Battles of attrition were not the mobian way.
At least - attrition on the mobian wasn't the mobian way. Mobians were an ambush predator, striking hard, fast, withstanding a single hit or less from their prey, and then, in theory, the fight was won, they dragged their prey back with them to their cave, or they retreated, biding their time until their next opportunity to strike.
This tactic had survived for millennia. Ultimately, even Sonic's fundamental strategy used the core fundamentals, striking with brutal force at high speed before slipping away to his next target, using his momentum to effortlessly evade any counter as he charged through opposition in a state of endless blitzkrieg.
And this was why Miles was in trouble.
Because this was now most definitely a battle of attrition.
Miles slammed into the ground to dodge a mortar seed, standing his ground to sweep the Whammer's tail in a wide arc, slicing through one of the giant hooks the plant monster used to navigate. Flame crept up the tentacle, helped along by five rounds rapid from his clockgun to a section where the blaze hopefully wouldn't spread into the mouth before dentropy extinguished it.
The plantastrophe was an enormous hulking leviathan. Most of the creatures here were somewhere on the spectrum of "hulk", big, heavy hitters with powerful attacks and sturdy defences, and Miles, like most mobians, was best at fighting hulks. Barring any unforeseen circumstances like ambushes, murder rain, things breaking physics in new and unexpected ways, or something hurling itself to its own death in his tails while he was trying to fly, Miles could determine the rhythm in its movements and react accordingly.
"You're doing very well, harbinger."
Cosmo was not a hulk.
Miles swung again, slicing off a snapping vine before sending his hammer hurting at the plant's jaw. A wall of leaves formed in its way. He yanked back the weapon with a frown as the leaves leeched away its momentum. A mortar seed burst through the wall, sending burning leaves spinning. Miles leapt off away, twisting wildly around the burning petals that scorched after him as soon as they grew.
Cosmo was a flak cannon. She wasn't sturdy, she didn't hit hard, but she simply saturated the area with damage. Minor, with mundane leaves alone, but constant, draining. And she turned every moment he landed against him. Even with his distinctly unmobian resilience and the madworld physics that let him rapidly recover from ridiculous amounts of damage, he couldn't help but get worn down as the battle raged on.
Worse, she was a flak cannon inside a hulk, and a flak cannon he didn't want to shoot in the rare windows of opportunity between snapping jaws and writhing, regenerative tentacles.
Miles winced as a leaf slipped into a seam in his armour, pulling a bucket of honey from his pack to dump over the wound, dousing the flames as they began. Various cuts and burns itched as the honey started to apply its strange regenerative effects, and he scooped up the remainder in midair, leaving only a few droplets to dissipate into nothing as his bucket refilled.
"You would have made a wonderful champion."
Worst of all, Cosmo wouldn't stop talking.
Tiny floating seeds punctuated each word, popped out rapidfire from the plant's thorny surface. Miles kept flying, returning that fire as best he could through a stinging wall of plantlife that had long since stained his armour black and green despite madworld's insistence. He retorted by extending his unarmoured hand, a screaming skull wreathed in diabolical purple flame launching from his palm. The leaves shrivelled away as they tried to bar its passage, leaving a decaying black spot against the side of the plantastrophe and Miles' mojo painfully dry.
"But there are so many children you, harbinger."
Miles snorted between blows, looping razor wire around two tentacles at once. Ancient? Terrible? He heaved, slicing cleanly through both before leaping away.
"Lonely."
Cosmo stretched bloodstained arms out, dangling from the tentacles piercing her like a mangled marionette, heedless of Miles raining bullets down around her from a higher ledge.
"With nobody like them. Needing somewhere to belong."
A stray slug sliced past her head as the plant twisted unexpectedly, sending petals tumbling from the side of her head. Miles winced on her behalf as the bullet impacted the back of the plant's "throat", scorching her back.
"They find belonging with me, harbinger."
A seed pulverised the wall at Miles' feet. He leapt into a bare tree, whose leaves had already been used as shurikens against him.
"As can you."
Miles frowned, leaping to grab onto a higher ledge, keeping his feet clear as he flipped up into the air. Pushed back as he was by the relentless wall of leaves and the constant approach of the heavily damaged plant monster, Miles was swiftly starting to have the opposite problem he'd had before he'd lost Cosmo - namely that he was running out of room in the opposite direction. The tight tunnels he'd carved between neighbouring cave networks up ahead were no barrier to the monster or Cosmo, while he'd be a sitting duck the moment he entered.
"Then why don't you run away, harbinger? Or simply shoot her?" Cosmo shrugged. "You yourself know you could do either."
Great. And she was reading at very least his surface thoughts, possibly even his second level processing. At least she wasn't doing more with that knowledge than taunting him.
"You cannot save her, harbinger. She is dead many times over. She is the last of her kind and she is part of something so much more." Cosmo laughed, head dragged up by its leafy braid. "And she is begging you to shoot, to take her life and slay me. A temporary inconvenience for us both."
Miles grunted in response, slipping out his clockgun and loosing a salvo of slugs into its open mouth. A thick vine curled up in the bullets' path, shrugging off the incendiary rounds almost unscathed.
"You missed, harbinger." Cosmo grinned, head lolling to the side as regenerated vines erupted into the earth beside him, a salvo of rapidfire seeds spraying out from its jaws.
Miles launched to the side, but with a sweep of a slender hand they changed direction midflight, smashing into him one after the other, leaving deep dents in his armour and one crashing into the open face of his helmet.
"I did not, however." Cosmo's face smiled as Miles dropped back to the floor, spitting a broken tooth and a mouthful of blood across the plants.
"Fine." Miles weaved to his feet, squaring his stance against a storm of leaves that rained down upon him. He ducked a mortar seed without moving his legs, watching grimly as the plant bore ever closer. "I'll do what she wants."
His mojo refilled, and Miles raised his hand, screaming skull blasting forth once more, straight towards the dryad. Leaves and vines alike congregated to try and block the noisy projectile.
Miles raised his other hand, grinning as blood trickled down his chin.
"She said we should suffer together."
He fired his grapnel. Cosmo let out a pained cry as the glowing hook slammed into her chest. Miles barely missed his own projectile as he hurtled into the creature's gaping maw, a bucket phasing into his free hand mid-flight, burning petals streaking after him from the flowers he left behind.
Impact. Miles slammed into the dryad, sticky contents of the bucket splattering the thorny interior behind her. He wrapped legs and tails around her body, latching himself fast to her as tentacles lanced out, slicing through his armour with ease. His arms were pulled out to his sides as Cosmo leaned close, his glowing form reflected in her eyes.
"You are an interesting one, harbinger." She smiled as a tentacle coiled around his throat.
"I'm-" Miles coughed, blood spattering her face. "-glad you think so."
He strained his arms against the tentacles gripping him, damaged hands slow in responding.
"She said -hck- something about... my fingers too." His smile echoed hers as two torches, one green and one normal, appeared in his fingers.
The dryad's eyes widened.
He dropped them into the slime coated maw as the flaming skull and petals exploded into him from behind.
A blazing fireball of three simultaneous types of flame - four, when he swept a tail behind Cosmo's back - ignited the flammable interior in a blinding conflagration. Miles screamed as even his armour warped from the heat, pink fur shrivelling to black.
And his arms were free, tentacles burnt away at the base. He launched his grapnel out behind him just before the plant's jaws snapped shut, tearing free with his prize still clasped in his burning grip.
Miles slammed into mud, skidding to a halt in a streak of fire flowers ten meters long. He dumped a bucket of honey over them both before rolled away from the dryad, sparks of green flame still smoking undeterred on his significantly diminished tail fluff. The plantastrophe loomed over him from within a technicolour inferno. A hook slammed into the ground beside him, but crumbled to ash at the base as it tried to drag itself forward.
Miles turned away as the monster collapsed, gulping down a bottle of honey/potion blend with a shudder as he scrambled back through the lava flowers, his burns stinging painfully every time he brushed against on of the glowing plants.
Cosmo let out a shuddering breath as he approached, desiccated vine tentacles still dangling from her arms and neck, blackened body shuddering from the destructive heat he hadn't quite managed to shield her from. Blue eyes stared unblinkingly up at him.
"You-" Her words were interrupted as Miles upended two open potion bottles into her mouth. Her body convulsed as burnt flesh fell away, a swirl of crimson and yellow erupting back out of her mouth a moment later as she retched, scorched tissue mingling in a pool beside her as she rolled onto her side, shuddering.
"Huh. Guess you really can't stack these things." Miles tossed the bottles back into hammerspace as Cosmo glared at him.
"Why did you do that?" She raised a hand, allowing the fox to help her to a sitting position, still shuddering.
"Well I can't actually physically induce myself to consume-"
"You could have just let the skull strike."
"Oh. That." Miles rubbed the back of his head, feeling fur where the metal had twisted. "I guess I- ah!"
The dryad lunged at him, arms wrapping around his neck. Miles fell back to the earth with a pained yelp.
"That was wonderful." Lips pressed against the charred skin of his cheek. "Well done."
"I- I- uh- I- Agh!" Miles wrenched the dryad off him with his tails, clutching the fresh hole in his flesh in surprise.
"A little gift, harbinger." Cosmo winked at him, dangling from his grasp without struggle. "I can see why she liked you so much."
Cosmo went limp in his grasp. The next words whispered from his own lips.
"The touch of my grandfather is upon you, harbinger. But when you wish to belong?" His face contorted into a smile. "Cry out for me."
The presence left, Miles slumped down with an exhausted sigh, dropping Cosmo into the flowers alongside him. Her eyes fluttered open, fixing him with a weary gaze.
"Hey." He waved a furless hand.
"What did she say to you?"
"Nothing." Miles shrugged. "Hey, Cosmo?"
"Yes?"
"Never do that again again."
Cosmo smiled. "As you-"
A poisonous stinger slammed into the dirt between them.
"Aw come on, already?" Miles forced himself to his feet with a groan. "I hate this place."
