Loki looked out over the plains, towards the forest. Nothing. Good. Maybe tonight would be a peaceful night after all. He lowered his Dark Lance and walked back to the barracks. "So far, nothing." He said to the others. "Good." Tunnel King replied. It was not always easy being a guard of the town of TCF. There were spambots, trolls, and sometimes even hostile renegades from within their own population. However, there seemed to be nothing amiss tonight. It looked like they were in for a well deserved break. Loki sat down.
Several moments later, Aurora and Ghostar entered the room. "We saw something odd and decided to take a look at it. When we approached it burrowed into the ground and vanished." Leinfors, who had been sitting in the corner finishing up a bowl of pasta, looked up. "What did it look like?" He asked.
Aurora spoke up hesitantly. As the newest recruit, she was still getting used to the job, though she had done very well thus far. "It was small. Smaller than my hand, about the size of a mouse. It looked gray, or silver. It glinted and made a weird buzzing sound when it disappeared." Tunnel King picked up his Hammer of Banishment. An ancient relic, it had the power to completely destroy almost anything, but had never been used for evil. At least not by any of the guards. "We might have a bot on our hands. Let's go check it out."
They all got up and left the barracks. Bots were usually harmless, but occasionally they could be very dangerous. The last serious invasion of spambots had crippled the town, and it took weeks to completely rebuild. They went to the location Ghostar said the bot had appeared. Loki bent down and dug into the soil with his Dark Lance. "It doesn't look like it left anything behind." He said, straightening up. "Usually, hostile robots will leave something behind- a virus of some sort, or a bomb. But i can't see anything except freshly dug dirt."
"Good." Tunnel King said. "Alright, let's return to patrol. Leinfors, i believe it's your turn to patrol the east-" He was interrupted by a loud whirring sound, like that of a chainsaw. They whirled around. "What was that?" Leinfors asked. The sound was coming from the forest.
Loki held his lance up, its dim purple glow illuminating the grass just ahead of him. They stood in silence for several moments, then Loki approached. "Hello?" He called cautiously. Suddenly, from the depths of the forest, there came a loud roaring noise. The group backed up as several large silver machines emerged from the treeline, their red, soulless eyes glowing. "Spambots!" Leinfors called. "We need to destroy them before they get to the town!" The team charged into the fray, each fighting in their own style. Loki stabbed one of them with his Dark Lance, it's honed demonite edge slicing through the hardened steel with relative ease. Ghostar shot arrows at them, aiming for sensitive spots. Leinfors drew his throwing knives, and started throwing them at the machines. Tunnel King bashed a particularly large and menacing one with buzzsaws for hands with his hammer of banishment. The hammer glowed bright green, and in a flash of colored lightning the bot vanished, leaving no trace of it's existence behind.
One of the bots, a small, round automaton with a large orifice on one side, slipped speedily through the group, picking up spent arrows and knives and devouring them. Then it stood still, a red light atop an antenna blinking as it whirred. Aurora turned to look at it. "What's it doing?" She asked. Leinfors looked at it with increasing alarm. As the light faded out and the whirring stopped, it opened the port on it's side and a smaller version of itself walked out. "They're replicating!" Leinfors yelled to the others. "We need to destroy the spawners!" Aurora and Leinfors rushed at them, but they were too fast to be caught. Leinfors pulled out his radio. "This is Leinfors, calling all mods! We need backup, we have a major spambot invasion on our hands here!"
Matsu's voice was heard from the other side. "We got ourselves a bit of a problem here, too! They're in the city!" "Got it." Leinfors said. "Calling all moderators, everyone retreat to the barracks!" He called to everyone fighting. They stopped and retreated back towards the base.
"What you saw first was a probe." Tunnel King explained to Aurora. "It checks to see if it's detected. If you hadn't spotted it, the invasion might have been a lot worse." Unit One, another new recruit, spoke up. "What do we do? The things are all over the city. We're getting reports from all over the place, we're greatly outnumbered." Loki stood up. "We haven't seen an invasion this bad since Vardenhost." "Vanhost?" Tsuki asked. "What's that?" "Vardenhost," Loki explained, "Was a rebel from within the city. His goal was to either take it over or destroy it, we're not sure which. He worked as a spy, giving information to our enemies and allowing them greater knowledge of our defenses. When he was discovered, he fled, and raised an army of spambots which he used to attack the town. We thought he was defeated, but he's the only explanation for this scale of attack."
"Well, we've been getting reports from all over the city." Kelp said. "Maybe one of them could give us information about his whereabouts." Tunnel King nodded. "Alright, let's look through the reports. Anything that differs from the ordinary is a possibility. Let's get to work." He then picked up a large pile of paper and passed it around to the other mods.
After about 20 minutes of finding nothing(except for a report of someone who had built an entire stone building for no reason, violating several zoning laws, found by ExoticCharm), Leinfors stood up. "I've got it." He said. Everyone looked up from their papers. "Someone in the trade district saw someone who seemed to be giving orders to the bots. That's got to be him."
"Alright." Loki said. "We'll attack in waves. Tunnel King, Leinfors, and myself will strike first, with Nike Leon, Doylee, and Kelp clearing a way through the bots. Then, Aurora, ExoticCharm, Tsuki, and Charmander will come up from behind. Ghostar, Jeckel, Matsu, and Unit One will take the sides, clearing out the bots the others can't reach."
"Everyone understand?" He asked. They all nodded, and stood up. "Good. Now let's go smash some bots."
~~~~
They approached the location of the report warily, in the same order previously assigned. However, the place was eerily quiet, with only the wind howling to break the silence. Loki shivered. "This was where the report was, right?" He asked Leinfors. "Definitely." Leinfors answered. "I'd bet a bowl of pasta on it." They carefully took a few more steps. Then Loki noticed something small on the ground. He bent down to pick it up. It was a small metal object, with a curve ending in a large glowing red light. He looked at it for several moments, when suddenly, he felt a knife on his neck.
"Hello, Loki." Came Vardenhost's voice from behind him.
Tunnel King and Leinfors whirled around, readying their weapons. Vardenhost pushed the knife up against Loki's neck harder. "One move and i will slit his throat." He warned. Loki still had his Dark Lance in his hand, but didn't move it, as the knife was sure to be far faster than it.
Vardenhost laughed. "So, you thought i was defeated?" He said mockingly. "Fools. I can not be defeated." Leinfors stared daggers at him. "Why did you return, fiend?" He asked. "Could you not be content to depart in peace?" "Peace?" Vardenhost said, "You banished me, with the threat of destruction if i were to return. I hardly call that peace." "You betrayed us." Tunnel King said. "What did you hope to gain?" Vardenhost stopped and considered this for a moment. "I was rather unimpressed with the way you ran things. I saw a great potential in this city, one which you suppressed and choked with your 'leadership'." "You destroyed things." Leinfors replied. "You attacked people, summoned spambots, laid waste to the place. Did you really think that was an improvement?"
"Come now, we can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." He replied. "Once things were suitably changed i would have rebuilt TCF, in a rather more impressive fashion than the way you did. In fact, i managed to create my own domain, one which has grown quite well, if i do say so myself." "Wait," Loki said, anger bubbling up inside him. "You mean the town southwest of here, in the old forest?" Vardenhost smiled. "Yes." He confirmed. "You villain!" Tunnel King shouted. "You accused king Redigit of thievery!" This made Vardenhost laugh. "Yes. It was quite easy, really. Pretty much everyone there is convinced this place is the spawn of evil, all it took was a little push. And," He said, making a strange gesture, "A little support."
Suddenly, bots began appearing out of the darkness, emerging from broken buildings, alleys, and even trash cans. Tunnel King readied his Hammer. "You will not succeed! We will fight to our last breaths if necessary!" "Very well." Vardenhost said. "Do so." He quickly slit Loki's throat and escaped quickly, vanishing into the crowd of bots bearing down on the trio. Leinfors started throwing daggers at them. "Teams two and three!" He called. "We need help!" Almost immediately, the other Moderators entered the fray, slashing and shooting spambots as they came. Most of them were destroyed quickly upon getting close, but one managed to reach Loki, who was now lying on the ground. Groggy from loss of blood, he pulled his lance out and stabbed the bot in the knee, causing it to stop momentarily. Then a crossbow bolt fired by Ghostar felled it. She ran up to Loki and handed him a red vial. "Drink this, it's a healing potion!" She said urgently. Loki grabbed it and tilted the contents down his injured throat, and it immediately felt better.
Meanwhile, Tunnel King, Matsu, and Leinfors had gotten surrounded by spambots. True to their name, they swarmed over them, and as many as were destroyed by the legendary Hammer of Banishment were quickly replaced. "We need to get Vardenhost! He's the source of all these!" Tunnel King called out. Tsuki scanned the surrounding area. Then, on top of a building, she saw a shadowy figure. She aimed her bow at it and fired.
Vardenhost screamed in pain and rage, and fell from his perch, landing in a pile of overturned garbage cans. He was livid. "You can never destroy me!" He cried. "As many times as you kill me, i will rise again!" Tunnel King cleared a path through the spambots to him as the others held off the attacking mob. Then, he raised his hammer and brought it down upon Vardenhost. With a screech that rent the night air and a flash of green light, he was gone. The spambots slowly stopped functioning and deactivated. One became confused and plowed into a building.
The team stood still, breathing heavily from exertion. Then Loki's voice rang out.
"Hey!" He said hoarsely. "Little help here?"
~~~~
"How are you feeling?" Tunnel King asked Loki. "Better." He said. "Although, i've been thinking. I've been the unofficial leader of the guardians of TCF for a while now. I think it's time i resigned." "Resigned?" Leinfors asked, surprised. "Yes," Loki replied. "I've taken up a new post as personal advisor to king Redigit and queen Cenx. I've also found a suitable replacement for me." "A replacement? Who?" Tunnel King inquired. "Remember that report we got of Vardenhost? That was given to us by Safemanda. She will be a suitable successor, i think." They continued talking, and then left the room where Loki had been recuperating from his injuries. "Tunnel King," Leinfors asked as they passed a ruined building(which, incidentally, was not only the same building that had been reported the previous day for violating zoning laws, but also the one the dying bot had smashed into), "There's something that worries me. When Vardenhost returned last night, he looked different. Not just a little different, but completely different. Do you think he might be a rebirther?" Rebirthers were rare people that, when killed, could regenerate into a new body. "When we defeated him, he said he could never be truly killed. What if he turns out to be right, and we can't ever defeat him?"
Tunnel King was silent for a moment as he stared out over the city. "Then we will fight him," He said, "For as long as it takes, as many times as it takes."