========================Before The Boss Appears==============================
Having taken cover under the platforms that Wheatly had been nice enough to move, Mongo took a moment to peak out and around her protection to consider the drones and the actions of her companions. Thanks to the white-haired teenager (
@Camleen), some kind of barrier was protecting the majority of the platform from the drone's fire. That certainly bought Mongo some peace of mind, as her confidence in the platforms above her was a little lacking given that she wasn't entirely sure what they were made of.
Regardless, with everyone occupied with returning fire and otherwise drawing attention to themselves, Mongo could take the full five seconds she needed to gather her magic properly before she ducked around her cover and took aim at one drone off to the right of the main pack. The sight of the M6G pistol was weird, but it gave her the view she needed to line up her first shot and pulled the trigger while casting Thunderstrike, a classic lightning enhanced weapon attack.
As a spell, Thunderstrike was a fairly basic Ravager spell, meant only to enhance a preexisting attack with a lightning element. In Mongo's mind, the true damage of her attack would have been the lightning element hitting the drone and maybe shorting it out, given the low-power of the spell. Instead, the drone took the M225 12.7x40mm SAP-HE round to the center of its mass and promptly exploded from the sheer force and caliber of the round; to say nothing of the lightning that coursed through its system following the round's impact. With a little whine of something akin to pain and agony, the drone fell away and disappeared, spiraling its destroyed wreckage far beyond Mongo's sight.
Mongo hadn't expected much, but she hadn't imagined both hitting the target and taking it out with one shot. A big old grin stretched across her face as she turned the weapon to another drone on the periphery and fired, only for an audible click to resound due to the empty firearm. Mongo pulled the weapon close and examined it as she ducked back into cover, confusion overriding her desire to deal with the drones as she tried to figure out what was wrong with the damn thing. The weapon looked fine...except of the empty cavity in the bottom of the thing.
To the credit of a person who had never really dealt with guns before, Mongo's realization about the missing ammo cartridge was fairly quick, but her response to it was probably not the smartest. Looking around and spotting her dropped cartridge, Mongo skittered out from the cover she had been using and scooped up the missing component with nary a glance at the drones above her. Satisfied with the recovery, she was halfway to getting back into her cover before she was struck by a revelation, perhaps sent by Etro herself.
If the ammo of the "gun" was what had enhanced her Thunderstrike so much, then she needed more. A lot more.
Spinning around and almost tripping in excitement, the teenager considered the mass melee and spectacle that was going on around her before she made the decision of a lifetime. There was definitely enough going on for her to grab more from the bag! Especially since she could just heal herself with a Curaga or two if she got hit!
Thus, as Moire (
@Epiphany) and David (
@The Wanderer) shot with military-like precision, and Gehrman (
@DrLucky1) and Fives (
@SorryTM) used their unnatural abilities and marksmanship to take down drones, and Van (
@noob13241) and Oliver (
@BazusoTheGrey) went full berserk with their melee weapons; Mongo instead made a mad dashfor the ammo bag and started fishing around inside of it. Drones exploded, bullets and lasers were exchanged by both parties, and yet Mongo crouched over the ammo bag and quickly stuffed more and more ammo for her pistol into a surprising number of pockets and hidden bags in her coat. It didn't matter how close she was to the talking-suit-of-armor (
@Epiphany), or how loud the child-with-the-long-rifle's weapon was (
@SorryTM), because once she was finally out of pockets to abuse with magazines of ammo, Mongo fished out a second M6G and stuffed it in her belt before scampering back to her prior position.
With her butt back in cover, Mongo took out the still-empty M6G and fiddled with it and its associated ammo cartridge before finally figuring out how to slide the thing back in, cock it back properly, and get the safety off again after she had accidentally turned it on when she had been fiddling with the gun earlier. Ready, willing, and just a tad blood thirsty, Mongo got back into position and began to both fire and enhance her shots with Thunderstrike, never once failing to be impressed at how satisfying it was to hit the little drones with her new toy.
Thus, as the fight wore on and on, more and more drones lost their lives to the onslaught of the other characters as Mongo maintained her position behind her cover, taking out drones along the edges of the packs that were trying to flank or otherwise circumvent the main line of fire that the others had created. Things were going great...until a new challenger arrived.
========================After the Boss Appears=========================
The sudden arrival of a new robot was not entirely unsurprising for Mongo, given how effective they had been against the drones. Thus far, nobody had really gotten hurt...and sure, they weren't really coordinated, but eventually they had to send something bigger and more dangerous, right?
Well, she got her answer when the funny-sounding man with the rifle got a blade right through his chest. Mongo should have been horrified, given the blood and raw callousness of the man's death, except that she really wasn't. It was hard to feel much fear or horror at injuries or death when she and other L'Cie could heal most wounds incredibly easily or simply bring back the recently deceased with a Phoenix Down or a singular Raise spell. The man getting kicked across the platform, however, irked Mongo given the sheer disrespect it illustrated for them. That kind of disrespect reminded Mongo of the crash site, and the way the Sanctum had played with her and the survivors of her transport for hours before finally moving in for the kill. So hung up on this fact was Mongo that she didn't notice that Alec's body was on a course for her.
Thus, Alec's limp body, impaled at one point but now airborne, was quick to come tumbling at her with the force of a haste-enhanced lobo. Much to the favor of the robot's plan, Alec's body managed to knock Mongo down, but thankfully it wasn't enough to knock her off the edge. Still, it managed to wind and incapacitate her for a moment as she had to extricate herself from the stabbed-man's body. Much to Mongo's surprise, once she had gotten herself out from under the man, it turned out that funny-sounding man wasn't actually dead, just rapidly approaching it.
With the robot temporarily distracted by the actions of Fives and Van, Mongo took a moment to crouch down next to the formerly, but still potentially, funny-sounding man and consider his general state. Definitely a punctured heart and a broken spine with Etro knows how much blood loss. Probably not long for this world…or wherever she was. Mongo could see the life beginning to leave his eyes as more and more of his blood flowed out from his wounds, as he had one in his back and one in his front thanks to the fact that his injury was an impalment and not a simple stabbing. Hesitating for only one more second, Mongo channeled her magic to her brand and shifted herself to her Medic Class, green energy exuding itself from her skin as she moved her hands over Alec's open wounds.
"Don't worry funny-sounding man. One little Curaga and you'll be…" Mongo's voice faltered for a moment as she tried and promptly failed to cast Curaga. It wasn't a problem of not being charged enough, or lacking the amount of charge capacity to cast the spell, it was more like she didn't
know the spell anymore. Confused, Mongo turned her wrist over and discovered, finally, that her L'Cie brand was not nearly as advanced as it had been when she had been in her prison cell back on Cocoon. Instead, it was now reset to its starting stage, though it was still blackened as if she had a Focus to complete.
"…What in Ramuh's metallic left kneecap?!" Mongo scrubbed at her eyes for a second, ignoring the fact that she had just rubbed some of Alec's blood in her eyes and generally onto her face, before looking back at her brand only to find it unchanged. She was definitely back to the start, which meant her Crystarium probably wasn't all that evolved anymore…which would explain why she couldn't cast Curaga...or Raise.
But, she had managed to swap to her Medic Class, so she had to have something…right?
"Alright, don't panic Sir. I can probably still cast Cure…" With an infinitesimal amount of focus, Mongo managed to get a singular Cure out, slowing Alec's bleeding as his flesh regenerated and his wound began to close. This was going to take forever if she had to use just Cure!
"Alright, small hiccup, but I need you to breathe evenly and keep calm. We're going to be cutting it close here…" Mongo didn't have any Phoenix downs on her and she couldn't cast Raise, so if Alec croaked she couldn't bring him back. That meant that all that she could do was lather him in basic healing magic for as long as possible while hoping he didn't lose too much blood too quickly. Her magic could close wounds, but outright regenerating blood was a little bit beyond her right now. Definitely more in the territory of Cura than just the basic Curaga.
Thus, as she cast Cure over and over again, Mongo could feel a cold pit of dread overtake her as she realized that she wasn't as invincible as she thought was. With only Cure, coming back from wounds was going to be tedious and time consuming...which meant she was going to need some protection to get this funny-sounding-man back on his feet. She couldn't charge her magic while casting it, so she would have to heal him in five-spell bursts and hope he didn't die in the process.
"Hey...uh...folks? Mind keeping that thing away from me while I'm working here?!"
The whole situation made Mongo nauseous with anxiety, and that was to say nothing of the memories and feelings that were bubbling up from her past in similar situations. She needed to focus on healing the man before her and ignore the fact that all of the Scotsman's blood and gunfire was bringing back feelings and glimpses that Mongo did
not want to think about that right now.