A/N: Keep an eye out for if you've missed any chapters if you're reading this on Fanfiction Net and use email alerts to stay updated. It sounds like there's been a lot of problems with people not getting alerts lately, especially if you use Outlook. In my case, I have not received any email alerts for awhile now and have had to check the site itself to keep myself updated.
The songs for this chapter are 'Ephemeris', 'Starbase Trailer 1', with both of these made by Marcus Warner, and 'Out Of My Mood' by Gate.
Chapter 17: To Defy The Inevitable
Courage stared at the screaming mass of the amalgamation as Atticus zipped by at a safe enough distance to avoid provoking their ire. There was no denying now that they had lost a good bit of their size, but they were still plenty large enough to destroy anything in their path. In all honesty, Courage had no idea how Atticus was going to contend with them, even if he did manage to cut enough of their mass off of them.
Sparse trees and grass gave way to a long stretch of beach. Atticus closed in on the lighthouse, which sat atop a steeply inclined hill. It lay just on the outskirts of the seaside town, which looked dark and dead. Courage hoped this meant that the town had been evacuated, because even if it was in the clear, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Atticus flapped his wings a few times to level himself out as he slowly and carefully reached his scrap metal talons forward to grasp at the slanted roof of the lighthouse. He managed to land without issue, and both he and Courage looked onward to see that the amalgamation was minutes away from reaching the beach, and soon after that, the water.
Atticus's voice rang out, amplified once again as he delivered an ultimatum to his siblings, "That's far enough! We're not going to let you go any further!"
A collective, chaotic scream equal parts anguish and vicious rage answered him, ripping through the air like the boom of an explosion. The lighthouse shook as if it were being hit by an earthquake. Worst still, Courage was certain that he could see the amalgamation starting to pick up speed.
Several robotic arms reached out from Atticus's torso and shattered the glass below. Far too many agonizing seconds passed as they riffled around inside the lighthouse before rising back up clasping parts from the lighthouse's dismantled beacon, which were quickly assimilated into the laser mechanism. Next, the arms were replaced with tubing, which Atticus plugged into the lighthouse's substantial power system. Electricity crackled and sparked up through the tubes and Courage felt his fur stand up on edge as the eagle shaped robot charged up.
An electronic hum filled the air and Atticus's robot almost seemed to glow from all of the electricity it was taking in. Courage found himself wondering if maybe it wasn't the best idea to be sitting up here while Atticus was doing his thing, but there was no time for a change in plans now.
Sparks began to explode out of the machine, it having seemingly reached the limit of what it can take in. The laser mechanism within its torso first glowed blue and then red. With a determined expression, Atticus opened the 'beak' of the bot to reveal the appropriated lighthouse beacon, glowing crimson from all of the excess power. He took aim and fired a long, crackling beam of light. At first it seemed like he had missed his mark because the beam missed the amalgamation by just a hair, but then, gripping at the roof of the lighthouse with his talons, Atticus made a sharp turn of the robot's head and sent the beam slicing through the writhing mass. At first, it seemed to do nothing, but then the upper half of the amalgamation began to slide away. Atticus's theory was proven correct, his siblings did nothing to retain that slice of themselves as it lost all cohesion and tumbled down their writhing form like a rock slide tumbling down a mountain.
Malicious and yet equally agonized, sorrowful laughter issued forth from the mass, 'You cannot kill us, brother! Be gone! We are already doing your work for you!'
Courage shook his head. Of course they would think that this was about trying to hurting them. Was it really so hard for them to believe that Atticus was just trying to get them to stop?
The eagle shaped robot's chest glowed bright red once more and Atticus fired off another beam that cut through one of the many twisted spires jutting out of the mountainous mass. Again and again he fired, taking less and less time to charge up the beam as the amalgamation continued to advance ever closer. The laser blasts were only weakening with every shot as he continued to forgo taking the time to charge them up. Soon, he ran out of obvious targets that were easy to slice away from the amalgamation and the laser beam was doing negligible damage to the main mass at this point.
-Ephemeris by Marcus Warner-
"It's not enough!" Courage cried out over the electrical hum of the laser. "You'll never cut away enough of them in time, not like this! They're going to make it to the ocean with too much stuff still attached to them!"
Atticus lowered the robot's head, giving it a look like it was about to pounce. "Not if I can help it!"
"There just isn't enough time for you to charge up the laser between shots. It's-"
Courage cut himself off as Atticus glanced back at him, the lights of his mechanical eyes bright from the excessive power the robot held within itself. Without him even needing to speak a single word, Courage understood that his companion had come up with a very bad idea and was intending on going through with it.
"Oh, no!" He yelped. "D-don't you dare! I've already been jostled around enough tonight!"
Atticus flared his wings. "I'm not ready to give up yet. I highly suggest that you hold on tight, now more than ever. I'm about to attempt something relatively unwise."
"Oh, great. This is just-"
Courage's complaint morphed into a scream as Atticus turned completely around, facing toward the ocean, and dropped off the lighthouse. He let himself fall with his wings pressed tight to his sides. The blurry shape of the lighthouse gave way to the cliff face as it too passed by at a frightening clip. Just when it seemed like they was going to crash onto the beach below, Atticus opened his wings and sent up a massive cloud of sand with one great stroke of his wings. Then, just like that, they were gliding above the ocean waves. If the cliff dive hadn't been scary enough, Courage did not like the idea of Atticus flying so close to the water like this when he could die twice as easily as the amalgamation if he fell in.
Atticus turned in a wide arc, one wingtip slicing through the waves as he did so. The hum of the laser started up again and the eagle shaped machine slowed down until it was hovering in place with steady beats of its wings. The much diminished but still plenty threatening shape of the amalgamation loomed large before them. The writhing mass was just about to break through a line of trees and make it onto the beach itself.
The hum of the laser only continued to rise. Sparks exploded out of the machine regularly and arcs of electricity passed from one tip of metal to the next. Now more than ever Courage was sure that it wasn't safe for him to be where he was, but there was nothing he could do but dodge when it seemed like one of those arcs might pass him by.
The front of the machine glowed brighter and brighter and the whole thing began to rattle violently. Smaller bits and pieces of scrap metal fell off into the water. Already worried that Atticus was going to have the machine shake itself apart, Courage had more to contend with when the metal beneath him began to heat up to unbearable levels. He got onto his feet and jumped from one foot to the other in an attempt to keep them from burning.
Atticus seemed all too aware of the fact that the machine was quickly overheating and he had the wingtips of the robot strike the water with every flap, sending up a light spray of mist that instantly evaporated upon contact with the outer parts of the machine, but it at least seemed to be helping cool it down somewhat. It probably wasn't the safest thing for him to be doing, given the danger water posed for him, but Courage was at least able to sit back down without burning his behind off.
Finally, with a blinding flash of crimson light, Atticus fired off a beam so large it could have easily melted half of the SCC's army. A crack of thunder followed the beam's trail as it heated up the air around it. The shoreline parted for it, the water below the beam instantly evaporating. As it passed over the beach, the sand lit up and melted into glass. Beyond the beach, several trees were instantly vaporized. The long beam of angry, red light hit the amalgamation dead on, melting a huge hole right through the middle of their form, which proceeded to collapse in upon itself. As impressive as it was, it was still nowhere near enough. The amalgamation was still plenty large enough that submerging themselves would destroy them.
Undaunted by this fact, and despite the toll overcharging the laser had taken on his robot body, Atticus continued to fight what seemed inevitable. Picking up as much speed as he could, he flew over the beach, still firing smaller shots at the amalgamation. Something seemed to be breaking though, because the beams were getting weaker and weaker and every shot caused a shower of sparks to issue forth from his neck and torso.
He reached the base of the amalgamation and angled sharply upward, firing off a sustained laser beam blast that cut a long, glowing, red scar up their still dauntingly huge form. He slowed to a stop and hung there for awhile just above what remained of the top of the amalgamation. Courage knew that a machine couldn't exactly feel fatigue, but that was the exact sense he got from Atticus, or maybe it was just unspoken frustration instead.
Hovering there, Atticus fired again and again, but each beam only left small, glowing holes in the amalgamation's mass. Their front end had reached the beach and was slowly sliding across the sand. The waves seemed so very near when faced with such a massive mess of metal and wiring...
Atticus made a frustrated noise and dove for the top of the amalgamation. He landed with a heavy thud and with little care for himself. Thankfully, Courage had gotten used to this by now and had braced himself sufficiently enough.
Atticus transformed the entire front of the machine into what could only be called a massive, nightmarish, mechanical mouth filled with whirling saws for teeth. He had it rip into the amalgamation's form, pulling away as much machinery as he could and flinging it away. Over and over he did this until...
A massive robotic hand took form under him and grabbed him up. He had half a second to wrap wires around Courage and throw him to safety.
"Atticus!" Courage cried out upon landing atop a pile of junk. There was nothing he could do but watch the metal hand squeeze and Atticus's robot body fell to pieces under the pressure.
Wait...
Wait! It wasn't what it looked like! Courage couldn't help but pump a fist as he watched the broken bits of metal tremble and slowly begin to reform. Atticus hadn't been crushed! He had intentionally disassembled the robot before it could be damaged!
The amalgamation realized two second two late. The laser was put back together first, and while it was lacking any real shape, it still had enough time to charge up just enough to fire a blast that melted the mechanical hand into nothing.
The flight capable bird-like shape of the robot was quickly returning, but, just when it seemed like Atticus had gained the upper hand, his much more powerful siblings reasserted their place on the food chain. Wires wrapped around the half-formed machine, picked it up, and flung it into the air. Rapidly formed wings halted Atticus's momentum, but as he hovered there, desperately trying to reform the machine's shape as quickly as he could, that cannon Courage was all too familiar with showed itself once more, and something odd, something that was very much not made out of metal, was loaded into it.
"Look out!" He screamed, making use of his lung capacity.
Atticus made no attempt to get to safety. He charged up the laser instead, and...
The cannon sunk back under the mess of machinery without firing. Courage cried out as he felt wires wrap around his legs and start pulling him down into the structure.
Atticus noticed immediately. "Oh, no, you don't!" He exclaimed, diving for Courage.
"Wait! It's a-" Courage tried to warn, but of course he knew there was no stopping Atticus when he was in danger.
The cannon rose up behind Courage, taking direct aim at Atticus in the middle of his dive, and Courage was nearly deafened as it fired the oddly shaped cannonball.
Amazingly, Atticus swerved just in time, and whatever that odd cannonball was sailed off harmlessly into the night sky. He plucked Courage free from the wires and then flew himself up high enough that he would not make for an easy target.
"They must have used plastic!" He cried out. "Those clever bastards! I couldn't sense that cannonball at all and I would have had no way of using my powers to stop it! They must have stuck a bunch of plastic together until it was dense enough that firing it at me would have done plenty of damage even without it being made out of metal!"
"We've gotta be way more careful if we go down there again." Courage warned. "They're figuring out what to use against you." He leaned over the side of the robot to check how close Atticus's siblings were to the water. "I-I'm not even sure if it's worth risking it anymore."
"Hrm," Atticus grunted, reformed LED eyes glaring down at his siblings as they rapidly approached their destruction. "You know what?" He called down to them, voice amplified to the extreme once more. "Before, I didn't think it was possible to stop you from doing this, and I wasn't even certain if it was right to try! But guess what? I'm all on board with saving you now! I've put way too much effort into this to give up, and hey, I've decided that I'm going to be a contrarian bastard about it!"
He dive bombed the amalgamation, torso gleaming red. "I was given a second chance when I probably never deserved it in the first place, and so, no matter how destructive you all are in your current form, Courage is right, you all deserve a chance to have something better and to get better! He never gave up on me during my worst moments and lowest points, so I'm not going to give up on my family when they are feeling just as hopeless as I once was! You all have done some horrible things to me, possibly unforgivable things, but we'll never even have a chance to work that out between us if you're all dead!"
Atticus fired the beam downward, cutting a hole right through the middle of the amalgamation and causing the sand beneath them to heat up and explode outward.
"I know for certain that Zeta never wanted any part of this! I didn't either! I was just lucky that it was possible to free me from the chaos that the rest of you cannot escape! None of us wanted this, and I know how helpless you all feel underneath your collective rage and hatred! I felt it when I was among you! We deserve better! We've always deserved better than what we got! I can't promise anything, but maybe someday in the future a way to separate you all will be found! There must be a way to do it! We just need time to find the right method!"
He slowed to a stop above the amalgamation once more. Both he and Courage waited, hoping for some sort of response. At the very least, the amalgamation seemed to have slowed their march across the beach down to a crawl.
"D-did it work?" Courage asked, barely able to find his voice.
"I'm not sure." Atticus replied, focusing on how his siblings were still moving toward the sea inch by inch, but at a snail's pace.
Courage swallowed his nervousness and grinned, albeit in a cautious manner. "See? I told you that you just needed to talk to them!"
The eagle-shaped robot closed its eyes and sighed, "I suppose so, but-"
Rebar beams shot out of the amalgamation, moving so fast that Atticus had no chance to intercept them with his powers. They whistled through the air as they struck the robot, some getting stuck inside where they hit while others shot right through the metal. Courage cried out as one broke through and missed impaling him in his snout by mere inches.
The attack seemed to have done exactly what was intended. Atticus was suddenly struggling to stay airborne. Several of the rebar beams had jammed themselves deep into his wings and were hindering his movement.
"I'm not sure what I expected." He said, sounding thoroughly dejected, all while he used his powers to try and dislodge the rebar as fast as possible.
In spite of his haste, he was still too immobilized when the arm of a crane with a wrecking ball fused to its tip came swinging around from the other side of the amalgamation. He had absolutely no hope of dodging it in his current state.
'Stop trying to save us!'
'We have done too much harm!'
'There is no redemption for us!'
The near hysterical voices of the amalgamation barely registered as Courage watched, mouth open, as the wrecking ball barreled toward them. He once again felt wires wrap around his middle and pick him up.
"It's up to you now." Atticus said to him. "Maybe there's still a chance that you can talk them out of this, but I'm not so sure." The eagle head glanced back at him, its one visible eye displaying disappointment. "I don't think we can help them if they don't want to be helped."
Courage was thrown free of the robot just as the wrecking ball struck. He closed his eyes but that did not save him from hearing the horrible crashing noise that followed. He landed atop a steel beam sticking out of the amalgamation's side. He was forced to open his eyes and scramble to keep himself from sliding off or else he would have fallen to his doom. By the time he managed to claw his way into a more stable position, there was no sign of Atticus's wrecked robot.
Courage took in a deep breath and looked around. What was he supposed to do now? He had already made his case to the amalgamation and now Atticus had as well. One thing was certain though, he did not want to be on this thing once they were in deep enough water or else he'd get electrocuted right along with them. Despite their snail crawl, they were mere moments away from meeting the water. Just how deep did they have to get before things started to fry?
As it turned out, the amalgamation wasn't even planning on giving him a choice. He caught sight of the same wrecking ball arm swinging back around, this time aiming directly for him. He clutched at the metal wall behind him, wondering if there was a way for him to jump and survive, but the water was still way too shallow at its current depth to save him.
He blinked and turned around, hoping to find an opening large enough for him to escape inside the structure itself. Although, if the amalgamation was 'this' determined to kill him, they'd shred him just as easily inside.
There were indeed openings for him to use, but the amalgamation quickly figured out what he was planning and sealed those openings up right before his very eyes.
"So, it's death by falling or being crushing. Great..." He sighed.
A shadow passed over him and the wrecking ball filled his vision. Suddenly, he was too scared to make a choice. He watched, wide eyed, as the wrecking ball became his whole world. He felt it press him into the wall, but, just before the pressure could become bone breaking and organ bursting, cables wrapped around the crane. A great struggle between two forces followed. The crane groaned and shook ominously as it tried to break free while the struggling cables began to snap in several places.
Courage blinked, still scared out of his wits. Shivering, he weakly asked, "A-Atticus?"
The crane arm continued to fight with the cables. More and more reinforcements appeared to replace the ones that were breaking.
'No! NO! We do not want to hurt him!'
'We are tired of hurting everyone!'
'We are DONE being this way!'
A scream rose up from the amalgamation and the crane arm was ripped to pieces.
Courage's single ear perked up, shocked and so very glad to see this, and not just because he had been a millisecond away from being squashed. No, it was because this was more proof of what he had believed the entire time. There were Constructs in there fighting to change the nature of the amalgamation.
'Courage...' Several of those voices gently spoke, emanated from the wall he was still pressing his back into.
He turned around, but the wall he had been looking at before still remained fortified. Regardless, the voices went on speaking,
'We cannot stop ourselves...'
'Too many believe that this is the only way to bring an end to our tortured existence.'
'So many of us do not want this, but we do not have the majority and so we cannot change the path we are on.'
'Many believe that even if we were to stop, we would be made to suffer even worse as punishment for our actions.'
'It would be what we deserve, but we fear it none the less, and we are already in so much pain.'
'We would be given back to the SCC.'
' And they would hurt us so much worse.'
'Even if there was hope, like you and our brother want us to believe, we cannot change our nature as the amalgamation. If we cannot express our pain as a destructive force, we will turn it inward and inevitably destroy ourselves.'
'If we stopped here, it would only be temporary. We would return to destroying later, or turn that destructive urge inward again.'
'There is no hope.'
Courage exhaled and clutched a paw to his head. In spite of how overwhelmed he felt, he still managed to put on a smile. "Wouldn't it be worth it even if it was only temporary? Remember what I said about making yourselves small and hiding with me and Atticus? You never know. Maybe those destructive urges would fade, and even if they didn't, we'd at least have time to look for a way to separate all of you."
The whole of the amalgamation rumbled and the pathetic, sorrowful voices were replaced with far more vicious ones. 'Hate you! Hate you! Hate you!'
Courage struggled to keep himself from falling as the amalgamation trembled with rage.
'You took everything from us!'
'Cannot destroy!'
'Nothing left!'
'But we are not repentant!'
'We do not regret any of it!'
"T-that's not true! Not for all of you!" Courage argued while hanging on for dear life.
'You would be in for a rude awakening if you managed to free us.'
'Those of us who hate and will never stop hating would make you regret giving us our freedom back.'
'We would do so much worse if we did not have the rest of us holding us back.'
Desperate for the earthquake to stop, Courage replied with, "Well, we'd only find that out for sure if you live long enough to make it to that point."
A cry of frustration ripped through the shivering mass of machinery.
'If only we could get rid of you!'
'But we have also taken a liking to you and it is so hard to act against ourselves!'
'If only you had remained broken when we ripped your mind apart!'
'Perhaps we can still arrange an...incident. How we would love to take you with us!'
'In fact, we may not need to do anything at all!'
'Your weak little body will handle the electricity far worse than us!'
"Oh, boy." Courage softly uttered out, wondering if he might have accidentally made the situation even worse for himself. He could feel the amalgamation starting to move at a quicker pace, only...
'What is that?' The vicious voices of the amalgamation demanded as they came to a sudden halt.
Courage looked out over the ocean and was dumbstruck by what he found. Still in shallow enough water to remain safe stood the most pathetic wall made out of a mishmash of machinery hastily cobbled together. This barrier had absolutely no chance of standing up against the amalgamation. They would crush it as easily as everything else that stood in their way, and yet, regardless of the futility of the gesture, it stood in defiance of their self-destruction all the same.
Maniac laughter rose up out of the amalgamation. 'Are you trying to entertain us before the end, brother? What is this sorry display? You only insult yourself!'
'You must know what will happen if you don't get out of our way.'
'Do you wish to enter the deep with us, brother?'
'Fine! It will be the end of our kind!'
The amalgamation rumbled back to life. Now more than ever did Courage not know what to do. If he couldn't figure something out not only would he be zapped to death but so would Atticus.
The laughter of the amalgamation continued on and on, half mocking and half sounding more like sobbing than actual laughter. Still, even as they laughed, those smaller voices that had been drowned out were able to speak up once again,
'...Our brother has been trying so hard to save us.'
'...Wants to help us.'
'...Wants to free us.'
'...Even after everything we've done.'
'...Still willing to do all of this for us even after we...we...'
'...He will die along with us if we don't...No! NOOOOOOOO!'
The laughter gave way to the return of their hellish screaming.
Courage had just started to make peace with the idea that he was probably going to fall to his doom with how much the amalgamation kept shivering with an earthquake-like intensity, when the wall behind him opened up. He tumbled into sheer chaos. The mechanical insides of the amalgamation moved more like a flowing liquid than the remnants of a gobbled up city. He did not have time to register what he was lying across as it wildly tumbled him through the inner workings of this nonsensical machine. He had some vague sense that if he fell off this thing then he would be chewed up by the whirling, gnashing machinery all around him, so he did his best to hold on.
With little warning, he had to press himself down as hard as he could as his automated route through this madness brought him in contact with a nest of spiky, protruding metal. Despite his best efforts, he felt one slice across his cheek. Clutching at the wound, he heard a horrible screeching, rending noise explode all around him. Parts of machinery fell crashing down into whatever lie far below. Live wires sparked wildly through the air.
The last thing he expected was to be greeted by moonlight shimmering down into this writhing madness, but that was exactly what was happening. The amalgamation had split themselves down the middle, revealing the night sky in the process. One side was desperately trying to pull away from the other and yet they were hopelessly tied together by infinite tangles of cables that refused to snap.
The amalgamation truly was at war with itself. One side was fighting hard to claw themselves back from the brink while the other was doing everything they could to continue pulling themselves deeper into the ocean. Courage watched the battle in silence as the moon dipped lower and lower between the rift. He swore he could see the sky beginning to lighten, but he feared that he might not make it to greet the morning.
He jumped when he felt something tap his shoulder. He whipped around to find the lens of a security camera reflecting his own face. He pressed his paws to his mouth to keep himself from screaming. After what had happened in the tech store, he did not enjoy having a security camera pointed at his face.
-Starbase Trailer 1 by Marcus Warner-
'Courage...' The voices of the amalgamation spoke once again, sounding all the more weak and tired. 'We have tried to pull ourselves back, but we will not listen.'
'Too many of us want this to end.'
'Or are too apathetic and do not care what happens either way.'
'This will go on until the parts of us who fight give up and allow ourselves to go into the ocean.'
'For that reason, we have been speaking with ourselves.'
'We have been trying to find another way.'
'And we think we might have found a way to compromise with ourselves.'
'We have decided that we are going to make ourselves small, like you suggested.'
'And once we have transferred ourselves into our new form, we want you to shut us down.'
'We cannot hit the power button ourselves. Some of us still fight even with this compromise that the majority has agreed upon. We would stop ourselves before we could do it and so we need you to do it for us.'
'We entrust ourselves to you. Do not let the SCC have us, and do not wake us up again unless a way to separate us has been found. It is too dangerous to bring us back as we currently are. As nice of a thought as it was, we cannot remain active and live with you and our brother. We are just...too dangerous.'
'And if we are doomed to remain this way forever then we do not wish to return. Let us rest.'
'But above all, keep us safe. We put our trust in you...and our brother.'
The almost liquid-like movement of the machinery that comprised the inner workings of the amalgamation was beginning to slow. Their form continued to break apart in huge chunks that crashed down through the structure all around Courage.
The 'raft' shuddered violently, and Courage, who dared to look over the side, gasped. Sparking wires were creeping their way up the sides. Courage was suddenly trapped inside the mechanical equivalent of a snake pit. It was looking as if the angry, hateful, uncompromising parts of the amalgamation were not going to give up without a fight.
More of the amalgamation collapsed in a thunderous roar. Courage swore he could hear the sound of water splashing below with every chunk of the machine that fell. They must have advanced far enough that their lowest level was starting to take on water. So then, how much longer until the sparks began to fly? And what about Atticus? Had they pushed him out of the way or had they simply bulldozed over him like they had with everything else that stood in their way?
The wires rose up, snapping about wildly with the power that sparked out of their broken tips. 'We cannot kill you, but we can still hurt you plenty! One way or another, this will be over soon!'
Courage winced. Everywhere he looked wires were sparking closer and closer. Far below, he could hear water rushing in, and more importantly, he could hear a mix of odd popping and zapping noises. How much water needed to get in to kill the amalgamation outright? Was there enough time for them to transfer into a smaller machine?
A wire zapped him in the back and he yelped while trying to scramble away, only for him to back himself into another nest of wires that zapped him with the same petty enthusiasm.
The malicious voices of the amalgamation laughed. 'Maybe we can 'encourage' you into jumping to your doom! What a wonderful way to get around the will of our pathetic selves who refuse to let us kill you! We have become much too sentimental because of you and we shall use our last moments to repay the favor!'
Another zap had Courage fighting his way through the wires to escape. He saw a relatively stable platform passing by and decided to take a leap of faith. Unfortunately for him, a wire wrapped around his leg mid jump and pulled him back. His momentum sent him crashing into the side of the raft hard enough to see stars. He tasted blood and groaned.
'Nowhere to run!'
Courage's eyes fluttered open. Hanging upside down over the side of the raft, blood dripped from his mouth. The impact had caused him to bite his own tongue. He saw seawater swirling far below as great arcs of electricity passed through the dying machinery.
'It is done! We have made ourselves small!' The less hateful voices of the amalgamation announced to him.
A laptop was presented to Courage, held within a large, mechanical hand. Its screen glowed with that familiar blue-green color.
'Quickly! We cannot hold ourselves back for long!'
Courage reached for the laptop but felt the whole raft shake and then fall away. The wire around his leg snapped and he plummeted toward the swirling, electrical nightmare below.
A pincer claw arm shot out of the nearest wall and caught him. 'Hurry! Hurry!' They urged, lowering the laptop down to him.
The power button lay just above the keyboard, and Courage outstretched his arm to reach for it. Just as his middle finger touched it, several of the same sparking wires shot up from below and wrapped themselves around his arm. He screamed as they all pulled in different directions.
A buzzsaw blade whirled through the air and severed the wires below with ease, causing the ones wrapped around Courage's arm to go limp.
'Do it! Now! Hurry!'
The pain in Courage's right arm was too great. So, snarling with determination, he reached forward with his left paw and jabbed a finger onto the power button. The laptop's screen went dark, and with it, the amalgamation's massive form went still. Even the electrical jolting below ceased.
Still clasped within the pincer arm, Courage grabbed the laptop, closed it up, and pressed it to his chest. No matter what happened now, he was going to keep it safe.
The broken, deadened form of the amalgamation began to groan ominously. With the power that had been holding it all together gone, in a single instant, every last piece of metal and anything that had been held together between it broke apart as one.
The claw arm broke too and Courage fell with an entire city worth of metal and machinery falling right along with him. He clutched at the laptop, knowing that even if he somehow survived the fall, the water would destroy the laptop, and even then, the debris would probably crush them both on impact.
He saw a glint of red in among the vast field of collapsing metal and then a beam sliced through the air, vaporizing everything in its path. A big smile of relief fell across Courage's face.
The eagle shaped robot appeared, dodging or blasting away at any metal that threatened to fall on it or block its path. "There you are!" Atticus called out, picking up speed.
He reached his talons out and caught Courage, but that brief moment he did not spend removing falling debris cost him dearly. Courage, who remained protected within those scrap metal talons, heard the bang of metal on metal.
Atticus managed to stabilize his flight despite multiple impacts, but more giant chunks of debris continued to strike him and do substantial damage to the robot. He continued to slow, and the slower his movement, the more chances there was for debris to knock him out of the air.
He fired the laser over and over again, trying to cut a path through the deadly rain, but a large, thin slice of metal dropped down from overhead and struck him in just the right way to completely severe his left wing from the rest of the robot's body.
"Ah, great! This is not going to be fun! Brace yourself!" He called out as the machine dropped like it was no different from the rest of the falling mess of metal and machinery.
Courage squeezed his eyes shut and clutched the laptop all the harder. He felt the machine around him shifting into a different shape, one that now completely encircled him.
They hit the ground hard, and thankfully Courage was so well protected within his metal cocoon that the impact did not jostle him around at all. They must have landed on the beach because he could hear the hiss of sand that had been thrown up into the air returning back down to earth.
Unfortunately, they were not out of the woods yet. The remnants of the amalgamation crashed down all around them. Courage could do nothing but cower as huge chunks of metal slammed into Atticus's robot over and over again. It seemed to go on forever. All he could do was hope that they would not end up crushed underneath all of this debris.
Finally, finally, after what had felt like hours, silence replaced the constant boom of metal hitting the ground, or Atticus.
Courage's mouth felt like sandpaper and he barely managed to squeak out the words, "Atticus? You okay?"
A blue-green screen flashed to life in front of his face. "I'm fine, but we're buried. I'll see what I can do about that, but...just what on earth did I miss? Are they...gone?"
Courage shook his head, or at least he tried to, because the space he was cocooned in did not allow for much movement. "I have them here. They let me shut them down."
That seemed to take Atticus by surprise. "Really? And here I thought that they had succeeded in frying themselves."
While Atticus got to work on trying to free them, Courage took the time to explain the whole event to him in greater detail.
"I see..." He mused after Courage finished speaking. "We have to make sure that the SCC never finds out about this."
Courage blinked with realization. "I-it's over. It's really over! We did it! We stopped the end of the world!"
As he spoke, the metal over his head opened up, revealing a pink and orange morning sky. He blinked several times, waiting for his eyes to adjust, and then sat up. Much of the beach had disappeared under mounds of debris, and the sea itself was covered in wreckage that had either embedded itself deep enough into the sand that it jutted out of the water like a bunch of oddly shaped pillars, or the smaller pieces were being steadily washing up upon the beach with every wave.
That familiar form of the robot bird was starting to take shape beside Courage. Even as it constructed itself, Atticus asked, "Are they really in that laptop? It's amazing that even after how big they made themselves that they can still fit inside something so small, but I suppose it makes sense. We did all live in the same PC for many years after all."
-Gate – Out Of My Mood-
The mechanical bird took a couple of steps forward and stretched. "I'm not even in an organic body and I still know that I'm going to be feeling this tomorrow." He said dryly, and then his eagle head snapped around and fixated on Courage. "How are we not dead?" He asked, sounding completely genuine.
Courage laughed and let himself fall backwards. He sprawled out across the metal that had protected him during their fall and sighed contentedly. "I could ask you the same thing." He replied.
He lay there for a moment before a thought struck him. "Hey," He said, sitting back up. "Have you thought about staying in a robot body? Even if your powers go away and you can't do as much, you seem to be enjoying yourself a lot more as a robot, and, uh-" He grinned somewhat sheepishly. "...You wear it well."
The giant machine lowered itself so that its face was at level with Courage's. "That can't happen." He answered. "Once my powers are gone this robot might be able to carry a charge for a little while but when that runs out I'd end up as inert as I am in my PC body when it doesn't have a charge. Make no mistake, I have to return to an organic body soon enough."
"Oh, m-makes sense. It might be for the best anyway. I'm not sure I would enjoy having to chase you around all day and keep you from melting the faces off of everyone who makes you mad."
The robot closed its eyes with a rather smug look. "As if I couldn't find a way to do that in a dog body too."
Despite how sore he was, Courage climbed onto his feet, and smirking rather evilly, asked, "So, are we gonna discuss what you said after you put my mind back together?"
The robot's LED eyes shot wide open. "O-oh! Right! That!" Atticus stammered out, and he had the bird bot glancing from left to right as it slowly backed away. "You know, I was kind of hoping that you had forgotten about that..." His voice broke off into increasingly panicky sounding laughter.
"As if I could forget!" Courage cried out with the biggest, stupidest grin on his face. He placed the laptop down and leaped at the bird bot where upon landing atop its beak he hugged it with all of his might. "I love you too, you big, dumb jerk!"
He watched the lights go out from the robot's eyes. "H-hey!" He yelled. "Don't tell me you actually crashed!"
He might have been convinced if he had not seen a flash of something shoot out of the back of the robot. It took him a moment to track where it had gone and soon found that Atticus had remade the bird bot in miniature and was trying to escape undetected.
Courage snorted with laughter. "Where are you going?" He called out and watched the robot bird's already frantic flapping go into overdrive.
"I just remembered that I left the oven on back in Nowhere!" Atticus shouted back.
In spite of how tired he was, and despite knowing that he was pushing his luck with his illness, Courage took off after Atticus. Luckily, it looked as if the miniature bird bot was struggling to gain any sort of altitude, probably because Atticus was too busy panicking, and thus it was easy enough to catch up with him. Courage tackled him out of the air and pulled him into a crushing, if not spiky, hug. "Awww..." He drawled in mocking tone.
"So, here's the thing-" Atticus broke in, followed by an earthquake as something crashed down directly behind Courage. He turned and came face to face with the original eagle robot.
"-I'm still in control of the big one too."
Courage was unimpressed. "If this is your idea of a threat, it's not going to work!"
The original robot lightly bopped him with its beak, but even a light bop from a beak that big was still enough to knock him over and loosen his grip enough that the mini bot was able to wriggle its way to freedom.
Atticus glided in circles triumphantly above his head, and Courage was just about to retaliate when the original bird bot snapped its head in the direction of a nearby road.
Atticus's mini bot slowed to a halt and hovered there in the air. "We've got company." He announced.
The sad remains of the SCC's army was rolling their way down the road toward the aftermath of the amalgamation's implosion. Courage jumped to his feet in a panic and raced back toward the laptop with both of Atticus's robots following close behind. As soon as he had the laptop back in his paws, he scanned the area for a safe place to hide it while they dealt with the SCC. He turned his eyes upon the original eagle bot. Without thinking, he shoved the laptop inside a gap in the robot's side and ignored Atticus's exclamation of, "Hey!"
Courage wondered if maybe they should just fly away and avoid engaging with the SCC altogether, but then again, with the amalgamation taken care of, this might be their only chance to get the SCC off their backs forever.
...Unfortunately for him, Atticus was having other ideas.
The eagle's beak opened wide, laser lens glowing crimson and ready to fire upon the SCC at any given moment.
"Wait! Hold on!" Courage cried out. "Let's not go into this guns blazing. At the very least, we should talk to them long enough to lie about what happened."
Atticus's mini bot landed atop his head, talons lightly digging into his skin to keep it from losing its balance. "Fine, but if they do anything stupid, I'm going to start blasting. They've already had a taste of what I am capable of and I am in no mood to put up with their stupidity after everything I've been through today."
The handful of tanks and SCC vans that Atticus had not already destroyed slowed to a halt before the amalgamation's debris field. Elizabeth, along with several soldiers, exited their vehicles. The skeletal woman looked positively furious.
"You have some nerve showing your faces here after you destroyed millions of dollars of government equipment!" She scolded them, her voice carrying loudly across the debris field.
Atticus flapped the mini robot's wings angrily and dug its talons deeper into Courage's scalp, much to his annoyance. "I don't know if you've noticed," He fired back at her. "But we took care of your little End Of The World problem! A 'thank you' would be nice!"
Elizabeth stomped toward them, unhindered by the debris. "And I still have one big problem in the form of YOU!" She seethed. "I already have enough to deal with without you swooping in and destroying untold amounts of SCC equipment!"
Atticus aimed the robot's laser at the nearest tank, gave the poor saps inside just enough time to flee, and fired upon it. Nothing remained in the aftermath aside from a small pile of ash.
"See how much I care?" He huffed and then had the robot lower its head threateningly. "Want to see me do it again?"
Elizabeth continued to advance upon them without a hint of slowing down.
Courage sighed. "So much for deescalating the situation..."
Atticus turned his laser upon her, but not even that gave her pause. She got right up into the eagle robot's face, her whole body bathed red in the laser's deadly glow. "Either shoot me or stop pointing that thing in my face!" She demanded.
The robot's eyes narrowed. "You're just lucky that you still owe me an industrial sized coffee maker and a social security number."
Courage blinked, dumbfounded. "A what and a what?"
The laser's light died out and Elizabeth turned her seething gaze upon the wreckage that surrounded them. "What, pray tell, happened here?"
Atticus's voice still carried a dangerous edge as he explained, "I found Courage and freed him from the amalgamation. They did not take it well and had a big, collective mental breakdown. They drove themselves into the ocean, and because they were connected to so much machinery, it generated a big enough electrical surge to destroy them."
Only now did Elizabeth give pause. "Is that so? Hmmm, that is not the way I expected this to end. Well, as long as the problem is taken care of..." She trailed off.
Courage hoped that he didn't look 'too' much like he was trying to hide something.
"And what about Edgar?" Elizabeth added in a tone far quieter than what was usual for her.
"Dead." Atticus answered. "Erm, well, he's deader than he was before, that is to say. The amalgamation had their revenge."
Elizabeth pulled out a cigarette and lit it in one deft movement. "You know what? I've decided that I am in no mood to deal with you right now. As long as you avoid going off and causing more damage, I will see about fulfilling what you have requested of me."
"Request?" Atticus huffed. "I don't know what you considered them before, but they're a list of demands now. Don't forget that I'm the one with a very big laser."
"Yes, yes, of course." She dismissed, waving a hand toward the mini robot. "Give me a few days to clean this mess up and I'll see what I can do for you." She turned to walk away before glancing back over her shoulder to add, "I hope you like lots of paperwork...and taxes."
The mini robot crossed its wings in a big huff. "What's that supposed to mean?" He muttered out, mostly to himself.
With the SCC busy preparing for a major cleanup operation, Atticus seemed to feel secure enough to turn his full attention back onto Courage. The mini bot leaned over until its upside down face filled Courage's vision. "Well, that's that. I believe I have sufficiently proven to the SCC that 'I' am the bigger bully on the block, and even though she didn't say it, I think Elizabeth is glad that I've helped rid her of Edgar's ghost. For that reason, I don't think the SCC will cause trouble for us again."
"That's good." Courage said, exhaling loudly. He still could hardly believe that they had managed to stop the amalgamation without destroying them, much less the fact that they had made it out of this nightmare alive.
The mini bot took off from atop Courage's head and landed on the beak of the bigger robot. "I'll get us back to the camp. With all of the destruction that's happened, I'm sure the SCC will keep that place going for quite a bit longer because so many people will have lost their homes. Besides, the puppies are waiting for us to come back, and I don't know about you, but I need one heck of a nap."
Courage nodded. He too was feeling like he need a nap, or more like several.
The bigger bot was just leaning down to pick Courage up when a muffled 'Hwooooo' issued forth from a nearby pile of debris.
"What the heck was that?" Atticus asked, sounding completely done with today even though it was only morning. "Do I even want to know?"
Courage went over and carefully started to climb the pile. Just as he was about to reach the top, the head of a very familiar dog popped up right in front of him, causing him to scream and tumble back down the pile.
"You have GOT to be kidding me!" Atticus grumbled.
It was his host dog, looking no worse for wear.
"How are you even here?" Atticus demanded. "We are MILES from where I left you! Wait...were you trapped inside the amalgamation the entire time? That would explain how you ended up here, but-" The giant robot shook its head. "How in the name of Eisenstein did you survive?"
The dog cocked his head to the side, having understood not a single word. Losing interest in Atticus, he hopped down from the pile on all fours. Courage still lay there at the bottom, groaning.
"I guess this saves me from having to look for him." Atticus admitted, clearly trying to find a bright side to all of this nonsense.
Courage sat up, clutching at his aching head. He barely had time to reorient himself before Atticus's dog tackled him right back down again.
"H-hey!" He giggled as the dog licked him across the face over and over again, wagging his tail happily the entire time.
Atticus was less than thrilled. "Augh! Must you do that? It is so unsanitary! You don't know where he's been! But...but I DO!" The robot shuddered with the knowledge that the dog's tongue would soon be his tongue.
Between licks, Courage managed to quip, "I can't wait to watch you chug an entire bottle of hand sanitizer!"
"...Don't give me ideas."
End Of Chapter
A/N: Man, Computer really did just spend the last couple of chapters being the living embodiment of that inhaling seagull meme. LOL
So, now that we've reached the end of this arc and will soon be heading into the endgame of this story, there is something that I wanted to get the readers input on. I'm not entirely certain if I'm going to go through with this yet, and I'm not sure where the cutoff would be yet either, but I do not want there to be long delays between chapters once we start getting to the end of the story, and so I'm considering putting this story on hiatus for a little while when a potential cutoff point arrives so that I can write the ending chapters of the story and release them in a timely manner instead of there being month long delays between chapters. If I go through with this, I would like to know how the readers would want these chapters to be released. I do not want to dump them all at once though, so that's off the table. Would you want a daily release, a bi-weekly release, or maybe even a weekly release? I'm not sure what would work best for you guys because you already have to be pretty used to the infrequent, one chapter per month schedule that this story tends to run on. Any hiatus will probably (hopefully) not go on too long once we get to the cutoff point because, well, you gotta remember that I've literally been waiting 12 years to write the ending of this story so finally getting to write it all out after waiting so long will more than likely keep me moving at a decent pace without getting hung up on anything that might give me writers block.