==== Metrovore Approaches ====
A colossal figure approaches the city, the rising sun an orange-red disk behind a huge cloud of dust. A rhythmic tremor runs through the ground at each titanic footstep, and the haze rises higher. Even at this distance it is easy to tell that the figure is massive, easily dwarfing the buildings of the city and even the Arena itself.
With red eyes and tired faces the inhabitants of the city finalise their preparations, the figure's warning still clear in their minds: Eradication protocol engaged. Substantial anomalous lifeform presence detected. Demonstration of cultured civilisation required to avert final failsafe measures.
Well - if it's culture that it wants, then it's culture that it'll get.
Preparations are underway for a cultural extravaganza the likes of which haven't been seen in the city in living memory. Circuses, concerts, poetry, fanfic, and of course the Money Pit are all being prepared for a demonstration of Bastion's best effort to the approaching figure.
Meanwhile, attempts are underway to ensure that the cultural displays will have the time they need. An expedition headed by Ultimate Ventures is preparing to head out to observe and interact with the approaching figure, and accompanying the scouts and envoys to the wastelands are a number of experienced monster trainers with monsters and equipment ready to engage if necessary.
The Wastelanders themselves have already received warning from Arch, who arrives back just as the expedition is about to set off. They confirm that those who had not already fled Metrovore's approach are now keeping a solid distance away, as they were able to use their connections to spread word just ahead of its slow but inexorable gait.
==== The Exclusion Zone ====
An exclusion zone is set up around Metrovore's approach by the observation team. Ash Moon immediately takes charge of the organisation and logistics, organising a base camp where amongst other supplies Dr Frost is setting up a medical tent to take care of any wounded, should the worst happen.
Prior to the showdown, a pamphlet is distributed, courtesy of Trend, warning of the potential dangers posed by Metrovore. It mentions the vast range of projectile weaponry it seems to have at its disposal, it's declaration of lethal intent, and a rough estimation of its height (exceptionally large). The publication is particularly strident in its condemnation of Metrovore's alleged Trainer, Mesh. It suggests that enabling Metrovore to conduct its fights within the Arena is the Trainer's responsibility - as will be any damage incurred to life or property as a result of his negligence. It strongly urges Mesh to register Metrovore in the League, upon paying all the requisite fees. Normally, people might find this relatively comical - but for now, they seem to cling onto it as a lifeline to normalcy.
Meanwhile, in the absence of Ultimate Ventures' regular security chief Quake, Saffron has volunteered to take a few combat-ready monsters and trainers forward to set up a small front-line of defense and confront Metrovore if it attempts to push further forward. In addition to Saffron and Pepper, the advance guard consists of Crash and Mechagraviton, and DYNAMITE with Knight-Mare.
Further back at the base camp, Angler, Chaser, Suture, Gintrap, Malbec, and Trend are hanging back making observations while Paradigm is working on a large metal armoured vehicle of some kind.
Metrovore approaches the advance guard, step by inexorable step. It doesn't seem to show any signs of slowing down, and everyone is starting to get nervous. DYNAMITE shouts with Saffron and Crash about sallying forward to engage it immediately before it can get any closer, and before either can hold them back DYNAMITE spurs Knight-Mare forwards. With shouts of warning lost to the wind behind it, Knight-Mare breaks into a gallop and throws up a tiny plume of dust as it races across the wastes towards the towering robotic figure.
There is a brief moment where Saffron and Crash look at each other, wondering whether to follow, when Metrovore's implacable step pauses for a moment.
ANOMALOUS LIFEFORM DETECTED
The words reverberate across the cracked earth, drowning out all other sound. For a moment there is a pause, as if everyone is drawing breath at once - and then an ear-rending SCREECH as a gigantic laser blast bursts from the giant robot's eyes. The beam rakes across the ground towards Knight-Mare which zigs and zags valiantly, but a short moment later the beam hits the armoured centaur which explodes into superheated shards, leaving little other than a charred trail and a crater filled with smouldering wreckage.
==== Show It What We Got ====
A short, terrified silence settles over Bastion.
Then, faintly, from over the edge of one of the city's crumbling market squares, comes the sound of music.
“Roll up!” calls a voice - distant, yes, but amplified, and getting louder. “Roll up! Join us - Morose Progress and Pennythrift Steeple - for the experience of a lifetime!”
For just a second, Metrovore - to the excitement and trepidation of all witnesses - turns its massive, expressionless head towards the source of the sound.
The voice continues, heedless of the attention it has excited. “Don't miss the opportunity to see Rollerpedes and THE TENT perform feats of theatricality and athleticism never seen before! We invite you all - we implore you all - to join us for the greatest performance ever made: Bastion's finest (and only) circus, quelling the savage, metrocidal rage of Metrovore!”
And then, THE TENT explodes into view.
Propelled by the momentum of a thousand curled-up Rollerpedes, it plunges into the sky, huge maw agape to display rows and rows of needle-like teeth. It lands, and is pushed up into the sky once more: somersaulting across the horizon, then tumbling to earth, only to careen upwards again.
The Rollerpedes, meanwhile, each in matching circus outfits, have arranged themselves into letters. HELLO, they spell out, in neat, calligraphic font. Then, after another flurry of activity: LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO.
What follows is a magnificant feat of aesthetics. The Rollerpedes stack themselves into expanding geometric patterns, getting more ambitious and intricate as they go. As THE TENT tumbles and soars, they provide an ever-shifting filigree background, creating weaving patterns of impossible complexity.
Thronged around the performers are mobs of screaming Fans: holding posters; waving fanart and flags. One person is even doing an impromptu public fic-reading. They cheer as THE TENT rises and plunges; they look on in awe as Morose Progress says something inaudible but clearly insulting to Pennythrift, as the latter scowls at the former. The drama is immense.
However, just as THE TENT begins another gravity-defying leap, there is a bursting screech of feedback: the sort of ear-piercing noise that voice-amplifying archeotech occasionally makes.
The crowd turns. There, where a slab of the city's rubble has been arranged into a makeshift stage, stands a young woman with a devilish grin: hair streaming; face fierce; some kind of metallic stringed instrument in hand. Flanking her are a handful of equally tough-looking girls, each also positioned in front of a salvaged musical instrument.
“Your little circus act is cool and all,” declares the woman at the front, voice blaring out over the screech of her archeotech device, “but I think it deserves better musical accompaniment! FANS OF THE ARENA - I am SOUTHPAW, and this is LEDA ATOMICA!”
A sizeable crowd is already forming around the stage, every bit as rowdy as Morose Progress' audience - but significantly rougher round the edges. The majority of them wear deliberately torn clothing, fastened together with gleaming tags of metal that must have been collected from scrap piles around the city. Their hair is choppy and of improbable colours: their lipstick is alarming, and their voices are loud.
Southpaw, as the loudest, scruffiest and most improbable of them all, laughs with delight as the crowd screams her name.
“You wanted a show? You'll get your show! People of Bastion - Fans - Metrovore - observe!”
What follows is a veritable explosion of sound. As the Rollerpedes dance in and around wild, gyrating Fans, Southpaw launches into a vivid rendition of her first song, 'Watch Me Melt'. As she strums at the loud string instrument, a fluid melody is produced, blending effortlessly with the heartfelt rasp of her high notes. Multicoloured jets of light shoot out from the instrument when she plays, bathing the flying TENT in floods of colour.
“Let me hear you, Bastion! This next song is WARFACE DISGRACE, but I'm gonna need a little help… from RIMERA!”
An ice-white Monster is ushered onstage: an elegant, six-legged lion-goat with a decidedly lethal-looking glint in its eye. Southpaw, to the delight of the Fans, leaps nimbly atop Rimera's back as she starts the intro to her next song.
What follows is slightly more chaotic than perhaps expected, as Rimera bucks, Southpaw yells musically, and the other members of Leda Atomica hurry to pull their instruments out of claw range with another vast screech of archeotech. However, the Fans still seem to be loving it; if anything, the pandemonium onstage has only increased their enthusiasm. The circus show continues to the wild ongoing strains of 'Calling All Lobsters', 'Geopoliticus', and 'Nightspider'.
There is another scream of archeotech amplification from atop a nearby dilapidated warehouse.
“Is that all you got?”
Out from in front of the vast, lashing tentacles of Thorn strides Thistle. Elegantly attired in black, her braided purple hair a slash of colour against a background of spikes, she raises a bottle of Dr Petrol towards the sky.
“Your songs have style. But do they have substance?” Determinedly, she looks out towards Metrovore. “I'm going to show you something that's rooted in feeling. I'm going to spin you a love story so weird and ambivalent you'll weep, and in doing so? I'm going to win at marriage.” Taking another swig of Dr Petrol, she yells towards the crowd: “This one's for you, Crabgrass!”
What follows is quite possibly the worst and most enthusiastically declaimed piece of slam poetry in Bastion history.
I love you more than flies love putrid trash,
My dearest, precious, wilting stranglevine,
If love is poison ivy, you’re the rash,
I itch with adoration – so, be mine.
Beloved reeking cankerblossom, stay,
And stink within the ring of my embrace,
I’ll marry you on every single day,
And cherish your absurd, putrescent face.
My darling fungus, I would never try
To purge you from the garden where you lurk.
No herbicide could ever make you die,
Your roots are deep, so even that won’t work.
Thus, Crabgrass, may your weeds forever spawn
Upon my otherwise untainted lawn.
By the final couplet, the surrounding crowd are cheering, screaming and chanting Thistle's name.
Metrovore approaches, but the city will not be cowed. Instead, the streets have come alive. Morose Progress calls out to his audience as THE TENT and Rollerpedes continue to jump and glide in acrobatic display. Southpaw emerges bloody, beaten and elated from a mob of her Fans, still screaming out the last note of 'Spring First, Dawn Last'. Thistle chants about how the colour of oozing fungus always reminds her of her true love's eyes. In the distance, at a nearby bookshop, Trend makes a passionate argument for the Volcanosaurus tragedy being an integral facet of Bastion culture - and elsewhere, whilst announcing the debut of his invisible arm robot, Todo List hosts a Money Pit spectacular. Fans flock the streets: displaying art, reading fic, singing songs - the entire city is ablaze with motion, sound and colour.
—
==== Holding It Off ====
Despite the cultural bombardment ongoing, Metrovore is still approaching Bastion and taking pot-shots at any monsters that get close enough. As Ash Moon and Malbec coordinate a staggered withdrawal, it quickly becomes clear that it's difficult to keep pulling back the base camp, and at this rate Metrovore will be at the edge of the city before everyone's various plans can be properly put into action. It's up to the defensive cordon to occupy Metrovore for long enough for them to finish.
Saffron immediately attempts to take charge. Heedless to anyone else's suggestions, she launches into a complex plan that is very clearly pitched more towards the watching crowd than it is at the Monster trainers - almost like she's attempting to cut a promo. She starts talking about fight pacing, and making sure everyone gets a chance to do their most flashy moves. From the back, Ash Moon calls forwards and suggests that this plan might be more showy than effective, but she continues regardless. With the pressure on, and lacking alternatives, the defenders have no choice but to try to follow any plan, whether or not it's a good one. It'll have to do.
The meat of Saffron's plan mostly involves trying to perform combo moves with the monsters, in the manner of an Arena fight. To her credit, Saffron actually does seem to have made a comprehensive study of everyone's abilities and has some bright ideas, so Basilica, Pepper, Mechagraviton, MonoChrome, and Maximus are all brought up to help, and even Diamon is sent forward from the field hospital as Dr Frost takes up a position with some kind of long-barrelled archaeotech weapon. Suture, meanwhile, takes charge of medical considerations.
Just as people are starting to ask questions (and object to some of the more potentially-suicidal ideas) there's a shout from the back of the watching crowd. Sprocket rides through the crowd on the back of The Nyoominator, while some sort of large translucent glowing sphere rolls along behind.
Ze skids to a halt next to the waiting Trainers and dismounts, Nyoomie waggling its extra limbs excitedly. The rolling sphere also comes to a halt, and appears to contain Strike. It's clearly some sort of archaeotech forcefield with symbols and lights flashing all around, but Strike is moving it around by pushing on its inside with hands and feet.
“Don't worry everyone! Strike thinks this is what controls the giant robot, or at least it might give us some information!”
Strike looks around himself for a moment and then shifts awkwardly, rolling the sphere backwards until a holographic image of Metrovore is projected on the front of the ball, surrounded by arcane glyphs and strange symbols.
“Can anyone make any sense of this?”
“I know the basics, let's take a look.” Crash starts pushing the ball around to get a better look at parts of it, much to Strike's consternation.
“I think these bits might be weak points, we should focus on those. And these are definitely weapons, keep an eye on them when they activate.” She wrinkles her nose in consternation.
“That'll help us, but this is complicated and we have to act fast. Maybe Paradigm can take a look?” She pauses. “What is he doing, anyway? Didn't someone say he had a tank?”
“He's working on it now,” Chaser calls out from further back in the crowd, “we need to hook up the Thing-Thrower, he's making the final adjustments now.”
Saffron rejigs one or two of her combos to more effectively target the weak points that Crash has pointed out, and everyone pushes forward to begin the fight.
==== Fanfic Cannon: Online ====
Something happens.
For a moment, Thistle stops reciting. Morose Progress falls quiet, and the Rollerpedes slow, as the TENT descends. Southpaw is still singing, but a couple of the other band members have abandoned their instruments and are pointing towards the sky. Even the fighting slows, with MonoChrome taking the opportunity to pull back after being flung into the giant robot's chest at high speed by MechaGraviton, and Pepper scampering out of range of the missile launchers.
A broad shaft of light is beaming from the very centre of the Arena.
Slowly, it revolves, dazzling all spectators with its intensity. It settles on the red visor of Metrovore. The giant Monster gives a terrifying shudder as the light begins to blink on, and then off again, in a quick, arhythmical succession.
As the observers' vision clears, they look up past the glare to see four spotlights pointing towards the middle of the Arena - to see a final, larger spotlight at the centre - and to see the silhouetted figure controlling it.
It is [BAD STAR] - [BAD STAR] haloed against the darkening sky, like some kind of never-seen-before, light-suffused Monster; [BAD STAR] with her hair pushed back by her goggles, holding a thick sheaf of papers in one hand, and gripping the edge of a perilously-balanced ladder in the other.
“People of Bastion!” she calls. She has no artificial amplification. She has no need of it. The entire space around the Arena has fallen silent. “We know why we are here. The creature we call Metrovore has threatened our way of life. Threatened our civilisation. Threatened our Arena. One might as well say it has threatened the very blood in our veins; that which was born before us, and that which will outlast us for generations after Metrovore is dust. Well, I am here to tell our would-be destroyer that the Arena speaks back.” She waves the papers higher. (Thistle waves her can of Dr Petrol in a responding salute). “Because here is its voice! That is to say, here are the combined voices of our people! The fanfic you have written, the stories you have told, and the songs the Wastelanders have sung! All of these - your stories, the Arena's stories - have been translated into code which is being emitted through these lights, and soon enough, Metrovore will hear us.”
The light continues to beam into Metrovore's visor, shutting on and off again - speaking to Bastion's attacker of . Metrovore itself has gone stock still, as if blinded.
“It's all there,” says Sprocket, excitedly, from the ground. “Khaos' Writer of Off the Record/Prime Executive erotic fic. Curlicue's Nyoomie and Giant Block of Wood story. Even that one Block/Tackle canon AU work in progress! We tried to give it the best writing we could. I like to call it the Fanfic Beam!”
As Metrovore stands frozen, there is terrified silence from the surrounding areas.
Then: “YEAAAAAAAAH!” shouts Southpaw, a trickle of blood sliding down her cheek. “Cmon, Leda Atomica! One, two, three, four!”
As the raucous strains of 'Knows No Glass' fill the air, the surrounding area comes to life once more. The Rollerpedes do a victory lap around the stage. Thistle starts drunkenly yelling out love-metaphors. Sprocket begins to dance with excitement, as Fans begin to scream and cheer.
For a seemingly infinite amount of time, the gigantic fanfic beam continues to glare and pause. Metrovore remains stunned. The party continues - loudly, madly triumphant.
As the last light shuts off, Metrovore raises its head. Gradually, the sounds die out once more, as everyone waits, breathless, for its reaction.
CULTURE SUFFICIENTLY DEMONSTRATED. ERADICATION PROCEDURES DISENGAGED.
==== Bring It To Its Knees ====
Relief washes over people's faces. Metrovore has been stopped? At least, it's not intending on destroying Bastion anymore. From back at the support tents a few voices break out in cheering.
Angler pushes Basilica further forward, hoping to get a closer look at the robotic figure and maybe find a way to get inside. But with a few more steps forward, Metrovore's torso twists violently and the missile launchers deploy once more. Before Angler can pull Basilica back, a swarm of missiles carves through the air and detonate against a wall, leaving pitted craters and causing Basilica to stumble slightly backwards under the impact.
“It's still attacking Monsters!” he calls back, and immediately the Trainers start to pull back and away, putting as much distance between the robot and their Monsters as possible.
Angler quickly ushers Basilica back to Dr Frost and Suture's medical tent, the join a couple of other injured Monsters. The damage seems to be superficial, and Basilica is docile enough to stand a bit of sanding and brickwork replacement, but locating the damage within its labyrinthine convolutions proves challenging. Dr Frost sends Suture in with some rope tied around her waist, and with a bit of coordinate teamwork, they are able to heal.
Meanwhile, Metrovore rises, its body moving in improbable ways as it gets back to its feet.
“Ah, to hell with this! I'm making the call - we need to bring it down!” Malbec shouts.
“Paradigm, is that thing ready yet?” Gintrap looks nervously back and forth between Paradigm's field workshop and Metrovore.
“Yes, I think so! I'll fire as soon as we're in range,” he responds.
The armoured vehicle, now fitted with the force-field generator that had been attached to the jeep and Chaser's Thing-Launcher strapped to the top, rolls forwards and begins to pick up speed.
Chaser calls out from within the vehicle. “I need everyone to distract it while I get us closer!”
Looks are exchanged between the various Trainers, until Saffron takes the initiative. “Let's go!”
The vehicle hurtles towards Metrovore, with Chaser swerving around various obstacles to maintain cover as various Monsters dart in at the sides to distract it. Mechagraviton narrowly avoids a laser beam, while missles burst leaving craters behind Pepper which darts backwards and forwards, too fast to hit.
Eventually it slews to a halt, and Paradigm sticks his head from a hatch in the top, holding a small globe in his hand.
“Are you ready?” he says, seemingly to the Thing-Launcher, before reaching forward and pulling the trigger. There is a WHUMF sound, and something thin and aerodynamic is launched in a high arc towards Metrovore's head. As the robot turns its laser gaze through the air to try to counteract this new threat, the object slams into it, hard.
Metrovore staggers backwards, disoriented by the force of the impact, and all over its surface various lights start blinking on and off at random. Its joints freeze solid and it stops moving, and Crash takes the opportunity to push MechaGraviton forward, shouting “GRAVITY SLAM!”. The force from MechaGraviton's move directed at a single leg is just enough that it slowly teeters and topples backwards. As it strikes the ground, the earth shakes and people are thrown from their feet. Dust is thrown into a huge cloud obscuring everyone's vision.
As the dust settles, Metrovore lies on the ground, still apparently active but for the moment motionless. Paradigm and Chaser open the hatch and wave to the other trainers to move in.
Gintrap shouts, spurring everyone onwards, and everyone dashes in to attempt to restrain the robot while it is still on the ground. It takes some time to sort everything out, but with Metrovore apparently unable or unwilling to move it's simply a matter of time before some spare cabling from Little Thread, chains, and various other supplies are pressed into service as makeshift tethers, anchoring the robot to the ground.
The great robot threat is on hold, with Metrovore subdued for now. Perhaps even… captured?