[i]AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okey-dokey, here's Part 4, there will be five parts. As is my custom, the epilogue will be included in the last part. No guarantee on if or when Story #10 will come out. I thought we were running out of gas way back at #3, or Kinderguardian Campout, but new ideas just keep coming. [/i] If you're new to this story, here's a link to Part 1: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/246136180 If you're new to Kinderguardians in general, there's a link to my Index page at the bottom. The group suddenly finds themselves surrounded by heavily armed goblins, hobgoblins, and minotaurs. ODDISH: "Or not." PAULA: "What's going on?" ODDISH: "Dawn! Bubble! Now!" Whump! Dawn's bubble appears over the assembly as withering fire pours in. Paula, unprompted, looses her Fists of Havoc, clearing out the Vex closest to them. ODDISH: "All Ghosts, transmat armor right here." The Ghosts do better than that, using their short-range transmat abilities to materialize their light-infused armor directly onto the wearers. The pint-sized Guardians know what to do. The Vex are closing in on all sides, but are soon met by withering weapons fire. Thanks to their relentless training from Oddish, Paula, and BraveCole, the kids know how to shoot for the radiolarian. Mr. Oddish, ironically, is the one who scores the lowest percentage of juicebox hits; the rotary-barreled weapon of mass destruction in his hands is more about volume of fire than precision. As he shoots, he comms. ODDISH: "Oddish to Osiris!" OSIRIS: "Yes, I know what this is about. Yes, I know there are Vex in your picnic simulation." ODDISH: "Well get them out of my picnic simulation!" (he runs out of ammo, punches a Vex and sends it flying, then deftly reloads) "If I wanted pests at my picnic, I'd have asked you for ants!" OSIRIS: "I'm sorry, the Vex infestation I was experimenting with has taken on a life of its own. I'm afraid I no longer have full control of it." SAGIRA: "Actually, you don't have ANY control of it." OSIRIS: "Well, when I generated the Pusillanimous Mind, I wasn't expecting it to be this capable." Dawn's bubble collapses, either under withering weapons fire or because it times out. Mr. Oddish utters a swearword that we won't repeat here. ODDISH: "Whatever. Give us an exit, we'll leave the forest, leave you to deal with this... glitch." OSIRIS: "Yes, about that..." ODDISH: "Don't tell me. You can't give us an exit." He sticks a fusion grenade on a Hoboblin, then uses a Chuck Norris spinning hook kick to send it flying into the middle of a cluster of Goblins. The explosion reduces them all to glowing chunks of silicon. SAGIRA: "It's not [i]totally [/i]his fault. After the affair with the Root Mind, I put in a failsafe that isolated any simulation that gets out of control. Last thing we wanted was for our creations to spread through the whole Forest." ODDISH: "Can't you shut it down?" OSIRIS: "The Forest runs off a series of high-yield solar power grids on a tidally locked world. It wasn't designed to shut down." SAGIRA: "We can turn the individual grids off, but we have to do it sequentially and that will take time. You'll need to hold off the Vex while we're doing it." ODDISH: "Fine. Get started." He surveys the battlefield. The kinders are holding their own. Marshall drops several Goblins with a well-aimed grenade. Ricardo takes down another with a precision-placed throwing knife. Dawn and Paula are back to back, the former blasting murderously away with her shotgun and the latter using her Cold Heart to laser Vex after Vex. David takes an unlucky hit and dies, but Ventis adeptly restores him, then hits his Stormtrance and slaughters most of the goblins in the vicinity. A hobgoblin gets the drop on Petra, but Growler gets the drop on it and drags it to the ground. A large mass of reinforcements teleports in, and Oddish gives them a proper greeting: 190 rounds of Sweet Business, reducing them to perforated junk and spilled radiolarian. SAGIRA: "Power Grid number one is offline." PAULA: "How many grids are there?" SAGIRA: "Six in all." ODDISH: "OK, then I think we can handle this." OSIRIS: "Bad news. The Pusillanimous Mind is fighting back. Number of Vex being generated per wave is increasing at an exponential rate." ODDISH: "Do you have any GOOD news?" OSIRIS: "I just saved a ton of money on my Sparrow insurance." PAULA: "That was SO not funny." MARSHALL (kills three Goblins with precision shots): "I wish we could nerf the Vex." ODDISH (punches out the Vex Marshall missed): "Wait a minute... this is a simulation, right? Couldn't you nerf the Vex? Make them harmless?" OSIRIS: "No. I can introduce general modifiers to the laws of physics: elemental burns, changes in melee damage, that sort of thing. But since the Vex are not under my control, I can't make direct modification to them." VENTIS (melee-zaps a goblin): "Toland would never lose control of his own simulation like this." OSIRIS: "It won't happen again." SAGIRA: "Yes it will." PAULA (reloads her Cold Heart): "What about the Mind itself? Could we find it and kill it?" OSIRIS: "No, that particular Mind refuses to enter combat directly." GLORIA (blasts a hillside full of Vex to oblivion with a Nova Bomb): "Not surprising, considering its name." (a beat) "What, am I the only one here who knows what 'pusillanimous' means?" ODDISH (throws up a rally barricade): "It means you have a real thing for cats, right?" SIGMUND: "No, you idiot, it means 'cowardly'." ODDISH (grenade-sticks a Minotaur): "You don't need to be like that, Sigmund." SIGMUND: "Until you gain the ability to reassemble yourself from a pile of cinders or a cloud of dispersing molecules without my help, I'll be any way I want." OSIRIS: "Second solar grid is offline. Four remaining." ODDISH (sprays the area with his minigun): "Someone's crabby today." SIGMUND: "Just underappreciated, that's all." SAGIRA: "Join the club, Sigs." Oddish starts to reply, but is fatally overrun by several rather large Minotaurs. Three swift Golden Gun bullets by little Ricardo dispatches them, and Sigmund restores his Guardian to life. ODDISH: "Can we have this conversation after the fight's over? Please?" SIGMUND (dodges a Harpy's laser): "If the number of Vex increases at its current rate, we may not be around when the fight's over." PAULA (puts down her empty Cold Heart and cuts loose with her scout): "Could the simulation generate more firepower for us? A few heavy machine guns would be really nice right now, maybe a Gjallarhorn." PETRA (punches out a Vex): "How about an Iron Lord axe? Or a Dark-Drinker?" ODDISH (backflips away from an attacking Minotaur): "Why? You couldn't even lift either of those." PETRA: "But you and Mom could." ODDISH (shoots the Minotaur dead): "Osiris? Can you put in extra weapons?" SAGIRA: "Programming them into the simulation would take time, time you probably don't have." OSIRIS: "Three solar grids offline. We're halfway there." GLORIA: "Great, but we're running low on ammo, and Vex numbers are still increasing." ODDISH: "I'm @%$@#$-ing TIRED OF THIS CRAP!!" He lights up his Hammer of Sol and throws his hammers in all directions, reducing a score of Vex to piles of glowing ashes. As more Vex spawn in, he opens fire with his minigun. More Vex die, and the spilled radiolarian fluid is ankle deep in places. The Sweet Business runs dry, and Mr. O. goes on a kung fu rampage, demolishing several more goblins with fists and feet. Finally, he rips the leg from a Minotuar and uses it to bash the last few remaining Vex to scrap metal. ODDISH (bellows): "IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?!!" (he sees that everyone is staring aghast at him) "What?" OSIRIS: "I think someone has a lot of repressed hostility." SAGIRA: "For once we agree on something." OSIRIS: "Fourth solar grid has been powered down." The imminent threat pushed back, Paula manages to revive Marshall and Ricardo, both of whom were overrun by the previous wave before their teacher's frenzy of annihilation. The younger ones reload their Sea Scorpions. Dawn's run out of shotgun ammo, but she has her Refrain autorifle at the ready. Ventis stands ready with his Azimuth handcannon. The group cluster together, knowing that it's only going to get worse. ODDISH: "We can do this, you guys. Fight smart, conserve your ammo. Dawn, how's your bubble?" DAWN: "Fully charged." ODDISH: "Use it if we're overrun, but not before. I miss Blessing of Light, don't you?" DAWN: "More than you do." The Vex arrive, and there's no more conversations now, this is a battle to the death. If everyone is simultaneously dead, the Vex will overrun the Guardians and Ghosts and it will be over. Part 5 (end): https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/247184768 Oddish's Index Page: https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/228589572