"Good evening, Horrifying Monster Warfare Attendees! Reiko Atari here, your eye in the sky for Monster Mash's Loser's League! We are LIVE above Maine's forests, on the outskirts of a lovely town by the name of Ludlow. We've taken appropriate precautions - The town has been evacuated and a flotilla of jeeps led by our finest tank, the M-56 Discipline, plan on keeping order and ensuring tonight's contestants focus their fighting on themselves. We really don't need any more lawsuits.
it looks like they've just dropped off Private Spinneret. More news as it breaks!"
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With her pale exoskeleton awash in the glow of lights, buttons, and dials, Private Spinneret steels herself for the challenge ahead as the Iron Maiden is unloaded from a large supply truck. She presses a button on the console, and the Iron Maiden's legs twitch, then unfold. The spider mech rises to its full height. With slightly trembling forelegs, Private Spinneret grips a pair of control sticks and directs her steed into the forest.
For a long time, all the jumping spider hears is the quiet hum of Iron Maiden's mechanical parts and the rustling and cracking as the large cyborg crashes through the forest. Branches snap off of trees, saplings are bent and crushed under legs, and scythe arms hack and slash away at excess greenery as Iron Maiden makes its' way towards where it's believed the Chupacabrain is located. Eventually the spider duo reach a small clearing, and the sounds of vegetation cease. Private Spinneret directs her steed to wait, and assesses the situation carefully.
The first sign something is wrong is the deer.
A deer, lying headless in a pool of its' own offal, is in the center of the clearing. There are no signs of a struggle - just a messy killing. Private Spinneret grips the control sticks tighter, hunching down and seeming to huddle against the control console.
Chop.
Jerking up again, Spinneret's eyes widen as she directs the Iron Maiden to turn. She scans the trees, wondering where that does had come from.
Chop.
Again, from a different direction. The mechanical spider is hauled in a rough circle to face the noise.
Chop.
Again, now in a third direction. Private Spinneret is rapidly losing her nerve.
The deer skull drops down from above, slamming hard against Spinneret's protective Lexan but not shattering it. A bolt of lightning shoots out and grips the skull, retrieving it.
It's here. But it has not yet shown itself.
Chop.
Behind the trees, a thin snake of lightning ends in a rotted, decomposing arm gripping a small hand axe. The axe cuts into the tree again. It would take hundreds of chops for such a small axe to down such a large tree, but that was never the aim.
As Private Spinneret spins the Iron Maiden to face the sound of the axe sinking into wood, the skull attacks again. Antlers first, it rams into the underbelly of the Iron Maiden. The mammoth spider flails its' claws and stumbles. Private Spinneret slams on a button and fires a cannonball into the brush in the direction of the chopping noise, but hits nothing. The brain is elsewhere.
But where?
The Iron Maiden manages to catch the deer skull with a wild kick, knocking it away. The shining white bone glistens in the sun. The jaw drops and the skull latches onto the Iron Maiden's cannon, attempting to disable it. Quickly, a mantis-like claw swoops up and chops the skull in two. The lower jaw clatters to the ground, but the head, still gripped by lightning, rams antlers-first into Private Spinneret's windshield. A small crack forms. The skull pulls back, then headbutts the plastic again. And again.
The two forelegs of Iron Maiden rise up and clamp around the skull, pulling against the gravity bolt that controls it. The claws seesaw back and forth, making the skull crumble to dust, but leaving the untouched antlers. The bolt grips the antlers now, sending them spearing into the armor of the Iron Maiden.
Inside her cockpit, Private Spinneret is having a nervous breakdown. She had never planned for any tactics like this, and she is confused, disoriented, and completely out of her element. She looks around desperately for a solution.
Then the bolts catch her eyes, and she finally understands. Ignoring the antlers' jabs at Iron Maiden, Private Spinneret pushes her charge forward, following the gravity bolt's path. The Chupacabrain realizes what she's doing and disengages contact with the antlers, making the bolt vanish. Private Spinneret presses on anyway, her small fangs gritting together.
The Iron Maiden finds itself on a winding dirt trail. It's more meant for humans than something as large as itself, but it is still a path, and may lead to the brain. Spinneret urges the Maiden forward, swiping aside branches as it goes.
The air seems to grow colder. The forest grows still.
At the end of the trail is a strange gate.
Private Spinneret cannot read, so it doesn't matter what the sign says. And while there is an air of foreboding here, the unnaturally cold air does nothing to bother her - she is, after all, an Ice Spider.
Unable to fit through the gate, she instead orders the Iron Maiden to go around and step over the fence. And at last, floating before them in the center of the graveyard, is the Chupacabrain.
Private Spinneret immediately opens fire, unleashing a fusillade of shots from Iron Maiden's turret. Tendrils of lightning sprout from the brain, and it grabs onto each shot. The cannonballs float in the air, hoisted up by the gravity bolts, before Chupacabrain hurls them back one after another. Each cannon shot impacts only seconds away from the last, and the Iron Maiden rocks on its' feet. A knee is blown out by the first ball. The cannon is dented with another. A third shot swipes the mecha's side and crashes into the undergrowth, while the fourth smashes into the top joint of a rear leg.
The brain reaches down with more gravity bolts, uprooting a stone cross and a standard-shaped headstone from the cemetery. Holding the two stones as if they were sword and shield, the multi-armed abomination advances to finish off its' opponent. Refusing to go down, Iron Maiden's front scythes raise up, ready to strike.
The first slash leaves a small scrape on the headstone, while the second is met with a counterswing from the cross. The chupacabra arms surge forward, clawing and scraping at the Iron Maiden and peeling off layers of synthetic skin. The cannon tries to fire, but it isn't working properly after that earlier blow. The arms now move to the windshield, pawing at the dome and trying to force their way in. Private Spinneret frantically hammers at buttons, looking hard for a "MAKE IT STOP" function. She doesn't find one.
But what she does find is the Eject Button. In the blink of an eye, the shattered dome retracts. As the arms try to clutch and grab at Spinneret, her seat launches into the air. Spinneret jumps free and lands nestled in the branches of a tall tree. Quickly, the Ice Spider hops from branch to branch, putting her jumping spider genes to good use.
The Iron Maiden, meanwhile, continues to fight back on instinct. The claws swing forward, both gripping the headstone, but a smash from the cross makes the mech's front cannon twist into an L-shape. Iron Maiden's claws grapple with seven of Chupacabrain's. More tendrils shoot out around the graveyard, snaking into the dirt and uprooting more gravestones. The slabs are hurled at Iron Maiden, crushing its' armor and forcing it to its' knees.
From the safety of the treetops, Private Spinneret watches as her companion vehicle succumbs to the Chupacabrain. She has been watching and biding her time for the perfect moment. And now, as the brain raises its' many arms and gravestones for the final blow on Iron Maiden, is the perfect moment.
Private Spinneret leaps.
You forgot about the axe, didn't you?
Chupacabrain sees the spider in the air, and lashes out with its' axe arm. Spinneret sees it coming and tries to twist in midair. The axe, which was meant to bisect her, winds up striking her on the head instead. Her helmet cracks, but it did its' job - Private Spinneret is hurt but not killed.
Her head swimming, she continues to fall, heading directly for Chupacabrain. A sea of arms moves to intercept, but the tiny spider squeezes between them and sticks the landing.
Fangs-first.
The instant the poison enters Chupacabrain, it loses control of its' gravity bolts. The arms tumble to the ground, twitching. The gravestones smash down alongside them. In moments, the brain sinks to the ground and begins to turn grey.
It's not that Private Spinneret's venom was particularly amazing - it's just that, well, once you inject paralyzing toxins into your brain, that's the end of it.
The victorious soldier crawls off the brain and into the cockpit of the barely functioning Iron Maiden, and waits patiently to be picked up after a job well done.
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And that is the end of this, the second of three Loser's League battles! Who or what will compete in the third? Tune in tomorrow to find out...
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