Densetsu no Batoru 5: Legendary Terror!

[RoxxyRobofox]

Part 4: Legendary Assassins!

Freebooter's Stadium was the largest building on Barbados station. It was made of rusty metal that looked ages old, shaped into a human skull with exaggerated fangs. The jaws gaped, inviting in the throng of spectators, many of them survivors of the preliminaries, while high above them the empty sockets illuminated the dark of the station with a pair of spotlights. Lynne, Ifrita, Serval, Reno and the other warriors who had qualified for a spot on the tournament brackets were allowed access through a side entrance, away from the pressing horde.

They walked down a long, dark hallway. Illusion Grande was ahead of the group, his purple hair flowing behind him as he wore a satisfied smirk. Smorc, the massive green brute, cracked its knuckled, rolled its neck and spent precious little time not flexing its oversized bulk. Arsenal Ark was engaged in an argument over brands of bras with Hello Hello, the latter not raising her voice once or looking up from her compact mirror.

“Tch. What do you know about support anyways? You're just a robot.” Arsenal Ark crossed her arms and though it was hard to tell because of the shiny black visor, gave the fembot an icy glare.

“I know more than some organic whose ego is bigger than her chest is. You're as flat as a board.” Hello Hello's reply was nonchalant as she applied a coat of red lipstick.

Arsenal Ark crossed her arms and grumbled under her breath. “Well the hormone therapy didn't help as much with my body as it did with other things.” She drummed her white gloved fingers against the sleeves of her suit. Upon hearing that, Hello Hello reached out to give the helmeted assassin a hug around the shoulders while her other hand was busy using the compact to get a better angle on her face.

“Yeah yeah, I know it's just teasing.” Ark grumbled and gave the wide-hipped fembot a bump and Hello Hello subtly returned it.

Meanwhile, Ifrita was heading the pack that she and her friends made up. Serval stuck close to Ifrita and Lynne walked behind Reno, her eyes glued to the floor. Reno looked over her shoulder to check on Lynne. Her thick, exposed neck joints buzzed loudly and she clacked her heavy steel jaws in silent contemplation.

“Oi, fireball. Yeh been quiet ever since th' fight in th' tower. S'not like ya ta not be bouncin' off the walls.”

Lynne shrugged her shoulders quietly and didn't lift her gaze. “Uh. Yeah. I dunno, I just feel nervous. Like we haven't been fighting a lot, you know? I'm still developing my martial arts programming and I haven't unlocked enough potential in my body. The old fighting programs were designed to utilize every ounce of power and speed I have. And... I've been thinking about that pain that Illusion Grande can make me feel.” She shuddered and clutched her arms tightly to herself. “It was unreal. The most negative experience I can imagine, and he barely touched me.”

“Hmph.” Ifrita grunted. Her long, red tail swayed as she butt in with an opinion. “If you are too cowardly to face Grande then I will do so. I am not afraid of this... this pain feeling. He will pay for trying to interfere with our mission.” Reno shook her head and Serval clamped her jaws shut, too timid to speak her mind on the subject. Besides, she couldn't bring herself to speak against Ifrita after saving her from being scrapped.

“I'm not afraid! I'm ready! I am!” Lynne clenched her hands fought back a shiver caused by her bravado conflicting with how she really felt. Ifrita's response was to narrow her eyes and look back towards the end of the hall.

The eight warriors stepped out into the arena floor. Unlike the outside of the arena, the interior was made up of obsidian steel, polished to perfection. The ground, the bleachers and even the flat, open ring shone. Far above the arena the ceiling was open to the rest of the station. The stands were filled with rowdy, shouting fight fans and the atmosphere of the stadium was electrified with excitement. The fizzing whoooosh of a small thruster could be heard high above, and from the hole in the ceiling flew in Mr. Grandstand with a junky-looking jetpack strapped to his rotund back.

“Alllllriiiiight! A group of cuh-RAZY animals like these eight psychos REALLY ought to be put somewhere dark and quiet for the rest of their lives but lucky for you, viewers in the stands and at home...” He turned to give one of the cameras broadcasting the fight a toothy grin. “...The Great Lich Queen Nosferatu herself has seen fit to unleash these bloodthirsty degenerates upon one another! For glory! For money! For the thrill of killing people on live Galaxy TV! Whatever gets them off about this, we're gonna have front row seats so you better have your splatter shields ready!”

The crowd violently cheered and yelled to the girls and assassins. Illusion Grande flourished his hands as he bowed deeply. When he stood back up he gestured to the fans. “You disgusting neanderthals are truly blessed amongst your wretched kind. It is rare for a war model with my kind of power to make a public spectacle of himself.” The crowd stopped cheering.

“Oi! Dis asshole sucks!” The rest of the crowd sided with the random heckler and shouted obscenities at Grande.

“Insolence...” Illusion Grande lifted a single finger and pointed towards the crowd. He gave them a look of contempt and a moment later a part of the stands erupted with an explosion. People cried out in pain as they were sent flying by the blast.

Lynne grit her teeth and assumed a fighting stance. “That bastard! I'm going to-” Before she could finish that thought, Ifrita placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Lynne, we have come too far for you to throw it away by being hasty. Save yourself for the arena.”

Lynne looked to Ifrita's calm gaze and lowered her trembling hands. She was thankful that she didn't have to admit she was too scared to attack him anyway.

“D-d-d-damn, folks! Looks like you'd best not piss off the handsome guy with the purple hair!” Mr. Grandstand seemed unfazed by the display of power. “Now if I'll have the short amount of attention you can spend on things not related to killing and/or being killed to look up here at the tournament brackets we can get started on sorting out who you'll all be fighting!”

Hovering behind Mr. Grandstand was a massive monitor. It flickered on with a loud buzz and showed off how the fighters would be paired off the in the quarterfinals. On the monitor was displayed...

Lynne VS Hello Hello
Illusion Grande VS Smorc the Facehunter
Reno VS Arsenal Ark
Ifrita VS Serval


The massive green monster that was Smorc stomped casually over to Illusion Grande and snorted down at him. It shook its shaggy gray mane and narrowed its scarred eyes at the war model. “You face pretty... pretty bad! Smorc want tear face apart! SMASH FACE!” Grande didn't even acknowledge the massive beast's existence as he walked past it and towards the waiting area set aside for the fighters.

Serval, meanwhile, seemed to be having a bit of a breakdown. She stared up at the tournament pairings, her optical pupils shriveled into tiny dark points. “I... I have to fight Ifrita? But she's gonna kick my furry synthetic buuuutt!” She mewled helplessly and sunk to her knees, and her big kitty ears splayed out in a display of hopeless kitten-ness.

Ifrita rolled her eyes. She looked down at the mewling, wailing waif-bot and crossed her arms. Her processor ran through a dozen ways to resolve this situation but every response she could think of simply annoyed her. “I don't have time for bawling weaklings.” Serval looked up at the tall, somewhat reptilian woman and fumbled through her shock and tears to try and respond but Ifrita just stormed off.

The crowd was getting restless. Chants that demanded the finalists fight started to echo across the stands. Not even the blast Illusion Grande had caused earlier dampened the mood of the excited crowd.
Mr. Grandstand hovered over the ring and gestured towards the brackets. “Allriiiiight! Let's get this trainwreck rolling down the tracks! Up first is....” He paused, for dramatic tension.

“Reno Updog versus Arsenal Aaaaaark!”

The crowd began to cheer loudly. Reno nodded to her friends and gave them a thumbs up. Lynne walked up to her and gave her hard, chrome shoulder a thump. “Go get 'em Reno! Show this two bit mercenary what you can do!”

Reno couldn't help but grin. She reached down and ruffled Lynne's bright red hair. “Oi, ya don't gotta worry about me, fireball.” With that, she headed towards the ring, which was a shiny black plate with grid lines cut into it. Waiting for her, was Arsenal Ark.

Arsenal Ark rolled her neck and cracked her knuckles. “Reno, huh? I heard you were modified from a mobile military platform.” The helmeted woman took a few steps back as Reno entered the ring. “Considering that an MMP is a pair of walking legs with armaments attached to it, VERY heavily modified.”

Reno laughed and slammed her steel gauntleted hands together. “That's quite true. My husband is quite a pervert an' loves big guns. So's 'e made himself a big woman that packs a lot of heat.”

Arsenal Ark crouched a bit, watching her opponent's movements and waiting to spring like a coil at the word go. “Your man's got good taste. I'll try not to break anything vital.”

“Yeh an' I'll try not ta smudge up yer pretty suit.” Reno didn't move, save to point her arms at Arsenal Ark. She too, waited to be told to fight, while high above them Mr. Grandstand bellowed out the rules.

“Alright, so before we get to the first fight, I'll go over the terms of engagement! That's 'rules' to those of you kill-freaks that don't got so much brain matter. Now, you lose if you die, pass out, give up, or your body touches anything from outside of the ring! Other than that, go nuts! Fight dirty, use weapons, do what it takes! And with that, let's get this crazy bloodbath staaaaarteeeed!”

The sounds of airhorns blasting at the start of the match almost overpowered the sounds of the roaring crowd. Reno's arms unfolded, panels clattering as they whirred aside and her twin gatling guns deployed. A storm of bullets fired at Arsenal Ark, who responded by launching herself into the air, her helmet catching the light as she soared overhead.

“Firestorm heavy assault rifle, kinetic shot!” As Arsenal Ark called out the name of the weapon, she snapped her fingers and in a flash of light it was in her hands. She started to fall down towards Reno, opening fire against her. Bullets pinged off of her chest plating and face, leaving scratches in her busty chassis. Reno responded by readjusting her gatling gun's angle and fired up at Arsenal Ark as she fell.

The assassin twisted her body through the bullet storm and the shells never quite seemed to manage to nick her. “Wiry little bitch!” Reno's chest opened with an emission of steam, her breasts swinging outwards to reveal a large red rocket with a twisted, grinning steel shark face built into the front. “Lemme see ya dodge a missile!”

The missile streaked out of Reno's chest and the metallic shark jaws chomped viciously as it streaked towards Arsenal Ark. “Not good enough!” Arsenal Arm spiraled into a sweeping kick as she fell towards the missile. Her heel slammed into the side of the biting shark face and with a feral yelp the missile was sent flying back at Reno end over end. Arsenal Ark landed in a crouch just as the missile struck home.

The blast knocked Reno backwards and well lout of the ring. Her chest was sparking, caved in by the explosion. Several panels busted and showing scorched components inside. Steam rose from her arms as she laid outside the ring and the airhorns sounded off again.

“And Arsenal Ark is our winner! In a stunning display of acrobatic assassination she managed to take Reno out WITH HER OWN MISSILE!” The crowd, naturally, went wild while Lynne and Serval rushed up to help Reno to sit up.

“Hey, you okay?” Lynne helped to try and get a few of the broken panels back into place while Servalk fretted over wiring that had been damaged or knocked loose.

“Ahm fine, ahm fine.” Reno rubbed the side of her head as she grumbled to herself. “Coulda been worse, all this damage can be handled by th' supplies on th' ship.”

Serval nodded happily and gently hugged herself against the big chrome machine woman. “Good! It'd... you know. It'd be bad if we lost you!” She pouted at Reno and her big furry ears splayed.

Mr. Grandstand cut off the conversation by once again bellowing into his megaphone. “And now for the next fight! Can we get Smorc and Illusion Grande to the stage? These animals wanna see some bloodshed and mayhem!”

Illusion Grande walked into the ring while the crowd threw a cacophony of boos and jeers at him. “Stupid animals. You beat them and beat them and still they refuse to learn.” He looked back to the crowd and raised his hand again. When the crowd saw that the booing quickly died down to a murmur.

Smorc followed after him and glared at Illusion with red, baleful eyes. “YOU! Bad man always hurting people! Smorc gonna smash tiny bad man! Make his pretty face ugliest in the system!”

Illusion yawned loudly as he stared at the giant green beast. “More beast-gibberish. Barely even worth paying attention to.”

Smorc snarled. “Smorc MAKE you listen! Smorc make you PAY!” Before the start of the fight was even called it started to rush at Illusion, its massive hands gripping the arena floor to help propel it forward in a gorilla rush. Illusion watched it approach calmly, and once it was in striking distance, Smorc swung its tree trunk sized arm in a massive punch.

However, the punch seemed to strike nothing but thin air. Illusion had moved with such speed that he just seemed to blink into existence under Smorc's over-extended arm. Illusion strock the back of Smor's elbow with an open palm, and the beats howled out as his arm wrenched the wrong way with a harsh snap.

“I've fought in hundreds of battles and not once has a slathering animal or worthless machine managed to despoil my perfect beauty with their putrid hands.” Balling his hand into a fist, he stepped into a punch that slammed into Smorc's chest. A flash of purple light erupted out of Smorc's back from the impact, and everyone watching gasped in horror at the clean, circular chunk that had been blown through the beast's body.

“As worthless as any other vermin.” Illusion steps away from the giant corpse as it slumps to its knees, and them onto its side.

Lynne and the other girls simply couldn't believe what they'd witnessed. Lynne felt keen fear rising up inside of her once more, and she trembled. Despite herself, she found her feet moving herself away from the ring, her arms clutched to herself as the pain she felt earlier replayed in her memories, and the display of power ran through her processors over and over.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile, back at Alpha Complex...

Professor Agni hissed and flicked his tongue as his scaled fingers worked quickly over a keyboard. Jotun would only be momentarily distracted and he had to work quickly while he still had time alone in Jotun's office. “There! The logssssss of who accessed the combat data for our project. Why would Jotun go through sssso much trouble to hide thessssse?” He accessed the files, and the displays on the screen changed to show who had accessed the files and when.

Just then, however, the doors to the office clicked open. Agni looked up to see Jotun leveling an ice pistol at him. “Agni. You shouldn't be here in my office.”

“Sssssilence, you traitor! It wassss you! You deleted the androids' combat data!” Agni bared the fangs in his long muzzle.

“You're wrong. I didn't delete them. I stole them.” Agni tried to speak, but a flash of blue gas fired from the gun. It washed over Agni and his scaley body rapidly froze.

“You'll never get away with thiss-” Agni's hiss was cut off as his face was frozen over, his body now inert and stiff. Once he was totally frozen over, Jotun pulled a communication device from his pocked and spoke into it. As he did, his icy blue eyes slowly hazed over into a green tinge. “Master Genesis. Agni has been taken care of. The combat programming and this facility are now yours. It was far too easy convincing the defense forces to spend their whole budget on just three androids... and even easier to secure the combat programming to add to your already immense power.”

As he spoke, he walked over to one of the walls and hit a hidden switch. The walls parted slowly, revealing in three glass tubes the forms of Lynne, Ifrita and Serval. Their eyes opened and a neon green glow emanated from their pupils.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And so the Freebooter's Tournament is in full swing and things look bad for Lynne and the others! Not only that but Genesis seems to have taken over Alpha Complex as well! What exactly is Genesis' plan? What are those strange duplicates in Jotun's office going to be used for? The plot thickens and the battle rages in Densetsu no Batoru 6: Legendary Ballerina Interrobang?!

[DukeNukem 2417]

As always, worth the wait to read.

And I would definitely watch the anime of this if one existed. My only problem is figuring out who Chris Sabat would voice

[FaceoffFembot]

Well Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann music on top of binge-reading this really added a layer of awesome, but it was far from required. Great job.

[--NightBattery--]

i haven't read the prequels to this but it doesn't seem necessary.