying to get out of the way. But most didn’t make it. The large metal arm sweeping across the land made the players explode into shards of light. The cubes of light disappeared into the air and Shaggy wanted to growl in frustration.

“Where’s the respawn point?” Levy asked.

Shaggy turned a confused look to his wife. But Ren answered. “Probably outside the realm. That way they’d have to wait to be ported back. Kind of like a Respawn Timer.”

“So will get these people back?” Slink asked excitedly.

“Yeah. But they’ll have to wait and time is something you don’t have much of in a Raid.”

“Dude, doesn’t that, like, depend on the raid?”

“Yes, but if you take to long in most raids something will punt everyone out. So this raid has an end-game. We just don’t know what it is. But I bet it has something to do with Cog. So all we need to do is get Shaggy near Cog and see what happens.”

“Oh great. I’m the Werewolf down the mine shaft.”

“That’s the plan, love. But first we have to get down.”

“Also has anyone seen Vlad?”

They all looked around the small white slab of stone they were on. The robots all used buildings as their heads. Shaggy and his friends were essentially near the robots ear. Which was the side of the city hall building. Last Shaggy remembered Vlad was misting up and getting ready to speed away. Had the vampire made it off the robot? The thought was enough for Shaggy to choke on a chuckle. The fact that Vlad was going to miss out on something epic again was hilarious to Shaggy.

“~~~lp!”

Shaggy straightened up as he heard something on the wind. Ren and the others were still glancing around the small area. Dave was even checking over the side. Shaggy flapped his hands and shushed everyone.

“Did y’all hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“~~ere!”

Shaggy saw Dave’s head snap up and start to look around. “You heard it, Dave?”

“Yeah, dude. What is that?”

“~~~UCKERS!”

That one, everybody heard. Slink spun on his butt and stood up charging around the side of the building. Shaggy and the others followed closely and carefully. The side of the building was the front of the robots face and they were running straight toward it. Slink stopped at the edge of the building and peered around. Shaggy joined the boy and felt Dave and Ren peer around him. What met their gaze was a sheer white wall with two windows in it. Just below the wall was the robot’s silver and bronze metal chest. It’s barrel chest hissed steam and cranked loudly.

“There!” Slink snorted in a half-giggle.

Hanging off the side of the robot’s chest, his nails stuck through the metal, was Vlad. He was glaring up at them all. Shaggy couldn’t help the laugh that exploded from his mouth as he watch their pale friend clinging to the side of the robot. Ren and Dave joined him as Vlad visibly hissed beneath them. Once they had collected themselves, they all stuck their heads together. Shaggy noticed that Levy’s hands were glowing and she was doing something. But he decided to tackle the Vlad problem first.

“You have to go down and get him, Shaggy.” Ren started.

“Whoa! Why me? He’s not that far down, let him climb up.”

“Dude, if he could do that, don’t you think he would’ve?”

“Besides, Shaggy. Your the only one of us who can probably survive the fall if you fuck it up.”

Shaggy growled at the three of them. But they made good points. He was strong enough and tough enough to get down there and bring up their vampire. Still though, a ninety-foot fall was nothing to sneeze at. Who was to say his body wouldn’t just explode when it hit the ground? Although that was only the case if he fucked it up.

“Guys?” Levy said sounding worried.

All four of them turned to Levy in time to see here purple-glowing hands move over the floor and walls. She grimaced at them as she canceled whatever spell she was doing.

“I think we have incoming.”

Ren readied his hammer as Dave summoned his suit. Slink started to pull his long energy rifle then thought better of it and pulled two small energy pistols. Shaggy grew his claws and got in front of his wife. They all glared at the walls and the sky around them waiting. Levy pointed to the white stone wall of the robot’s head.

“They are coming from in there and it’s a lot of them!”

She pulled back a fistful of magic and waited as everyone reoriented and waited. It didn’t take long before several square bits of wall shifted upward and several dark square spaces were revealed. Those dark spaces were almost instantly filled with dozens of tiny, spindly robots that crawl out. The chittered and clacked as hordes of them threw themselves at Shaggy and his group.

Shaggy used his body to catch the launching robots. They were barely two-foot tall and rail-thin, but they had long needle-shaped arms. They tried to stab Shaggy all over his body but he let his dermal armor do the work and swiped his claws through any within reach. Their thin bodies caved easily under Shaggy’s claws. But there were loads of them. Ren tried to use his body and hammer to block up one of the portals. He was doing a good job, but Shaggy wondered how long the big guy could hold.

Slink was firing at anything that got to close to him as Dave was batting the bots aside just as easily as Shaggy. He couldn’t see what Levy was doing, but occasionally a tiny bot would exploded as purple magic hit it. When it became obvious that Ren, Dave, and Shaggy weren’t viable targets, the tiny robots redoubled their efforts to get at Slink and Levy.

Shaggy maintained constant vigil around Levy and the pair of them were destroying bots at a rapid pace. But Slink only had his two guns and the robots were pushing the boy closer to the edge.

“Dave!” Shaggy called pointing at the still retreating Slink.

Dave’s helmeted head turned to regard the situation before nodding at Shaggy. The blue-armored mutant moved to help Slink as Shaggy used the body of one robot to destroy another. They had stopped pouring from the hole now and Ren was using his large fist to flatten the little things.

“OH SHIT!”

“Dude!”

Shaggy spun as Slink gave a cry of alarm and Dave shouted. He saw Slink had finally been pushed off the edge. Dave had the boy by and arm, but several tiny bot were on his armored body poking away with their needle arms. Shaggy grimaced as he kicked another bot away and swiped through another. If he moved they damn things would get to Levy. He wanted to wait to see if Dave could lift he kid up, but a cool hand patted his arm.

“Go help our friends!” Levy all but screamed in his ear.

Shaggy groaned but threw himself forward. He made sure to claw every bot that stood in his way until he got to Dave’s prone body. The bots were using their needle arms to pry up the man’s armor and were jamming him in the side. Shaggy kicked and clawed the little fuckers off the side of the giant robot. Once Dave was free he yanked Slink back up and the three of them shared a nod. Slink looking extremely wind-swept.

The robot rocked harshly as it punched into the ground again and several more robots went flying off the side. Shaggy chuckled and began cutting through the things. A flash of purple brought his eyes around to Levy and he saw his wife batting several tiny bots away with her staff. Her personal shield flared purple as a bot tried to stab at her ankle. Near the building wall Ren was doing something to the square portal the bots had come through. Shaggy didn’t have enough time to parse what the big guy was doing, though. There were still several small bots to deal with.

The cleanup went fairly quickly with Shaggy, Slink and Dave walking from one end of the building to the other. The swept the bots of the side or just straight up killed them. Ren and Levy were working on something. But Shaggy focused on taking out the remaining bots. When Slink kicked the final one from the side, Ren called them all over. The rushed to his side to see that the big alien had wrenched the square portal open on all sides. The hole was now big enough to fit someone Ren’s size. Given the way Levy was panting, Shaggy guessed she helped in some way too.

“This is how we take this fuck down.” Ren said, grinning.

“From the inside?” Shaggy smiled back.

“Fuck yeah!” Dave shouted.

“What about Vlad?”

They all turned to regard Slink before rushing to the side of the building again. A quick recon proved that the surly vampire was still hanging onto the top of the robot’s chest. He cursed at them, but most of his words were swallowed by the rushing wind. They all put there heads together again.

“Shaggy…”

“Dude, I am not throwing myself down there.”

“You don’t have to throw yourself, love. Just crawl down and get him.”

“Or, better idea, we go through the inside and get him.”

“How are going to find him?”

Shaggy grimaced as his mind raced for an answer. As he scanned his friends a thought came to him.

“Slink, can you use your snakes to scout the inside?”

The pale teen nodded slowly. “Yeah, but how does that help Vlad?”

“Well, we can use them to help us navigate to where he is right?

“Maaaybe… I really don’t know. They have a better sense of direction then me and are really good with scents. But still…”

“Well it’s either that or toss my ass over the side. So I say we go with team snake-finder.”

Shaggy glanced at his friends and wife. Sadly he wasn’t surprised to see them all consider the idea of tossing him over the side. To curtail any of that thought Shaggy marched over to the large hole in the robot’s house-head.

“Not doing that. So let’s get in here and fuck this robot up. All we got to do is listen for a whiny vampire screaming, right?”

Ren sighed loudly as they others all walked over to join Shaggy. The stared into the darkness of the robot’s head. Pipes hissed with steam and cogs whirled in a loud symphony of noise. In the dark, Shaggy thought he could see more of the little bots moving about the inner workings.

“Fine. Slink and Shaggy you two make your way down to where Vlad is. Levy, Dave and I will start wrecking shit up here.”

“Why am I still the vampire grabber?”

“Because your still the toughest of us. So if shit goes sideways, Slink can bail on you and you’ll be alright. The rest of us have to watch each others backs. Levy is on Heals, Dave is DPS and I’ll Tank.”

Shaggy winced but he agreed with the assessment. As they all got ready, Slink dropped Larry and Curly to the floor and the two green snakes slithered into the robots head. They gave the snakes a few minutes head start before Shaggy and Slink dove into the darkness. Ren’s voice followed them as they ran through the narrow space.

“Try not to get killed!”

“No shit!” Shaggy screamed back as he sliced through every pipe he could see with his claws.

He didn’t know how far the chest was from the robots head. But he was going to do as much damage as he could along the way. Slink seemed to agree as he heard the rapport of Slink’s energy pistols going off in the darkness. They both tore off into the darkness to rescue a vampire from the bosom of a giant robot.