Splatoon Manga: CybeRun

Chapter 28: P45510N

💗Chapter 28: P45510N

Finally, it was Flip's turn to fight her robot counterpart. Despite the numerous challenges she'd faced before, the many counterparts and foes she'd had...this one felt different. Why was there so much pressure? Why was she more scared NOW instead of those times she could've been gravely injured in her own timeline? Was that it? Was being in an altered timeline where she was supposedly dead and replaced the true cause of her fear all this time?

Well, she needed to make a move soon.

Hey, maybe she'd actually ace this and be the first in the squidbeak to actually finish off her robot early!

Flip knew that there were other passageways she could go to and run, but she didn't want to leave her friends behind. Who knows what her FL-1P could do to them if she were to leave them, even though there was a small chance that they wouldn't do anything and go after Flip only. Guess her only choice was to fight, and that's what she planned on doing as she dashed forward with her roller in hand. FL-1P countered with a modified roller, but this was no big deal. It was like fighting Heise from before, where similar weapons clashed in a fight.

Of course, the hookroll had never been installed into the weapon pin Flip had been given, but that was fine. She ran in to attack her robot counterpart in hopes of getting herself prepared for a trait boost, but FL-1P dodged and retaliated by swinging her modified roller against Flip's back. Flip nearly screamed in pain as she was knocked to the ground, but used a curling bomb to sink into ink and avoid being splatted by...whatever weird energy was coming from that roller. Her back felt really tingly, and Flip hoped that there weren't severe side effects from whatever that attack was. FL-1P dashed over to where Flip was though, and Flip quickly sent out another curling bomb to move out of the way.

She wasn't feeling real passionate now, but hopefully that would kick in soon. She was passionate about using her weapons, fighting...adventuring...but it was kind of hard to prove that when her foe was immune or resistant to most of her attacks. For now she was just stalling by swimming around as FL-1P swung wildly at her in an attempt to splat her. Flip needed a plan soon, and the back pain was not helping. If she let everyone down now, she surely wouldn't be forgiven for quite a while...and that was when Flip realized.

She couldn't activate her trait.

She was too worried, too nervous, too shaky, too unable to pull herself together to become passionate enough about winning this to even spark something within her. Flip popped out of her ink briefly to try to get a roller swing in, but ducked as FL-1P swung their modified roller over her head. Flip then went for a sweeping kick to try and trip the robot up, still hoping there was a chance for her to win this. Naturally, her foot met metal and the loud CLANK further proved how un-movable FL-1P was by unassisted physical means. The robot then grabbed Flip's leg and tossed her aside, though Flip got on her feet and readied her roller again. She swung over and over as FL-1P kept partying each swing.

Flip and FL-1P continued to fight each other using rollers, but the ink splashed onto FL-1P wasn't affecting their robot build. Flip wasn't sure how to damage them at all, because this was metal, and metal needed either extreme force, heat, or electricity to mess with it. Flip could try charging her special if FL-1P wasn't distracting her, but that alone would be hard enough seeing as how she couldn't let any missed attacks from her robot self hit her friends while they were still out. Of course, she could still try punching FL-1P when she did the splashdown. It would hurt her hand, but the damage could make it worth doing.

As she charged her special though, things only became harder. FL-1P couldn't really get exhausted, and Flip was not about to stall for hours to try and drain the robot's energy. Flip's body still hurt a lot, and sometimes she couldn't maintain her squid form for very long because of it. She kept trying to knock FL-1P down, but the splat roller had hardly any effect in comparison to the modified energy roller. The two were glaring at each other after they'd clashed rollers, Flip huffing from exhaustion.