With an electronic groan, Noxic rebooted and found himself draped over one of the bushes in the middle of the vineyard. Doing a quick system check, he found many reports of severe damage, but it wasn’t something a few days in the shop couldn’t fix–if he had a shop…
… Which was probably still in the Nightmare Realm…
… With all of his Combat Mecha.
“Aw man, I’m gonna have to start all over.” He struggled to get up. “Hopefully Macho won’t trash everything while I’m gone.”
He sat up. “Hey Typhus, buddy, you alive?”
Typhus, suspended upside down in another bush, squirmed. “Anybody get the number of that bomb truck?”
“It hit like a frickin’ B-52!” Noxic rose to his feet. “You good to go?”
Typhus tumbled out of the bush and got up, untangling his cape. “Yeah, I think so-”
“Shooting Star Explosion!” A trio of spinning stars smacked into Typhus and exploded. He crashed back through the bush.
“What the?!” Noxic faced Star and saw Marco coming towards him. “Aw man…!”
“HEEEYAH!” Jumping as he yelled his kiai, Marco spun his entire body around and lashed out with a kick. It connected before Noxic’s head could block and sent it spinning around on his neck.
Marco landed in a three-point crouch next to Star. “I’ll take care of Noxic!”
Star held her wand to her chest and hopped in place. “I’ve got the meaty mutant guy, Typhoid.”
“Typhus,” Marco corrected, springing off after Noxic.
Star walked towards Typhus. “Right, we had a Typhoid outbreak in Mewni just before my birthday. That’s why it was on my mind.”
The Beetleborgs rushed up the path to cut Typhus and Noxic off. Stingerborg called over to them. “We’re going to soften them up for you!”
Star waved. “Okay!”
Hunterborg ran just ahead of Stingerborg and Strikerborg. “I still can’t believe homie can go off like that!”
Stingerborg nodded back to his friend. “I know!”
The three stopped at the row the Magnavores were scrambling in and readied their Input Magnums.
His head still spinning, Noxic caught it between his hands and made it stop… right in time to see the Beetleborgs. “Uh oh!”
“Clap these fools!” On Strikerborg’s shout they opened fire, battering both Magnavores.
Noxic stumbled back and raised his arms to shield his head in vain from the beam assault. “Gah! Ow! Hey! I’m already! Ack! Smashed up!”
Grabbing him by the shoulder, Typhus yanked Noxic back and put himself between his battered buddy and the belligerent Beetleborgs. “I got you, baby!”
“Keep shooting!” Stingerborg yelled, and the shower of fire increased. Even with chunks coming off his body in sprays of dark, oily fluid, Typhus laughed off the beams crashing against him, and charged straight into the barrage.
“Is that all you got?!”
He jumped and drew his left arm back, the red that covered his jagged, gnarled fist and forearm spreading up the rest of the otherwise green limb and causing it to swell with muscle. Roaring, Typhus came down and punched the ground in the middle of the Beetleborgs. The ground exploded beneath his fist, flinging all three of them away from the Magnavore monster.
Hunterborg landed on his feet and slid backward, just outside the Hillhurst-high cloud of dust. “God, damn he tough…!”
A beeping alarm from his suit warned him just in time, and he dove and rolled out of the way of the charging Magnavore. “Weave!”
Typhus turned around and bore down on him. “The only good beetle’s a squashed beetle, baby!”
In his haste to get at the green Beetleborg, Typhus had forgotten about Star–who’d used a quick jumping spell to get above him.
“Rainbow Avalanche!” With her command, the wand spewed rays of rainbows that battered Typhus’ back and head, slowing him down enough for Hunterborg to scramble clear of his path.
When he stopped, Star landed in front of him and spun around in place to build momentum. “Laser Beam Blast!”
She swung the wand up as the spell fired at the end of her spin, a solid laser of magical energy slashing up the front of Typhus’ body and making him stagger back.
The nasty scorch across his chest left by the beam didn’t matter much, as Typhus’ red eyes shone brightly. “Aw yeah, baby!”
The whale-like top of his head opened like a mouth, revealing the muzzle of a weapon and unleashed a barrage of energy. Star threw herself out of the way of the attack, first hopping, then flipping back to escape the bolts. Laughing, Typhus turned his body to keep shooting at her.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Star ran as fast as she could to stay ahead of the bolts. “Bulla Spiro!”
Before his fire could converge on her, her wand flashed, and she jumped a final time–a bubble-shaped shield encasing her and bouncing Typhus’ fire.
Typhus stopped shooting. “Huh, neat trick!”
“Thanks-” Star was cut off by an avalanche of beams from Typhus. “HEY!”
Typhus laughed. “Let’s see how much it can take, baby!”
Star pressed her wand against the sphere, keeping it up. “I am not your baby!”
While Star endured Typhus’ barrage, Strikerborg got back up on her feet and looked around. She had been thrown into the vineyard by the force of Typhus’ blow. “Dang it, wait ‘til I get my hands on him…”
The sound of clanging caught her attention, and Noxic’s shouting. “Ow! Hey! Hold still you little-!”
“HEEYAH!”
A bell-like ringing echoed from the force of Marco’s blow connecting with Noxic’s head.
“Aw come on!”
She looked over to find Noxic reeling from Marco, his head spinning again. The teen karate expert was staying light on his feet and swatting at the mechanical Magnavore with quick punches and backhands.
“Ack! Ow! I’m getting-!” Noxic managed to stop his head, only to get slapped again. “Really tired!”
He swung at him, missed, and got kicked in the stomach. “Of you hittin’ me like this!”
Noxic swung the staff hard to win some separation from Marco. Gripping the weapon tighter, he thrust the umbrella end for the young man’s heart. “KNOCK IT OFF!”
Marco cleared the wild stab with an Olympian high jump, ducked under the shaft of the weapon when he landed, and lunged in close. His first punch folded Noxic forward, and the rapidfire jabs that followed lifted him off his feet for a brief moment.
Ignoring the sting of his knuckles from pummeling a robot man, Marco jumped and spin-kicked him in the chest. “HAA!”
The blow knocked Noxic against the row of bushes they were tangled up in. Marco landed, and set a low fighting stance, his left foot and hand leading. “What’s the matter, tough guy? I’m just a regular ol’ human. No armor, no fancy weapons! You can’t handle any of this?!”
Noxic slumped back against the bush. “I don’t know…” He thrust his left hand out, pointing it at Marco. “Can you handle getting struck by lightning?!”
Before Marco could react, Strikerborg stepped in front of him and took the full brunt of the attack. Unimpeded by the bolts arcing over her body, she drew a bead with her Input Magnum and fired a steady stream of bolts into Noxic, blasting him through the trellis row.
Noxic tumbled back through the bushes and crouched. He twirled the staff around off his back to open the umbrella and deflect Jo’s barrage of fire.
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Marco rested a hand on Strikerborg’s shoulder. “Cover me and get your Beetle Battler ready, I’m gonna get rid of that umbrella!”
“Got it!” She called back and kept shooting.
Running ahead down the vineyard row, Marco turned and leaped over the bushes, landing right beside Noxic.
“No you don’t!” Noxic closed the umbrella and swung the staff. Marco jumped and performed a mid-air split to avoid the weapon.
“Hey!” He spun it to try to catch Marco, but his target backpedaled. “Hold still you meatbag!”
Steam pouring from his dreadlocks, Noxic stopped spinning the staff and thrust it for Marco’s chest. He missed, Marco spinning to the left to avoid the strike and hook his right arm around the shaft of the spear. With another twist, he yanked the weapon out of Noxic’s hands and kicked him in the chest, knocking him back.
“Hey, give that back!” Noxic yelled at Marco.
Marco refused, turning the other way and twirling the staff around over his head to clock Noxic across the face with the staff’s looped end–making his head spin again.
“Ahhhhh! Will you stop doing that?!” Noxic grabbed his head, stopping it facing the wrong way. He saw Strikerborg, aiming her spinning Striker Plasmar at his back. “Oh this is gonna suck.”
“Yeah it is!” Marco dove out of the line of fire.
“TORNADO SPARK!” Strikerborg called out, firing a rotating ball of plasma from the Beetle Battler that struck Noxic in the back.
“GAAAAAAAAAAH!” Pushed by the blast, Noxic tried to twist to escape it, but quickly the ion energy melted and punched through his back and out his chest. “AHHHHHHHHH!”
Marco pushed himself up and looked back just in time to see the beam pass through Noxic. “Whoa.”
At the house, Flabber winced and looked away as Mabel and Misao gasped in shock at the brutality of Marco and Strikerborg’s teamwork. “Oooh… that’s gotta hurt.”
Janna gripped the windowsill, grinning. “Fricken savage.”
Groans of rose from the monsters watching the fight on TV.
“Come on, who doesn’t know how to keep their head on straight like that?!” Mums demanded.
Frankenbeans bellowed and slammed his fists on the couch. “Not fair! Not fair!”
Fangula sipped the bloody mary he was enjoying with the fight and sighed. “What happened to the good old days, where children were terrified of monsters and hid under their blankets?”
Dipper gave the monster peanut gallery a caustic look, then returned his attention to the fight. “They’re doing way better than before.”
Mabel agreed. “They’re making the dream work with their teamwork.”
Something about it had Dipper bothered, though. “They’re almost doing too good.”
Stumbling from one foot to the other, Noxic stopped and turned his head completely back around. Turning around slowly, he pointed at the red Beetleborg. “You… two things. One. I’m a robot, so this is only an inconvenience. Two. Do you have ANY idea how long it’s gonna take for me to repair this?!”
Noxic fell face-first to the ground, rendering his question rhetorical.
Marco walked over to Strikerborg and threw the staff a few rows away. “Good job.”
She let out a short laugh. “No need to thank me, I’m just happy that I can finally do something!”
Both heard the sound of Typhus’ energy barrage and looked over. They found the remaining Magnavore battering Star’s shield with gunfire. Wide-eyed, Marco bolted ahead without another thought. “Hang on, Star!”
Unaware of the approaching cavalry, Typhus laughed and kept blasting away. “You can’t hide in that bubble all day, baby!”
“I can too, and don’t call me baby, that’s gross!” Star called back.
“Hey!” Stingerborg shouted from behind him.
Typhus turned around, the gun in his head still shooting. “Yeah, what?!”
The energy bolts smacked into Stingerborg, and he stumbled back. “Gah, he hits so hard…!”
The distraction gave Hunterborg the opening he needed as he hit the keys on his Input Magnum. “0-1-0! Freezing Magnum!”
He squeezed the trigger, sending streams of super cold air that washed over Typhus and began to freeze him solid. “What now, bitch?!”
Before he could change the modes on his Magnum and take advantage, the red on Typhus’s left arm spread up his shoulder and across to the other arm, and he flexed both with a roar, shattering the ice encasing him into a cloud of powdered snow. He lunged forward again, reaching Hunterborg and delivering a punch that drove him straight into the ground. Sweeping around, he caught Stingerborg with a lariat.
“Ugh!” Drew grunted, feeling that through the armor, before he was sent flying off Typhus’ arm. “AHHHH!”
“I got you!” Star called out as she fired a spell in front of her, conjuring a bed that Drew landed on. As he bounced off, she jumped onto it and used it to race in front of Typhus.
“Ha! Hope you can take a punch, too!” Typhus warned and tried to take Star’s head off with a right hook.
The far nimbler Princess flowed under it like a river around a boulder, and side stepped two more hard punches, the last one making her hair whip in the opposite direction from the air pressure. Still inside his reach, she jammed her wand in Typhus’s chest.
“CORGI SHOTGUN BLAST!” She called out, and Typhus was clobbered by a spread of magical corgis that blew him back from her.
Mabel practically thrust herself out the window when she saw that attack. “THAT IS THE BEST SPELL EVER-!”
Dipper and Flabber hauled her back inside, before she could distract Star or get hit by a stray corgi.
With Typhus on the ropes, Star spun on one foot with the grace of a ballerina and stopped to aim the wand at Noxic with both hands. “Super Mega Narwhal Blast!”
The wand did as commanded, spewing a stream of Narwhals. Facing the onslaught, the red spread from his arms down the coiled green organs protruding from Typhus’ chest, and he unleashed a storm of punches, deflecting the cascading cetaceans away before they reached him.
Star let out a gasp. “Whaaaat?!”
Grabbing a last one by its horn, he swung it around and threw it back at Star. “Catch this narwhal!”
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” Star dispelled it fast as she could.
Right through the puff of smoke the banished narwhal left behind, Typhus lunged to punch a hole through her stomach. “Now catch these hands!”
The Hunter Claw came down hard on the fist, stopping Typhus from connecting. Hunterborg forced Typhus’s arm down, struggling against his might. “Hands caught!” He looked at Star. “Do something that can hold him in place!”
Star’s mind raced before she pointed her wand at Typhus’s cape. “Surprise Cape Betrayal!”
Hunterborg looked at her as she got the spell off. “That is not a real spell!”
“It is, I just made it up!” Star yelped back.
He did a double-take. “What?!”
His footing suddenly slipped, and Typhus swung him off his feet into Star, sending them both tumbling away.
The moment they hit the ground, Typhus’ cape went rogue–wrapping around his arms and legs in a valiant effort to restrain him. “What the heck?! C’mon, this ain’t the time for static cling, baby!”
Star sat up and pointed at Typhus. “I told you!”
Hunterborg looked from her to the struggling Magnavore. “Girl, how does your magic even work?!”
Getting up, Stingerborg shook the cobwebs out of his head and pulled the slide on the Input Magnum. “Okay, not that it needs to be said, but from here on in, do not let Typhus ever land a hit on you!”
He hit the keypad. “3-0-5, Birdlime Magnum!”
He opened fire, the beams fired by the Input Magnum becoming sticky, white glue-like strands that splattered all over Typhus’ legs and arms, causing him to stick to his cape and to the ground. Spinning around, he howled at Drew, only to catch more of it across his mouth and face.
Over at the house, Dipper, Mabel, and Misao grimaced in disgust. Janna chuckled perversely.
Typhus struggled and managed to claw the gunk from the lower half of his face. “You kids are startin’ to tick me off with this silly gimmick crap!”
Stingerborg entered 9-6-4 in the Input Magnum. “Like Jara said, I am an abysmal fighter. So rather than have a nice and fair fight where I’ll get stomped?” He pointed the Input Magnum at Typhus and squeezed the trigger. “I’ll fight as ugly and dirty as I need to win. 9-6-4.”
The stream of rapid-fire energy bolts from the gun showered the Magnavore, ripping through the Birdlime, and tearing chunks off his body. Five seconds of sustained fire later, Typhus dropped to one knee, viscera and ichor dripping from his wounded body.
Janna whistled. “Sad Kid’s not playing around.”
Dipper tightened his fists and nodded. “C’mon, you got this!”
“Heh… heheheh…” Typhus’s baritone chuckle rumbled from his mouth as Drew lowered the Input Magnum. “When you put it like that, kid? You’re not a bad fighter at all.”
Drew quickly raised his weapon back up in surprise. Typhus’ injuries were closing up with every word he spoke.
He can regenerate?!
“It’s all good in a real fight!” Typhus yelled as the mouth atop his head opened and a long white whale bone-shaped sword shot from it at Stingerborg, hitting him in the chest and knocking him down.
Alarms blared in Drew’s ears, that one had done real damage. “Ugh, come on!”
Typhus got up and caught his sword as it returned to him. “Including hitting a guy while he’s down!”
He turned to point his sword at where Star and Hunterborg had gone down, but several shots from Strikerborg’s Input Magnum caused him to stagger back. “URGH!”
“Marco, go make sure Star and Hunterborg are okay.” Strikerborg put away her Input Magnum and started towards Typhus. “I got this.”
Typhus laughed. “You got this?”
Strikerborg cracked her knuckles. “Just like I got your windup wuss friend!”
Typhus’s eyes flashed red, and his body shuddered in furious anticipation. “Then come and get it!”
He charged Jo, holding his sword drawn back at his side. Raising it the second Jo was in range, he swung down to cut deep into Jo’s shoulder and through her chest.
Jo’s hand shot up and caught the weapon mid-swing–stopping it cold. The shockwave of the stopped blow traveled over her and kicked up waves of dust away from her feet.
“GOT IT!” She yelled out.
Typhus tried to pull his weapon back, but Jo’s grip was immovable. “Dang, baby! You’re almost strong as me!”
Strikerborg let out a sharp chuckle before she snapped the weapon in half. “Good.”
She punched Typhus’ jaw, leaning with all her strength into it, and in the next instant, he was rocketing through the air, leaving a trail of spreading condensation rings that ended in an explosion of dirt and rock when his body impacted and took off the top of a hill.
The sound his body made hitting it took a full second to reach the house.
“Yowza!” Flabber exclaimed. “Did you see that?!”
Janna’s eyes trailed from Strikerborg to the distant hill. “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, and this fight’s already been one of those things I can die happy on.”
“Right?!” Mabel agreed. “Go Beetleborgs!”
“… What the fuck,” Dipper blurted out. Misao was speechless beside him.
Drew was having trouble understanding what he just saw. “… Jo?”
Strikerborg lowered her fist and nodded in satisfaction. “So, the super strength works even with the Beetleborg Suit. Awesome!”
Stingerborg rushed to her side. “Super strength? What are you talking about?”
She looked at him. “I have super strength now. I don’t need to be transformed to use it, either.”
Hunterborg made his way over with Marco and Star and caught the tail end of Jo’s reply. “Yeah, she folded Lars Vanderdud in the cafeteria.”
Strikerborg did a double-take. “You got into a fight at school?!”
“Being really generous calling it a fight,” Star suggested.
He looked towards Hillhurst. “Dipper! Why does she have super strength?!”
“Oh yeah, I forgot to ask Flabber about that. Gimme a second,” Dipper called back.
A pause followed, the group outside barely hearing some hurried back and forth, before Dipper answered. “Flabber says it might be leftover power from the wish that settled in you, to make up for what you didn’t ask for with the wish!”
“That makes sense!” Mabel called out.
Strikerborg looked at himself. “Great, we have actual superpowers on top of these?”
Hunterborg shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, I don’t have super strength.”
Stingerborg pondered that. “Maybe we can only activate it when we’re really emotionally triggered?”
“That also makes sense!” Mabel shouted.
“If that’s so, then where’s your…?” Strikerborg trailed off and looked past her fellow Beetleborgs. “Oh great, we missed one.”
The blue and green Beetleborgs looked back, Star and Marco following their gazes up the path.