“Solomon! You’re in charge of the ground forces!” Angel, still voicing, turned to me as shouts of alarm rang out from our makeshift platoon. “Noodles. Get me on that central tower.”

With a roar of defiance and encouragement to the others, I let her mount and bounded over the edge of the walkway, leaping over to the watchtower. Angel vaulted down, gun in hand, and ran into the office. She dragged the table out and tipped it over, setting it against the slat railing to give herself cover against arrows and stray bullets.

“I’ll snipe from here.” Angel was shaking a little, eyes flashing with adrenaline. “Don’t let these bastards kill you, Noodles. Not even once.”

Just like that, my crush on her was back. I pulled my lips back from my teeth, and backed up in readiness to launch. “Same to you, kid. We have to take down Rachini after this.”

“Noodoo! Woo huuve STOORS!” Lulu protested even as she formed her Omnishell vest around my torso.

“Fuck stairs. They dull my claws.” I ran to the edge and swung over it, tarzaning my way down the outside of the tower. I was about halfway to the ground when I realized something. It might not have been a good idea to leap into the killzone that fifty-something rebels were shooting into.

"EEK!" Lulu squeaked in protest, spreading to cover my back as one, then two, then several stray rounds clipped us. They impacted three inches of living ballistic gel instead of my scaly ass.

“Can’t stop now!” I flung myself out like a leaping tiger… and landed on the back of the raging bull Legion as it charged the base of the ramp. A crowd of terrified rebel spearmen had formed a weak imitation of a phalanx. The [Tondrothaw] was about to skittle them when it realized it had a passenger. It bellowed, and suddenly I was the cowboy at the rodeo, clinging onto the bull as it spun and bucked. The Tondrothaw frantically kicked its hooves with no regard for any Centurions that might be in the way.

[Tondrothaw (Body/Blood/Dark): This violent, fiece S-rank legion is incapable of pain and hard to control even for the experience trainer. It fears no poison or rozpacz.]

'Get outta here. You fuckers can't even be bothered to translate half the fucking game.' I was about to ram my tentacles down when the bull let out a piercing war-moo and smashed us broadside into the nearest wall, dropping his own HP by nearly ten percent. The blow tore me and Lulu free and scraped us both along the rock.

I had a second to realize two things. First off, the Tondrothaw was stronger than the average Legion, on par with Kaya the Fire Deer. Its Body type canceled out its weakness to Holy, its Dark type canceled its weakness to Poison... its only weakness was Psionics, which I brought to bear on it as I landed on my feet and emitted a disorientating screech of White Noise force at it.

[x2 damage. You deal 1655 enhanced damage to Tondrothaw.]

Tondrothaw didn't care. Tondrothaw didn't give a damn. It shrugged off the hitpoint loss and the sudden gashes that opened along its skin. Then it rammed right into my smug ass before I could escape. The blow sent us flying and stripped 1699 HP off my ring. It enervated me, like the energy had been sucked out of me.

[Tondrothaw uses Savage Horns. x2 efficiency. You have lost 100 Strength.]

I bowled into a squad of panicked Centurions. They went down under me, crushed and bleeding. So was I, from an accidental sword thrust to one foreleg.

"Sorry, excuse me, sorry." Adrenaline surged through my veins as I leaped to the side, hissing as the Tondro heedlessly charged into his own people. He bashed a Centurion aside, horns crackling with deep violet-black light. The Darkness energy drained HP on contact with the man's body - which visibly aged between the moment he was launched from the ground to the moment he landed tits over ass on the floor. The Tondrothaw whirled on a hoof to gallop after me and Lulu as I sprinted toward an open cell on the other side of the room, weaving between the brawling people as they tried to jump out of the way. The Tondro followed, trampling jailors and prisoners alike in its rage.

"Lulu! Grab the ceiling when I do!" At the last second, I bounded vertically against the doorframe, vaulting up along the frame and wall with all eight limbs. Lulu shot out pseudopods to grasp the underside of the walkway as I scuttled along it - while underneath us, the three-ton bull slid and smashed headlong through the narrow stone doorway and wedged its dumb fat ass two-thirds of the way into the cell.

"No way. I can't believe that actually worked." I landed lightly behind him.

"BRUUUUUU!" The Tondrothaw began to buck and thrash, but the doors were hewn right out of the mountain stone. It wasn't going anywhere. That left the three-headed lizard dog now bounding for us from across the room. It had a prisoner in one of its jaws, scissoring her corpse apart while the other two heads gaped their mouths: one gathering a ball of lightning, the other hocking a great big glop of acid toward us like a giant lurgy. I dodged the acid on reflex - then made a weird 'urk!' sound as Lulu stuck to the floor and yanked me down, right under the bolt of lightning. It seared through the air, inches over my shoulder… and hit the Tondrothaw right on the ass. The bull bellowed in fury, throwing its tail and hind legs back like a pissed off mule. The stone around the doorway began to crack.

[Kerberos (Mind/Fire/Acid): The ferocious spawn of underworld, able to combining fire and psionics to create almost any element. The three heads possess one element each. It is different for any Kerburos. Paired with right lesser legion, the abilities can be enhanced or even transmuted.]

"Wow, good job. That one was almost legible." Now it was my turn to buck and kick as a group of ten Centurions converged on me with spears. I flared my tentacles out and took out six at once, sending the others scattering back with screams. Alarms were blaring now, but the Centurions jailors had been decimated: the prisoners had more guns than this island had ever seen, and the Maroons, at least, knew how to use them. Not to mention Angel. Even as one of the spearmen rallied to try and charge me again, there was a crack from the direction of the tower. He dropped with a neat entry wound just below his cheek, where the roman-style helmet framed his eye on that side.

The Kerberos threw the dead prisoner aside and snarled at us with all three heads as it dropped into a prowl. There was real intelligence in those six snake-like eyes - not human intelligence, but this was a Mind-type Legion, and it was smarter than average. We almost the same size, both built for speed. The Kerberos had maybe a hundred pounds of muscle on me and was slightly slower and stiffer. Its type combination gave it a lot of weaknesses, but no triple-threats. It didn't like Earth attacks... but neither did I.

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"Sorry, kid. Incoming." I steeled myself and plugged my tentacles into Lulu, wincing in sympathy as I felt the barbs shoot out and lock in, and brought up our list of current absorbed abilities:

* Water Saber

* Absorb

* Quicksand

* Inferno Ball

* Shadow Cloak

* Electroshock

* Flash

* Razor Leaf

I selected Quicksand and was about to hit it right under the Kerberos when it leaped - away from me, toward the birdlike Lesser Legion hanging out underneath the walkway. The trainer was there: a cold-eyed woman who was clearly in a link trance with her pet monsters. She made a gesture, and the Cute began to emit an energetic forcefield. As it did, the Kerberos began to change - and I remembered the note about its elemental alignment being 'transmuted’.. As we watched, its skin took a metallic, steely appearance.

"Muututoons!" Lulu squeaked, tugging at my tentacles.

She didn't have to tell me twice: I reluctantly plunged them in again, picking Dynoshock, and dove out of the way as the Kerberos breathed a plume of boiling liquid metal at us instead of acid. I had no idea if its defensive polarity had changed, but it was all I could do to evade while the move charged. I released the electrical blast right at the clustered group of Gladiator and Legion. The woman's eyes widened in surprise as the wall of electromagnetic force snapped toward her, and the Kerberos lunged forward, soaking the hit. The electricity tore over its metallic skin, cracking it as it howled.

[Kaiburos takes double damage from Dynoshock.]

Its defensive polarities HAD changed: which meant it was weaker to a lot less things than before. But the Gladiator was confused by my ability to release an electric attack, her dark brows furrowed. I wasn't the only one unsure of what Legion type I was now facing.

So I decided to try something.

"Hey, lady," I beamed my Psionic voice right at the gladiator as I dodged another blast of molten metal. "What do you say about calling off this fight and you joining Team Noodles? Because I really don't want to have to kill you or your Legions."

Her eyes widened, and her control over the Kerberos briefly wavered. I knew she wasn't going to turn coats, not when she and her Legions had demonstrably oppressed the prisoners here at the mines for so long. But a second's lapse - the brief uncertainty - was all I and Lulu needed.

"Acid Fog and Poison Cloud! Together!" I said.

"Oohuu!" Lulu let out a defiant sound as she spread around me more evenly - and stiffened, turning a weird shade of puke-yellow.

[Lulu has used Omnishell.]

[Lulu has adjusted her armor's elemental polarity to Acid.]

"Lulu-!" I nearly snarled at her as the Kerberos suddenly whipped its tail and flung a cloud of flechettes at me. Steel flechettes. Instead of sinking into my Metal-vulnerable skin, they embedded into Lulu's acidic mass, hissing and bubbling into slag.

"Nuuw!" Lulu rippled, pores opening across her surface to spew clouds of acidic fog into the air.

"How the fuck did you even notice that!? You don't have eyes!" I roared and charged in, belching sulphuric fumes - and then a toxic cloud that engulfed the trapped gladiator and her Legion under the stairs. The purple and yellow gasses spread across the floor of the prison, sending every person still fighting in the pit running in all directions. Not all of them were Centurions.

The Kerberos gagged. It had no defense against poison, and his little Mind/Air/Psionic buddy and their trainer were especially vulnerable to it, trapped as they were under the walkway. The human came barreling out in a blind panic. I nailed her with a tentacle on the way past. It punched through her leather and bronze armor like butter.

“I tried to offer an olive branch, but nooo.” I swung her around and flung her at her own Legion, plugging back into Lulu with my remaining tentacles. The Kerberos, disoriented, swatted her from the air - then yelped as the floor went out from underneath it, the earth liquifying with Quicksand.

While the Kerberos struggled in the quicksand pool consuming him and the body of his trainer, I whirled on the Taudro. It was still thrashing around, but the doorway around it had held. Bulls weren't really designed for side-to-side leverage. His spasming legs were powerful, but only backwards or forwards - and all his struggling had only gotten him more and more stuck in the tiny airless cell. His HP was down by over half between the poison-acid gas and the bloody furrows the doorway had left on the sides of his belly.

Without hesitation, I called on my Psionics and drove my tentacles down into the floor. Power pulsed along my spine and down each one, sending a forest of criss-crossing spikes up from the ground right underneath the bull. He bellowed in panic, writhing as they skewered him inside the stone trap I'd set. I did it a second and third time, until finally the beast sagged down to his knees, lowing in agony, and flopped to the floor. No cry of anguish rang out from any of the few remaining Centurions - his trainer was already dead

[You have defeated Tondrothaw. You gain 1288 EXP.]

I turned slowly back to the panicked Kerberos, now half-sunk into the ground. There was a gleam of humanity in those eyes, the desperate terror of someone who didn't want to die.

"I'm gonna regret this." I leaped back over to the Legion's side, wrapping tentacles around his many necks, and hauled backward. Slowly, so that the sand didn't stiffen up and lock him in place. The Legion emerged out of the mire whimpering, his ears pinned back to his spiked skull... and I noticed that his Command Collar was not glowing. The pinkish-red sigils were cold and lightless. Before I could try asking about it, the Kerberos frantically clawed at it, snarling as he cut into his own flesh, until finally he got the thing off. He threw it away, and with one last frightened look over one of his shoulders with one of his heads, he ran for the main doors with his tail tucked between his legs.

[Congratulations, you made your first perma-kill! You gain 200 bonus EXP!]

[You are Level 23. Lulu is Level 23.]

"Great, thanks. Love being a murderer." Growling with exertion, I took the chance to plant my ass and sit.

[No need for shame. If I've told you before, I'll tell you again. Purgatory rewards the strong, darling.]

Before I could think of a smart retort, a cheer went up from the rebels as the Kerberos vanished into the mines. I sighed, and did my best to ignore the omniscient, omnipresent, probably sociopathic referee. Instead, I turned my attention to the slime hugged around me like a kid with a teddy. "Sorry for snarling at you, Lulu. You made the right call about doing the armor first, even if it cost us a turn."

"Oos oowuu." 'It's okay', in Lulu-speak. She gave me a little pat on the head, then slithered off my body to investigate the corpse of the Tondro.

[Lulu is attempting to Absorb, however, the target Legion is too large.]

"Damn… an S-rank. I bet that thing has some great attacks." My tail flickered with irritation. "Hey, go find the lady's Cute. I bet that thing has something you can grab."

"Ooo!" Lulu, suddenly excited, bounced over to the shattered body of the fragile bird-thing. I looked over to it just as Lulu engulfed it.

[Chemshrike (Mind/Air/Psionic): Physically weak, the small lesser legion can generate the powerful forcefields. It has ability to transmute one form of energy to another, including energy of Greater Legions it supports in battle.]

Damn. Despite the squalor of Ironside, I felt bad about what I'd done to the gladiator who'd commanded this pair. She reminded me a bit of Angel, in a way. Smart enough to capture and mesh a decent team, brave enough to fight us to her last life. I wondered, if in her last moments, she’d judged her cause to be just.

Across the room, Angel slid down the ladder and jogged over to us, flushed and grinning. "Noodles, Lulu! That was incredible! God damn, I’m so glad you're on my side!"

"Same. You’re deadly with those rifles." I got to my feet, only to stop as Angel threw her arms around my neck and squeezed me in a hug. Without thinking, I unconsciously wrapped my tail around her, a protective ring on the floor, as Solomon and his comrades trooped down the stairs to join us. He halted at the moment of apparent intimacy and cleared his throat.

"Room’s clear, ma’am.” He saluted reflexively as Angel stood straight. “Next orders?"

Angel started to sign to him, then remembered she needed to voice. "Scavenge every weapon and piece of armor you can. We break out of here and assault the slave training center."