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Everything exploded in green light.
Enoch's golden mask's surface flashed momentarily, overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of the Omnitrix's activation. Around him, the knights recoiled, hands flying to their eyes, their carefully maintained formation dissolving into chaos as horses stamped and reared.
"SHIELDS! SHIELDS UP!" someone screamed; most likely the veteran knight.
Lasers hummed to life, searching for a target that should have been obvious. The boy had been right there, standing between the old man and the beast, his hand on that accursed device. The light had engulfed him completely, and now—
Now there was nothing.
The green glow faded, where Eren Yeager had stood, there was only smell of ozone and the fading sounds of energy discharge.
"WHERE IS HE?!" Anya's voice came out shrill as she searched for any sign of the boy. "He was RIGHT THERE—where did he GO?!"
The knights fanned out, weapons trained on every shadow, every patch of grass, every possible hiding spot. The ravine walls were too steep to climb quickly and the exit was blocked by their formation. The other side led back toward the Titan-infested forest.
There was nowhere to go.
And yet, the boy was gone.
"It's a trick," the veteran growled, his horse stamping beneath him. "Some kind of—of illusion. He's still here. He HAS to be."
Enoch sat motionless on his horse, his golden mask unreadable. Only his eyes moved, scanning the terrain with cold precision. The boy had vanished. The device had activated. But there had been no transformation, no monstrous form of what he was expecting, or any explosion of power.
Just... nothing. That's odd, or did the child transform to something else?
Meanwhile Ember's sonic flaps twitched as rustling sounds, making the vulpimancer look down at the grass, that was suspiciously parting on its own. Ember tilted his head at the grass as his nostrils caught something unexpected.
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Eren, for his part, was having the time of his life.
The transformation had rearranged his DNA into something small, grey, and incredibly intelligent. Cerebrus observed the confused knights while walking in the grass.
Twelve knights, he noted, cataloging their positions, weapons and body language. One leader with the gold mask—priority target. The rest; professional, disciplined, but confused by my disappearance.
Optimal strategy: …chaos.
The young galvan's tiny feet walked past some knight horses' hooves that thudded past him, their riders' eyes scanning meters above where he scurried. One horse stopped almost directly beside him, while the knight's boot dangled in between his mounted horse.
Eren looked up at the man's armor. At the gaps between plates. At the trousers that disappeared into those gaps.
A grin spread across his small face. 'Oh. This is going to be beautiful.'
Then he leapt.
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An unfortunate knight, another young man barely older than the one Anya had been forced to kill, with straw-colored hair and the beginnings of a wispy mustache; felt something brush against his calf and assumed it was a leaf. He continued scanning the treeline, his laser gun held at the ready, completely unaware that a tiny alien was now scaling the inside of his trousers.
Afterward he felt a tickle. Then a pinch. Then absolute pure agony.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
The scream tore from his throat, making him drop his laser gun. Both of his hands flew to his groin, and danced backward in a series of jerky, agonized steps.
His fellow knights spun toward him, weapons raised, faces contorted in confusion. All they saw was their comrade who had just flung himself from his horse and was now hopping on one leg, clutching at his crotch with both hands, his face a mask of horrified pain.
"Oi John, what's wrong?!"
"IT BIT ME!" he howled, his voice cracking. "SOMETHING BIT ME IN THE—IN THE—AAAAAGH!"
"What the hell are you talking about?!" the veteran demanded, urging his horse closer. "Bit you WHERE?"
John's answer was incoherent, a stream of curses and pained noises that did nothing to clarify the situation. He was dancing around miserably, one hand still clutching his groin while the other slapped uselessly at his own thigh.
"There's something—IN MY ARMOR—IT'S MOVING—"
The other knights stared, frozen between confusion and the dawning realization that something was very, very wrong. Gerlach's trousers were bulging in ways that had nothing to do with anatomy, a small shape scrambling beneath the fabric, climbing, climbing—
"GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF ME!" Gerlach shrieked, and began frantically unbuckling his belt.
Grandpa Arlet, still seated on his horse with his hands raised in what looked like theatrical surrender, allowed himself the smallest of smiles. "Well," he murmured, just loud enough for the knight closest to him to hear, "that's new."
The knight's eyes narrowed. "What did you do, old man?"
"Me?" Grandpa Arlet's expression was of pure innocence. "I'm just sitting here, hands raised, no weapons drawn. Whatever's happening to your friend there—" he nodded toward John, who had now managed to remove his belt and was hopping out of his trousers with desperate urgency.
"—that's entirely between him and... well, whatever's in his pants."
"It's a trick!" the knight roared, finally understanding. "The boy—he's still here! He's just—he's SMALL! FIND HIM!"
But John's trousers were now around his ankles, and something small, grey and impossibly fast was scrambling up his chest, using the folds of his tunic for purchase, heading for his shoulder. The knight swatted at it wildly, nearly clocking himself in the jaw in the process.
"HOLD STILL!" the veteran knight shouted, dismounting to help. He grabbed at the moving shape and his fingers closed onto something, only for it to enter into the button shirt holes of John's shirt and begin crawling at his side.
"IT'S IN MY SHIRT! GET IT OUT! GET IT OUT!"
Eren, now relocated to the knight's torso, was having the time of his life. He scrambled up the man's chest, avoiding grasping fingers, and popped out of the collar like a very small, very strange jack-in-the-box, and everyone could see it.
Grey skin. Large, bulbous head dominated by enormous unsettling eyes. It had limbs that somehow looked like a frog's own and a small body, no larger than a rat.
John and the creature were nose-to-nose.
The creature smiled.
And then it BIT HIM. ON THE NOSE.
"AAAAAAAAGH!" John shrieked. He staggered forward and crashed into the veteran knight who had been trying to help him, making the two fall down. The creature leaping free at the last moment and landing on the ground in a perfect three-point crouch, grinning up at the stunned knights.
For a frozen moment, everyone stared at it.
Three feet at best, and it wore what appeared to be a miniature version of the boy's clothing. And somehow on its back, pulsing with a steady green light, was the changeling device.
"That's—that's the BOY?!" one of the knights sputtered.
"Surprise," it said, revealing mouthful of surprisingly sharp teeth, the voice was pitched high but unmistakably HIS. "Bet you were expecting something bigger."
"KILL IT!" One knight screamed.
Lasers fired. But Eren was already moving. For something so small, he was FAST. He darted between the legs of the nearest horse, causing the animal to rear and scream, nearly throwing its rider. He scrambled over a fallen log, used it as a springboard, and launched himself at the next knight.
This one was smarter. He saw the tiny creature coming and swung his weapon like a club, trying to swat it out of the air. However Eren maneuvered in the air and landed on the knight's outstretched arm. Before the man could react, he was climbing again, using the folds of the uniform for purchase, heading for—
"AW HELL NO!"
And suddenly the ravine was full of panicked horses and shouting men and one very small, very fast alien who was loving every second of this.
Grandpa Arlet watched it unfold like someone had just been given an unexpected gift. Even Ember was wagging his tail in amusement, completely entertained by the madness surrounding them. Most of the knights were scattered now, half of them dismounted and chasing the tiny menace, the others trying to maintain formation while their comrades shrieked and hopped and slapped at themselves while firing blindly but hitting nothing aside from rock and dirt.
Eren was on a knight's helmeted head, clung briefly to the crest, and then launched himself at another incoming knight's face. The man swatted at him instinctively, missed, and hit his companion square in the jaw instead.
CRACK.
"OW, YOU IDIOT!"
"I WAS AIMING FOR THE THING!"
"THAT'S MY FACE, YOU—"
Their argument was cut short as Cerebrus, having bounced off a third knight's shoulder, executed a perfect midair flip and landed on the ground running. He was heading for the next target when a massive hand closed around him from above.
"GOTCHA!" the knight crowed, lifting his closed fist to eye level. "I've got the little—"
GREEN FLASH.
The hand expanded. The knight's fingers were forced apart by forces they were never designed to resist. His wrist snapped with a sound like a dry branch breaking. He screamed and released his grip, staggering backward as a creature that had definitely not been there a moment ago now stood before him.
Where the small grey thing had been, something new now stood.
It was large, not Titan large, but big enough, perhaps eight feet from head to toe. Its body was insect like with four powerful limbs and a pair of translucent wings that hummed with barely contained energy. Its head was dominated by four glowing red eyes and a long, sharp proboscis that could probably punch through armor. Even in the dim light of the ravine, a thick, viscous fluid was clearly dripping from its tail, sizzling where it struck the ground.
The knight stared at him. Buzzrot stared back.
"Hi." The creature's voice buzzed. "Thanks for the lift," it said, and then it squirted something from two of its disgusting stick like eyes.
A glob of green, viscous, unbelievably FOUL goo struck the knight square in the face. He went down gagging, clawing at his eyes, his mouth, his nose; everywhere the slime touched, it stuck, it burned, it SMELLED.
"WHAT IS THAT?!" someone shrieked.
"Organic defense mechanism!" Buzzrot called back happily, and then he was airborne, his wings carrying him into the sky with a grace that belied his bulk. Below him, the knights scattered, some still dismounting, others trying to aim their weapons at a target that moved faster than anything they'd seen.
Whenever Buzzrot weaved he fired a splat of goo in his wake.
"DIRECT HIT!" he buzzed happily, watching a knight slip on a patch of the stuff and crash into his companion.
His distraction had cost him a blast that caught him in the side.
Pain; sharp, hot and real; lanced through him. He staggered in midair, nearly falling, and looked down to see a smoking wound in his chitinous flank. It wasn't deep, but it was a reminder: he wasn't invincible.
"KEEP FIRING!" someone below shouted. "IT CAN'T DODGE FOREVER!"
Eren's response was immediate and visceral. He turned, aimed his tail, and RELEASED.
A torrent of green goo rained down on the knights below, thick and sticky and indescribably foul…but also dangerous. Those caught in the blast stumbled and fell, the sizzling blob having felt like acid on their body. One man went down screaming, both from pain and sheer overwhelming disgust.
"It's in my MOUTH! It's in my—BLARRGH!"
Eren allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. Then he looked down at the larger battlefield. Ember had came in charging at the unsuspecting knights still firing at Buzzrot above. Now it was two monsters against the knights.
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