The Story!

Are you guys sure this is a good idea? All I'm expecting out of a challenge like that is a Wonderchild-sized hologram added to the list of our problems.

Yes and no. Umm fuzz what do you think

I'm fine with BACKSTAB for the sake of moving things along

The W-E and Stevonnie vs many Holo-Pearls

Something deep inside Logan wanted to scream at these things – to really yell and stand up to them with a challenge. On the other hand, something far less deep within his thought processes told him that such a thing would be foolish. No, at the moment the fake Pearls were all completely distracted by Stevonnie and the small crowd of civilians she was protecting in her bubble. Wait, her? His? Their? Yeah, that works: their bubble. Pronouns aside, it looked like the fetching young human-Gem hybrid was holding out, but even through the barrier, Logan's cameras gave him a good enough look to tell that they were already sweating from exhaustion. Noticing this, Logan decided to relieve some pressure by way of his beam saber. Stepping across the sturdy boardwalk pier as subtly as he could in a multi-story machine, he grasped his trusty beam sword off the Wonderchild's hip.

“Parry!” “Parry!”...

“You know, I don't think I ever gave this thing a name,” mused the pilot, waiting for just the right moment to ignite it.

“It's the W-E unit's beam sword, forgetful Logan.”

“Much escapes you, Adam. Remember that thing we did against Bones and his buddies? The counting thing?” Logan grinned, making sure to distribute the weight evenly between both of his robot's feet so that they didn't exceed weight limits or anything. He wasn't sure if the pier was up to code, nor was he sure he wanted to find out.

“Slice!” “Thrust!”...

“Should I prepare to mimic your speech again?”

“You bet, my faithful computer! Don't broadcast it over speakers this time, though.”

“Acknowledged.”

It was time for the diplopilot to get to business. Making as little sound as possible, Logan dashed forward with tiny steps. Well, they were tiny for an eighteen meter tall robot, anyway. With a single movement, the Wonderchild's plain white colored right arm was directed to stab forward and activate the equally white beam of crackly white energy straight into the back of one of the Holo-Pearls! Thankfully, it penetrated the holographic skin of the weird automaton, instead of proving to be incompatible. As he satisfyingly pulled his weapon out and observed the target fizzle out into thin air, Logan shouted out of joy!

“One!” cheered both Logan and his trusty assistant, jubilation in only one of their voices.

Ready to repeat the process as fast as he could, he took the suggestion to “Thrust!” despite it seemingly being intended as an identifier for what one of the Pearls was doing. This attempt was markedly less successful, as a trio of the threatening fake women had already turned around in response to what had just happened to their fellow light projection. “Engaged!” they said in unison, as one bravely attempted to 'Parry!' the much larger beam sword. While for a brief moment it sort of held fast, it didn't take very long for the beam to subsume the second foe's frame entirely. Wiping his blade around like a paint brush, he beat the devil out of another target.

“Two!”

“Thrust!” “Thrust!”...

Unfortunately, despite it seeming like he was on a roll, the Wonderchild and its pilot quickly found themselves on the receiving end of a fairly unexpected strategy. Instead of remaining in position like they had previously, both of the shimmering fake ladies with eyes glowing like the devil had jumped onto his machine's arm! Balancing atop the mass of metal, each of them kept their stance wide and body lowered. The problem, of course, was that he couldn't cut them down with a sword that was at the end of the limb that they were currently ascending. The solution wasn't exactly obvious to Logan. Shaking it was the obvious thought, but the second he started doing so both Pearls “Thrust!”ed their spectral-looking swords as deeply as they could into the W-E's arm to hold on for dear life! Natrually, they didn't penetrate fully since the W-E is a top of the line action frame – rather, they barely got the tips in, with the sound of metal grinding against other metal screeched through the area.

Though he truly wanted to scream something like “You suck!”, he knew that he'd been behaving far too casually lately. Yes, he was on vacation, and yes, he probably hadn't been putting his most adult foot forward since he left Tokyo-3. Maybe it was just a factor of being around people younger than him, but he'd honestly felt he'd regressed, and he knew it had to stop. Instead, Logan calmly remained quiet, and tried to figure out a clear path. “Adam, cook up a few Triad Cannon blasts. I will need full use of my lasers if I'm going to really ease the pressure on that bubble.” Even though the bubble of semi-transparent rose quartz was an awesome defensive power, he knew that Stevonnie wouldn't be able to maintain it indefinitely.

“The Triad Cannon is not a laser.”

“It is a laser cannon to me, Adam! Let's focus on getting numbers three and four!”

“Firing frontal array bursts at the W-E's arm is highly inadvisable, highly inadvisable Logan,” said Adam despite the fact that he enabled the pilot by activating the array, as was signified by the telltale glowing and whirring noise that the greyhead had come to love.

“Number one, I don't care, number two, your adjectives for me keep getting weirder, number three, maybe I do care. Damnit...” He privately wished the Gems had been accompanying Steven and Connie to Funland, even though it would ruin what seemed like a special time between the two young'ns. If those incredible superhuman beings were around, he would be able to do incredible team-based manuevers with them. He'd been dreaming about those lately, at least when his REM sleep wasn't occupied by thoughts of losing to a giant reptilian.

“How are you holding up in there?” shouted Logan over his speakers.

The fused being yelled back, “Not great! I can't keep the bubble up for much longer!” Stevonnie's light brown skin, splendidly long wavy locks, and impractical mostly denim-based outfit were getting even more soaked with sweat, but they were still holding steadfast. As Logan glanced over to them, it was clear that she was struggling even to stand up. The other Holograms were still raining countless cuts, and it was obvious that the current path wasn't sustainable.

Choice Time!


>Bad times, yo!  He was going to have to not only get these Pearls off his unit before they got somewhere they could do real damage, but also help Stevonnie as quickly as possible.  The solution he concluded on was to drop to his knees in front of the ring of holograms, and start swinging his arm at them!  He could therefore not only bash them, but also hopefully knock off his unwanted passengers in the process!

>This ain't good!  The most important thing was to get those civilians out of the way, so Logan decided the right idea was to throw the bubble back towards town!  If he could do that, they'd be safe!

>Same as the previous, but throw the bubble towards the sea.  Holograms can't swim.

>Adam can bite Logan's ass, it was time to unload the damn Triad Cannons and fuck up not only the units on his mech's arm, but as many as he could hit!

>Aha!  It was time!  Finally Logan had a chance to use his robot's bracelet!  He'd been waiting for just the right opportunity to use it as a secret weapon, and this was it!  He would use the special weapon on his left arm to clear the Pearls on his right, and if that worked, apply it to the Holos remaining in the attack ring around Stevonnie and the crowd!





Sorry about the wait, cray stuff going on in my life. Should be fine now, though! I love doing fights between units of different size, though, and especially ones with multiple things going on.

It would be nice if Fuzz or our duck would break the tie between 1, 2 and 5 so Crow doesn't have to have his vote subsumed again

Logan and Stevonnie vs 25 Holo-Pearls (23 remain)

“Thrust!” “Slice!” “Thrust!” “Thrust!” “Thrust!”...

Well aware of the risks of allowing smaller opponents to do whatever they liked to his custom piece of hardware, Logan made the call. It was time to do something unbelievably risky, and take action that might have, by his estimation, led to some exceptionally negative results. Gulping slightly, Logan pulled back his robot's right arm, and shouted over to his newly minted ally. “'Vonnie! I need you to do something!” He felt kind of awkward even asking what he was about to. Maybe he shouldn't. Or should.

“I'm already doing something! Is this seriously not enough?!” The brave long-haired Gem Fusion had a point – she seemed to be managing to protect the innocents. Despite being saved, they seemed to be scared out of their minds inside the crystal orb, with some of them yelling about frantic shit and panicking, which couldn't make the job any easier. It was kind of a mess in there, and Logan was secretly glad to be in his robot instead.

“You're doing great! I've never really seen you fight, so I don't know what you can do besides the bubble.” Logan admitted the truth, nervously killing time before he did what he had decided to.

“Right now, nothing! Later I'll show you. What. Do. You. Need?” The two-stack of kids clearly didn't have time for a nice chat.

“I need you to make sure that doesn't pop when you land!” Logan declared this quite nervously.

The fused young individual's voice cracked a little as they said, “That doesn't sound even a little goo-”

With a thunking 'clunk', Logan had his robot fall to its knees and smashed the orb of Rose Quartz with a clubbing blow from the arm that still contained Holo-Pearl swords. Since it wasn't some heavy piece of anything, the bubble, passengers and all, slammed into a part of the crowd of “Thrust”ers with all the momentum of a rubber ball! It wasn't quite the same as that school gymnasium stable, as it remained constant even though at least a good five Pearls were rolled up onto it. Those tenacious training automatons clung to it just as well as they had to the Wonderchild, and together the whole package got sent over towards the center of the tiny town. Despite the fact that they were likely to do far better against such a small squad of holograms, the lithe and previously-spunky teen yelled out something as they soared through the air and off the boardwalk. Unfortunately for Logan, he didn't quite catch it – it sounded like they were already pissed at him for having bonked the damn bubble. Hey, at least he didn't use a weapon to hit them like a golf ball!

Reassessing the situation, Logan was easily able to use the W-E's external cameras to determine that not only were the Holograms off his arm, their blades were still lodged in him! Well, as long as they didn't impair his movement or anything, that wouldn't be a problem. Heck, it might even be a tactical advantage. He'd need that, because if his cameras weren't screwing up, he was right in the middle of a crowd of sixteen armed Holo-Pearls, and two unarmed ones, all of which were a-glowin and a-yellin! Instinctively jumping up and trying to put as much distance between his carbon fiber adorned mech and the heartless swordswomen. Frustratingly so, this led to him accidentally putting too much pressure on a creaky spot of wood and crunching down through it!

“Adam, a little help here? Like, can we stabilize?” Logan asked, hoping the answer was yes since he quite liked Funland and didn't want to break it apart fighting gem technology. That would be possibly some of the worst PR that the Crystal Gems could ever get!

“My software is doing its best to stabilize your frantic mecha piloting style.”

Trying to comfort himself in the face of the fact that the rail-thin ghostly gems were fanning out and looked to be planning on surrounding him as well, Logan clarified Adam's words. “Frantic like Jack Shard going for a pinfall a minute into the match?” That guy had been pretty cool until he got his face busted open

“Frantic like a squirrel or other small prey animal,” Adam said, shooting down any possibility of spinning the comment about his piloting style.

Cursing himself for not coming up with any sort of proper comeback against a simple computer program, Logan looked around and tried to figure out an appropriate measure against... Well, maybe they were made on a computer as well. What could he even do against that many tiny opponents in the theme park? Fact was, there wasn't any chance of him successfully using his weaponry right there without hitting the local scenery. Unless he were to try kiting the Holo-Pearls to another part of Beach City, Logan was going to have to get his hands a little dirty. Or a lot. The problem was, they were forcing his hand – he was nearly surrounded, and the only small comfort he could take was that one of them seemed to have fallen into the water when he broke a hole in the floor.

Cut-in:

Logan felt like he was going about this the wrong way – it would be a lot like trying to swordfight a ton of tiny little people a fraction of his size. Sure, he could probably win, or at least take most of them down, but it would take some serious brains or some extreme skill to be able to walk away without getting some nasty cuts. The W-E had so far avoided being made unusable in the time since he'd fought Godzilla, and the United Arms would not be happy to hear he'd lost to basic grunts that aliens used for training!

“Draw your blade, challenger!” All seventeen remaining enemy units said this in a haughty voice that resembled the real Pearl's only in level of condescension. Logan had so much firepower. So darn much weapon. All ready to go. All he had to do was say the word, and he could wipe the smug and antagonistic confidence off every one of those faces. He was sure of it.

“Maybe I will!” he said with the microphone off. “You know, Adam, I should just break out the floor under us and drown the lot of them! Energy-based forms plus water won't be good, right?”

“You have neither proof that the unit that fell is deactivated nor sufficient structural evidence to be sure that you would not destroy the whole pier.” Adam added, “However, the water here is shallow enough that if they continue to fight, it would resemble 'shooting fish in a barrel' as the colloquialism goes.

Choice Time!


>Logan walked like a man, my son.  He met all the remaining Holo-Pearls head on, looking to use his full arsenal to take out as many as possible as quickly as possible.

>Logan made an attempt to kite the Holo-Pearls using his vernier thrusters!  They would easily provide  enough speed to get the foes into a less-destructible part of the town!

>Logan used his beam saber to cut up the boards under the holograms all around him.  It would do a little bit of damage to Funland, but thanks to backing up he was only near a few basic stalls, not any of the key rides.

>Words!  Logan was an Ambassador, and decided to try to talk down the automatons.  Maybe he could convince them to stop attacking, like by admitting defeat or something like that?  It was obvious that these weren't weapons of war, so maybe it would just stop and he could resolve the issue entirely.

>Logan needed the real Crystal Gems to help as soon as possible.  He would do whatever he could to stall, since he assumed they had way more experience than he did fighting small-sized enemies.  Jeez, he needed to get some training to help him handle that, since it was becoming obvious that this was something that would be a problem!