Chapter 4: Invaders

09:09 AM (Japan Time), Sunday August the 29th…

"Sir! Multiple large energy signatures detected in orbit! Over 20 of them! There's a separate, bigger signature too! It's probably spaceships!"

"Naturally!"

"Tabuu again… "

"Yessir! I'm gonna go for a nostalgic approach today."

"Air Display…!"

Alarms went off again in the WAXA Command Center and everyone began to move up down before an "Air Display" of Tabuu showed up.

It displayed a close-up of his torso, neck, and helmet.

"You know… For an alien, you sure don't feel like one!"

"Ain't it obvious? I spent over two years with Partner, and had ample time to process speaking manners and forms… But my little tale can wait, or it will fall upon deafened ears! Isn't there a law limiting the amount of dB an alarm can make?" He sarcastically asked.

"None as far as I know…"

"Lawyer Man strikes back with a vengeance!"

"I am not a lawyer!" Acid annoyingly countered.

"The guests are on their way down there. Have a look at the mightiness of my Imperial Fleet…! I was forgetting the necessary BGM. There you go! Imperial March!"

A melody based on drums began to ring out while the "Air Display" shifted to display a tactical map showing twenty yellow arrows in four rows of five plus a large red arrow at the very front.

"Live feed, courtesy of Moon Ace!" Tabuu announced.

"YO, YO, YO! Yessir! Thrilling thrill of thrills!"

"Not again…!" Akatsuki groaned.

The live feed displayed gigantic, metallic spaceships.

Their main bodies were shaped as elongated bullets.

A ramp emerged from the southern edge.

A bullet-shaped structure was built atop it.

The engines were placed on the very rear.

Four large rectangular openings ran down the sides of each ship.

The mother ship was notably larger than the other twenty ships and it was visible by the fact that it had ten hangar openings instead of eight.

"Behold! The UFO invasion!" Tabuu laughed.

The hangar doors opened, and UFO-shaped spaceships flew out accompanied by small fighter spaceships.

The fighter spaceships were five meters long and very simplistic.

Each had a main spheroid body and two attached hexagonal panels which acted as wings.

The engine was built on the rear part of the spheroid.

Ten of them escorted each UFO.

The UFOs were tens of meters wide.

They had a round base and a dome body.

A smaller dome, the cockpit, built atop the main body.

Four closed oval hatches were built on the SW, SE, NW and NE corners.

"They carry invaders! And guess where they're headed to, Acid Disaster!"

"I ain't Acid Disaster and these things must be headed towards Japan and other nations as well!"

"Yessir. So, enjoy… While you're still alive…! Be glad it's not Gojira!"

09:49 AM (Japan Time)…

"We made it on time, it'd seem!"

"That Tabuu…! Making me sweat…! He's gotta be a pervert!"

"That's considered a perv, too?"

"I'm glad you're here. We'll need all firepower to deal with whatever is inside of those UFOs!"

"One of them is about to land here. You can see it coming close and we can't attack them! Their escorts have deleted all Battle Wizards we've sent to try!"

"Let them come! War Rock is gonna smash 'em 'til only DUST is left!"

"Pororon! Focus on surviving!"

"Sorry for the delay!"

"Hi! Blood!"

"Brad Shad came!"

"Jeez! War Rock! You never grow!"

Rock Man and Harp Note made it to WAXA's outer yard and Acid Ace came out to greet them.

"I'm Blood Shadow and not that "Brad Shad"! When will you stop using that silly nickname on me, War Rock? Jeez! Everyone seems to want to bully me!"

Blood Shadow resembled Rock Man, but with alterations to his design.

His shades were black and thick.

A flock of messy reddish hair came out from behind the helmet given how it only covered the face and the front of the head.

His ear-pads had the purple "SS" letters drawn inside of each.

His armor had the purple letters "BS" engraved on the chest area.

His legs were black and had two red stripes running down the legs' sides in a parallel manner.

His right forearm was covered by a red device coupled with a transparent red piece.

A small indentation near the wrist had the "BS" initials engraved there.

"Who knows, Bloody Shadowy~?" He teased.

"Coming!" Acid Ace warned.

One of the UFOs reduced speed and hovered about ten centimeters above the ground as Real Wave ramps formed beneath each opening and the doors slowly opened.

"… Hover tanks, P – 001 series robots…" Blood Shadow muttered.

"Hover tanks and robots…? How do you know that? They haven't begun rolling out yet!"

"Look!" Rock Man gasped.

M1 tanks missing the caterpillar threads and having hover engines instead rolled out.

There were ten of them coming out of each ramp.

They deployed in a circle formation with their guns covering the area.

They were followed by humanoid robots colored in shades of blue and measuring about a meter and seventy.

Their heads only had a red LED on the center of them.

Their right harms had built-in energy machineguns.

"I think there's about eighty of them going down each ramp! What a huge amount of them!" Acid Ace muttered.

The ship finished unloading and hovered skywards while the ten fighter spaceships formed a circle while aiming inwards.

"Coming…!" Blood Shadow warned.

"Here we go~!"

"Battle Card, Fire Slash!"

"Battle Card, Wood Slash!"

"Wing Blade!"

"Charged shotgun shot!"

They began shooting at the robots and easily blew up several of them before the M1 tanks began a bombardment of the area, opening craters and hitting the building, too.

"No good! Blood! How can we destroy the tanks?"

Rock Man sliced a robot in half as he called out to Blood Shadow.

"Shoot inside of their cannons!"

Blood Shadow blew up a robot's head.

"Roger! Battle Card, Mini Grenade! Eat this!"

Rock Man threw it inside of a M1 tank's gun and it blew up from the inside.

"Be glad it's just one carrier ship!" Blood Shadow drily told them.

"Why?" Harp Note asked.

"Because we'd stood no chance if we had to deal with all of them one after the other without sufficient breaks… And if it's hard enough dealing with 40 tanks, you can't imagine how harder it's gotta be dealing with higher numbers!" Blood Shadow explained.

"Then again… How do you know the numbers?"

Acid Ace tossed a Mini Grenade inside of another tank.

"Boss showed me the file!"

"Wait! Does this mean that this is…?" Rock Man gasped.

"Boss' former spatial army! He used them in local Middle East and Africa conflicts, years ago!"

"I'd already turned all of it into recycled scrap! But Tabuu has recreated it. He must've have had a huge number of factories and Wizards to do this in just one year and three months!" Vadous admitted with a sigh.

"So… What's the total?" Acid Ace asked.

"Are you sure you're not going to faint?" Vadous asked.

"Me? I'm not a pencil pusher!" He laughed.

"Shidou… That is calling for something bad to happen…"

"I warned you!"

"Go ahead!"

"The total number of enemies unloaded in the yard is 320 soldiers and 40 tanks. Each carrier has 4 cargo bays, and 1 cargo bay has a max capacity of 80 soldiers and 10 tanks. Multiply the max capacity of 1 cargo bay per 4 to find out the max capacity of one carrier ship…" Vadous began.

"320 soldiers and 40 tanks…! And that's just one ship!"

"That's why I warned you!"

"By all the… How many UFOs can a spaceship carry?"

"Each orbital ship carries 8 of those carriers, so… They carry a total of 2.560 soldiers and 320 tanks plus 80 fighters as escorts…" Vadous listed.

"B-by all the…!" Acid Ace gasped.

"It gets worse. The fleet has 20 of those orbital ships, so if you multiply those numbers by 20…" Vadous kept on saying.

"I think I'm about to faint, even…"

"You get a total of 160 carriers and 1.600 fighters! And 121.200 soldier units plus 6.400 tanks…"

"It's getting worse, true!" Harp Note grimly commented.

"Wait. The flagship carries 20 dropships, 200 fighters, 6.400 soldiers and a total of 800 tanks…"

"Bring me a pill for the headaches…" Acid Ace grimly muttered.

"If you sum up the orbital ships plus the flagship, you get 21 orbital ships, 180 carriers and 1.800 fighters. Total numbering: 127.600 soldiers and 7.200 tanks!" He finished with a large sigh.

"Alright. I just fainted!" Acid Ace sarcastically announced.

"Shidou…" Acid didn't find it funny.

"YO, YO, YO! Moon Cutters!"

Moon Disaster dropped down in the middle of the fray and spun towards the right while shooting his "Moon Cutters" at the enemies.

He swept towards the left while delivering some kicks and then dropping down from above to kick another robot's head.

"Is there anything we can do to stop the rest of the invading ships from landing in Earth?" Acid Ace asked.

"I'm using the weapons on my HQ, the Energy Spears, to shoot the engines and energy cores of the orbital ships. If they blow up, the troops get blown up, too, and we lower the number of ships which can get down to the surface. Insofar, out of 180, only 10 have made it to the surface with another 20 on their way there. I hope to intercept them. And the number of intercepted ships ascends to 95, too. The fighter-model ships have tried attacking me, but my energy shield is too strong for them to break through, and we can bounce the lasers off!"

"Good! Tabuu's efforts will have been in vain!"

"Sure! The guy's outdated!"

"I came, I saw, and I won! Truly! Useless struggle leading to heroic deaths! It couldn't have been better! My drama is perfect! Today Rock Man dies!"

"No way…" Rock Man groaned.

"That guy…?" Harp Note cursed.

"Crap!" Acid Ace cursed.

Phantom Black showed up atop the UFO and looked down on them.

"My new sponsor sure has good resources! I'll just take profit of his setup. I'll have the Ace Program and then become invincible!" He laughed.

"Try battling your own "R" version first, you script jerk!" War Rock taunted.

"Wha~t? Why, you…! Die! Phantom…!"

"Not so fast, Phantom!"

A shotgun blast rang out.

Phantom Black fell into the ground while Blood Shadow appeared on the spot he'd been at.

His shotgun's barrels were smoking, and the foe had a large charring mark on the back of his body which opened a hole on his silk cloak.

"You lowlife…! Rock Man's spin-off…!"

"Name's Blood Shadow. You're weak! Go to Alaska and deliver a speech to the penguins there or go set up a theater in Africa!" Blood Shadow scoffed.

"You lowlife… Phantom Slash!"

Phantom Black recovered and began to spin upon his axis to create a tornado-like effect.

"Hmpf! It's in vain!"

Blood Shadow merely brought his shield up and deflected all hits back.

He then placed the shotgun into Phantom Black's chest.

"Charged shotgun shot!"

The blast propelled Phantom Black across the air, and he collided with one of the steel structures built around the building.

He groaned and dropped into the ground to then try to stand up in vain.

"You lowlifes…! One day…! I'll destroy you…! Farewell!"

"Brag all you want!"

He managed to run towards the Wave Station and quickly climbed up the Wave Roads until the Cosmo Wave entrance.

The group shrugged and kept on fighting the enemies.

"Any progress, Boss?" Blood Shadow asked.

"The other available fighters are taking care of two ships! I've supplied them with abundant Recovery Battle Cards so that they can get ready for the next wave. And I've blown out a total of 138 ships by now! Only 10 have reached the surface and another 32 are still awaiting exit!"

"Good. By the way… Do you think that Tabuu was most likely seeing to make a display of might than doing something to ensure victory?"

"Could be… He must try to stir up my repressed memories and anger me to plunge into a trap…" Vadous admitted.

"The Trap-Destroyer, War Rock, will win! Bring it on, angel wannabe jerks! I'll make mincemeat outta ya!"

"And how do you plan on getting through the armor? Illuminate me!"

"Easy! Breaker – Type Battle Cards, Subari~!"

"That won't do. It's too thick!"

"Wha~t? But were ya crazy or what? Why build such a powerful armor to begin with?" War Rock grumbled.

"The grace of it is that it contains a lot of circuitry and devices which help him channel out his power… To make sure that they were unaffected by exposition to space and attacks, I had no other choice but to build it using a special compound!" Vadous argued back.

"Why are ya guys always making me look like an idiot?"

"We don't intend to! You've brought it into yourself! Because you're trying to play the cool guy without thinking it twice!"

"Totally!" Jack added.

"Wha~t? Jackie~ is also in the club?"

"Stop with that nickname!" Jack grumbled.

"Jack! Behave!" Queen Tia commanded.

"Sheesh! Gotcha!"

"Good news… Only 12 ships left to blow up over here… And I've gotten news that out of 10 ships on the ground, the crew of 8 of them has been decimated. I'll give out a hand once I'm done with the orbiting ships in a few minutes… How's it going over there?" Vadous reported next.

"Hmmm… About 80% of the crew and weapons have been decimated…"

"Perfect. We can then take a break and relax!"

"I'll try something risky. Please step back. Access Meteor Server, Level 8… Finalize! Black Ace! Black End… Galaxy!" Rock Man announced.

"Go!" Acid Ace encouraged.

He morphed into Black Ace and the Black End Galaxy attack swept the ground with the remaining enemies plus the UFO standing on it.

The shockwave over-killed them, and Rock Man landed on the ground.

Nothing but debris and scrap was left of them.

"We did it, somehow…! This battle was hard!"

"Sure. It was a battle against numbers, after all…"

"Speaking of which! Oxid Fire! Beware! It's the Math exam!"

"YIKES! Don't bring up my nightmare~!" Ox Fire groaned.

"It's not the end of the world!" Harp Note sighed.

"Don't neglect it, Jack… And Akatsuki…"

"I'm not a student!" Acid Ace grumbled.

"At least you should be able to mentally calculate the change when you pay at a store with coins and notes!"

"Sheesh! Don't act like you're my mom, Tia~!"