Dark on the Waters [Dark Data]

[Freeza]

Out came commander Bola, in his bulky hands were blades as long as Jaco which gleamed with a similar purple tint. This armor-wearing lug-nut was definitely a bad guy, but he was also a bad guy who was warning them about the oncoming attack?

Jaco felt himself shrivel. Within his red dented tin can he considered fleeing once more, but… If there were bombs about to lay waste them all, this threw a sizable wrench into his evacuation plan, and well… That was a dead-end plan with a capital DEAD.

It was time to cover his ass and it just so happened the cowardly space alien knew all about finding the best places to take cover, it was in his nature and he was small enough to fit between most miscellaneous items. But other partner themed realities were setting in, Jaco couldn’t just hang the Protoman out to dry with the incoming assault of explosions. He thought of the android's shattered carcass and the promise he’d made to his pooch who would show no mercy when ripping Jaco’s teeny head off in Rush’s massive mechanical maw. Quickly, Jaco’s super elite sight scanned the terrain from his bird’s eye vantage point.

First, he analyzed the incoming enemy parachuters. They were of all sorts of shapes and sizes, some were unmistakably pirates carrying rusted, jagged swords and armed with single-fire pistols, as well as some hefty looking iron-forged muskets. The galactic patrolman’s sworn enemy just happened to be space pirates and Jaco narrowed his bulbous eyes with newly kindled determination as his itchy finger boldly fell on the trigger, with a molten swarm of sputtering laser blasts all aimed at the reinforcements that had just arrived, still stumbling from their withering parachutes and struggling for a foothold.

Dust and bits of rock splashed at their feet and sprayed around them in the air in a shroud of the alien’s decimating wrath. Jaco had aimed for the fiery tree stumps and managed to saw a few down, no one had the time to yell TIMBER! which left various members of the invading forces pinned underneath flaming branches. Those in the vicinity of Jaco’s assault range stopped, knelt behind rocks and the fallen trees, crouched low, in a feeble attempt to make themselves smaller targets but for someone with amazing eyesight, not even their nose hairs were safe. They took aim, hoping to reciprocate heavy fire blasting at them aerially but their weapons were rather short-sighted, the primitive lead balls missed his ascending spaceship by a mile. With that, Jaco continued his mental chart of the land, not knowing he’d caught the attention of more bloodthirsty, disturbed Poke-lings but they were not eager to jump in the air and chase Jaco during an air incursion. He had bought them only a few short minutes with his terrain-eviscerating attack. Moments that could be used to ensure his own survival.

Ding! It was memorized by his super-elite mind with a scaling ratio to the height of the terrain, plus he had some insight on the land he’d already whizzed by. Judging from the sheltering Darklings, they didn’t know the geography very well, instinct had told them to take cover, but their fear-penetrated minds had not calculated their best hope. The lowest geographical point nearby was zero point two kilometers south and the highest cliff scaled just above it, Jaco envisioned a mighty rockslide and aimed to make it happen.

It was but a small trek for a being in a spaceship, but for those on the ground? Jaco had just enough time to inform them and directed his chugging ship forward to do so before his radar blared at him and the interior of his ship strobed with the final scarlet he was to see if he didn’t MOVE!

Without the chance to fearfully gulp, Jaco threw all his weight into the steering wheel and swooshed across the sky, veering left and dodging the missile that had trained on his previous location by just a few seconds. “Phe-ew! That was way too close!”

Zooming in closer to the ground he pressed a button which caused his glass sphere to recede like a convertible car’s canvas top and shouted down to those who were either calibrating their weapons, blasting, or otherwise trying to figure out which was better: To seize the opportunity to fight through it or flee from the certain cremation that would be delivered to them from the bombs above. “See if you can draw them closer to that cliff! I can blast away the loose rocks from above and it would really send them rolling-”

Jaco rolled his eyes as he was interrupted by the blaring alarm of his radar. “Why is it always up to me?” he narrated to himself and felt the oppressive burden of responsibility weighing on his terror before facing the incoming missile head-on. The galactic patrolman quickly spun his ship around and waited a brief second, one full of calculations, before firing his ship's laser beams accurately at the moving target, they detonated from the premature collision and he and his allies felt the immediate blast of the inferno that would’ve been laden in their robotic armor or stretchy flesh a moment later.

“I can’t just shoot them all out of the sky!” Jaco yelped down to his weaponized homies.

“Why not?” Protoman replied with a challenge, “You seem to have practiced aim.” Perhaps he’d noticed Jaco’s strange eagerness about the preteen robot, or perhaps he sought to further strategize the best way to take out the new hordes under the safety net of his ally's marksmanship.

Purpose gripped in Jaco’s stomach, he was petrified when the Protoman had asked him for a favor, but torn by his own cowardly nature. Tides of nausea strummed in the alien's stomach like a familiar tune from the strings of a guitar, yet Jaco sealed his glass globe once more and took the mission he had been given with unmatched zeal.