“Well said! We shall carve your path home through glorious slaughter!” Nocturnus boomed in Mikayla’s ear.

  “Keep it down, you psycho. This is just me being pragmatic,” Mikayla insisted. “Here it comes!”

  A beam of electricity struck the earth, sending a shockwave outwards. Keldryn managed to leap over it, and Asika took wing, grabbing Mikayla’s shoulder and hoisting her up when she saw that Mikayla’s attempt to jump over the blast wasn’t going to work.

  The Giant Roc hovered over them, the downdraft from its wings sending Asika and Mikayla fluttering backwards.

  Skyward Grasscutter was already increasing in scale. “We can’t touch it at normal size!” Keldryn shouted, carefully keeping his balance as Skyward Grasscutter swelled up to a full ten times its normal proportions.

  Mikayla nodded her agreement as her feet found the forest floor again. One more time. She had to go big, to go home. She forced her Mana into the complicated pattern within her Core Controller that would bring the Black Knight into the right weight class.

  Upsettingly, even size ten still felt woefully inadequate against the Giant Roc. It now ‘only’ seemed like she was engaging a flying T. Rex rather than feathery Godzilla, but all she had was a sword, a shield and a few Techniques to throw out.

  The Giant Roc, on the other hand, seemed to be a living thunderstorm. It shrieked again, expelling a jerky, erratic burst of electricity from its eyes and out through the tip of its beak.

  Mikayla brought her shield up, but it turned out to be woefully inadequate. The blast struck her shield and sent her sprawling into the treeline.

  By the time she got back up, Keldryn had distracted the bird, leaping up and grabbing onto the side of its neck. His fingers entwined with its plumage, and his wrist blades opened bloody holes in the side of its neck - but then electricity erupted from the wound, forming a solid pane of plasma that scraped him off and sent Skyward Grasscutter tumbling to the forest floor.

  “What was that?” Mikayla gasped, watching the veil of electricity ripple across the Giant Roc’s whole body.

  The sound of Asika whistling through her teeth was broadcast between the Armour Cores. “It looks like a type of ability we call ‘active elemental defence’. A power that both reduces incoming damage and punishes people for getting too close,”

  “How do we counter it?” Mikayla questioned.

  “Piercing abilities. Ranged attacks. Or just power through it!” Psychic Bolts flew from the clawed fingers of Kagura-no-Shibu, splashing against the Roc’s back as it flung itself back into the air.

  It circled above them and launched more attacks, arrows of lightning dropping from its wings like deadly rain. Mikayla held up her shield to defend against the strikes, and Keldryn ducked behind her. As they hunkered down and shrank to conserve Mana, they could only watch as Asika dodged around its blasts of lightning and tried to land attacks with all the success of a minnow trying to kill a shark.

  Eventually it had passed their position again, and rather than follow, Asika dropped back down to reunite with them. “It’s no good. It can fly too high for either of you to hit it, and I don’t have any attacks that are both fast and damaging enough to make it hurt, not with the Stats I have at my Level,” she groaned, glancing back at where the Roc was already wheeling around again.

  “The Goliath Guard’s gotta have strategies to deal with monsters like this. Keldryn, have you learned anything like that?” Mikayla pressed.

  “I was told to disengage and call in a specialist when I reported back,” Keldryn denied. “Fight a stronger monster? Sure. Fight a flying monster? Doable. Both of those put together? That's a no-win scenario,” He growled, shaking his head in dismay. “But we can’t run away now,”

  Bigger and more potent lances of lightning arced outwards from the Kaiju’s wings and fell from the sky, exploding when they hit the ground. Keldryn and Asika threw themselves out of the way, but the Black Knight wasn’t fast enough to avoid being caught in the blast. Mikayla stifled a groan of pain as the bolts ripped into her Mana-crafted muscles.

  “We need to either knock it out of the sky, or get you two up here with me,” Asika agreed. “Maybe if I . .”

  With pinpoint precision, she flung a Psychic Bolt up towards the Giant Roc’s wing joint, but the bird saw it coming from a mile away. It barrel rolled in midair and let the spell strike harmlessly against its chest.

  “Yeah, so I’m out of ideas,” the faerie groaned. “Anyone else got something?”

  Mikayla hummed, and something occurred to her. When she and Keldryn had merged their Armours into the Black Knight Duplex, it had inherited the best parts of both Armours. The enhanced Agility from Skyward Grasscutter’s digitigrade legs and the heavy armour of the Black Knight.

  She was self-aware enough to know that she wasn’t contributing anything to this fight at present. The Black Knight couldn’t jump high enough, move fast enough or shoot far enough to even try to hit the Giant Roc. A sword through its wing would definitely bring it down to the ground, but getting the sword up there in the first place . .

  Mikayla considered her options for a few seconds, but knew there was really only one thing they could do. “Hey! Asika! Do you trust me?” she shouted at the faerie.

  “Sure I do! Why?” Asika hollered back, dodging out of the way of another bolt of lightning.

  “Access Demigod System!” Mikayla commanded nothing in particular. Thankfully, the white and gold notifications blossomed in her vision without issue.

  [DEMIGOD SYSTEM ACTIVATED. WELCOME, INHERITOR.]

  Mikayla took a deep breath. “Apply the Perfect Rainbow Blessing of Teamwork to myself, Keldryn, Nocturnus and Asika!”

  [APPLYING PERFECT RAINBOW BLESSING OF {TEAMWORK} TO FOUR INDIVIDUALS.]

  [YOUR CURRENT FAITH POINT TOTAL IS: 3,223.]

  [CORES DETECTED. SYNERGY DETECTED. CONDITIONS SATISFIED TO INITIATE PANTHEON PROTOCOL.]

  She expected it this time, but the rivers of light that flowed out of her Core Controller towards her teammates were still mesmerising. Similar veins of energy emerged from Asika and Keldryn’s arms, each conduit meeting in the middle and forming a triangle. A vortex opened between them and shot skywards, formed out of spirals of black, red, green and blue, and all three were sucked in, their Core projections turning into streaks of light that all merged together in the eye of the resultant rainbow-coloured hurricane.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The Giant Roc shrieked in distress, backwinging and putting distance between itself and the tornado that had formed. Its eyes narrowed, and it flung waves of dark clouds towards the growing tornado, hoping to interrupt whatever was coming.

  But it was to no avail, as the polychromatic twister retreated into the heavens, leaving a single, noticeably larger warrior that was already straightening up and raising its sword.

  After the fight against Flyreh, and the issue with their minds mixing, Mikayla had come up with a possible solution. With Asika’s passenger-equipped Core in the mix, there had to be enough malleability for her Willpower to project a better method of interaction and bring structure to the shared mental space.

  She’d seen this in a show about multicoloured superheroes with combining giant robots, and that just seemed appropriate.

  So when the rainbows fled their vision, rather than all floating in a soup of thoughts, Mikayla found herself settling into a chair with a dashboard covered in blinking lights, buttons and joysticks. It was a bit muddled - there was no physical way for her to operate five joysticks - but the fact that the projection had appeared at all proved her idea had merit.

  To her left and right, Asika and Keldryn were seated at consoles of their own, and at the rear of the imaginary control centre, in a slightly elevated seat, was Nocturnus, this time manifesting as a whole human body, barrel-chested and bristling with hairy muscles that were barely contained by studded leather armour.

  “Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa! What did you do? We combined? This is awesome!” Asika screamed.

  “Indeed. This is different. I’ve never seen anything like all this,” Nocturnus rumbled, appreciatively looking over the controls.

  “It’s a work in progress. Better than getting our minds all mixed up, right?” Mikayla called back to him.

  “Wait, who’s that guy?” Asika blinked, and Mikayla realised her mistake a little too late.

  “My mentor. I’ll fill you in later,” she summarised.

  “Oh, he’s the voice in your Armour Core. Cool! And illegal. But that’s not important right now, we'll sort it out later!”

  Mikayla decided Asika was correct in declaring that to be a problem for later, instead focusing on the result of the Perfect Rainbow Blessing.

  At first glance, the newly formed armour didn’t seem all that different from the Black Knight Duplex. The crossbow on their right shoulder had been replaced with Asika’s rifle, and the Black Knight’s spiky shoulder pads had been traded in for Kagura-no-Shibu’s bulky, blocky shoulders with their integrated thrusters.

  But then two pairs of wings, reconfigured from Kagura-no-Shibu’s own wings and legs both, unfolded from their back.

  Mikayla checked their Status.

  NAME: Mikayla Aiadon, Keldryn Thorntail, Asika, Nocturnus Virralis

  LEVEL: 79 (26+20+33+0)

  RACE: Human (Demigod), Beastkin (Foxkin), Faerie, ????

  “Level seventy-nine? Oh hell yeah!”

  “Don’t get too excited. We’ve still only got a Statistic multiplier from the first Schema Lock. A real Level seventy-nine warrior would crush us,” Keldryn soothed her. “But we’ve got a chance against the Roc. That’s what matters,”

  “Heck yeah! I’ve never seen anything like this! I’m not even totally sure what it is! I love it!” Asika cheered.

  “Really? Was hoping you’d know something about a 'Pantheon Protocol',” Mikayla sighed.

  “Nope! Sorry!”

  “Doesn’t matter. Fight!” Keldryn reminded them. Looking over the console Mikayla had provided him, the readouts shifted on the fly to make sense to him. “I’ve got the legs?”

  “The arms are mine,” Nocturnus confirmed.

  “Dibs on the wings!” Asika weighed in.

  “And I’ll coordinate, and control the secondary weapons. We can do this!”

  It was good that they had sorted themselves out, because they were out of time. The Giant Roc, after hovering and scrutinising the new challenger for a few moments, decided that it would be prudent to destroy first and wonder what was happening later.

  Nocturnus brought their shield up just in time to block a bolt of lightning. Unfortunately, that was only a distraction, as the Giant Roc was approaching them with storm clouds visibly gathering around its wings. “Dodge!” Mikayla commanded, panic creeping into her voice.

  “You got it!” Asika grinned. Glancing in her direction, Mikayla saw that she had transformed her control panel into a keyboard, and her fingers were blurring across the keys. Lines of code were fed into their Armour, and its four wings spread wide, whirring into motion and launching them into the air.

  Well, it was working, so why not?

  They just barely managed to get above the diving monster, the forest beneath them getting swallowed up by storm clouds.

  Nocturnus made a violent motion in his seat. “Have at thee!” he bellowed, and the Armour twisted in mid-air and brought its sword down on the Roc’s tail, carving off a chunk of flesh and feathers.

  The merged mech barrel rolled, listing sideways and bouncing off trees as Asika fought to get their flight back under control, hollering, “You can’t make moves like that when we’re flying! You need to stay balanced! Move with your velocity, not against it!”

  “Pssh, what would a gunslinger know about swordplay?” Nocturnus rolled his eyes.

  Asika cackled. “I’m so glad you asked!” She brought them down, twisting and hitting the ground in a crouch, pressing their legs to the ground. “Keldryn, launch us!”

  “Sure,” Keldryn coolly confirmed, and Skyward Grasscutter’s double-jointed legs propelled them back into the sky like the world's largest grasshopper. A fresh line of code in Asika’s interface had their wings snapping outwards, yawing them back towards the Giant Roc, who was ascending. Eyes filled with light locked onto them, and dozens of electric javelins burst out of the monster’s wings.

  “Mikayla, here!” Asika flicked a System screen into Mikayla’s field of view, before her typing somehow got even faster as she drove their Armour to take evasive action.

  Mikayla’s eyebrows raised as she read the Technique that Asika had shared with her.

  [NEW TECHNIQUE SAVED: POINT DEFENCE (Flawless)]

  [POINT DEFENCE (Flawless): Infuse Stamina into a Firearm-type weapon to fire rapid shots that intercept and deflect incoming projectiles. Cost scales with Dexterity, efficiency scales with Intelligence.]

  Since Asika was too busy to both dodge and use this Technique, Mikayla didn’t hesitate to absorb it and feed it right into the guns that had become their onboard weapons system. Energy bullets erupted from the cluster of firearms mounted on their left shoulder, twisting and spreading in every direction. They ripped apart the incoming bolts of lightning, filling the sky with flashes of light.

  It only took several seconds of utter chaos before they were through the barrage and closing with the Giant Roc, who looked surprised at their having successfully closed the distance.

  “Now, big guy!” Asika commanded, pulling up.

  For a moment the two combatants squared off in mid-air, both ascending into the clouds. Twin streaks of lightning and a glowing red visor stared each other down, each filled with murderous intent.

  And then Nocturnus brought their sword up in a slash that raked across the Roc’s chest. Lightning beat against the blade, the active elemental defence mitigating the damage and splashing over their trigonal chest, but the cut he opened was a grisly wound all the same. The recoil from the strike forced them apart, and Asika yanked the Armour into a backflip that sent them spinning through the air, away from the Roc. They stabilised, arms and legs splayed, looking like the world’s largest and spikiest pixie.

  “Haha! Very well then, that was acceptable!” Nocturnus cackled.

  “This is the coolest thing ever!” Asika cheered, throwing her arms up.

  Keldryn smiled. “This strength . . it’s awesome,”

  “So, lass, what are we calling this one?” Nocturnus asked with glee in his voice.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Mikayla smiled. “Black Knight Triplex!”