The team trudged through the forest, their boots crunching on dead leaves, when the ground began to tremble beneath them. Zane's device beeped furiously, its screen lighting up with chaotic red blips.
"Uh… guys?" Zane muttered, holding up the gadget. "We've got company. And by company, I mean a lot of company."
As if on cue, the underbrush rustled violently, and out poured an unrelenting wave of monsters. They ranged from snarling, dog-like creatures with glowing eyes to towering, multi-limbed beasts with drooling maws.
Elena adjusted her glasses and groaned. "Fantastic. Just what I needed—another round of overgrown wildlife with anger issues."
Anji grinned, cracking her knuckles. "Let's make this fun."
Ken smirked. "Race you to 50 kills."
Simon rolled his eyes, already shifting into a massive, clawed form. "You're on."
The fight began.
Ken exploded into action, his body a blur as he charged headfirst into the horde. Monsters flew through the air like ragdolls as he plowed through them. One particularly brave beast leapt onto his back, only to be slammed into the ground with a deafening thud.
"Is that all you've got?" Ken yelled, punching another creature so hard it spun like a top. "Come on, I'm just warming up!"
Meanwhile, Anji unleashed a whirlwind of chaos energy, her hands glowing with an ominous purple light. The monsters closest to her were instantly sucked into the vortex, spinning wildly. One creature managed to avoid the chaos, only to get a face full of mud as Anji flicked a stray rock at it.
"Oh, look," she said with mock surprise, "you slipped. How embarrassing."
Elena, standing on a fallen tree, shouted orders while firing precision shots from a compact blaster Zane had designed. "Akamatsu, block their escape routes! Simon, handle the big ones! Zane, what are you even doing?"
Zane, crouched behind a boulder, tinkered furiously with a gadget. "I'm engineering! Do you know how hard it is to make a laser cannon on the fly?"
"Try harder," Elena snapped, ducking as a clawed limb swiped over her head.
Simon, fully shifted into a hulking reptilian form, roared as he grappled with one of the larger monsters. "Big ones? Sure! But could you maybe stop yelling at Zane? I'm kind of busy!" He slammed the creature into the ground, then smirked. "That's one for me."
Ken, punching a monster into a tree, shouted, "That's 30 for me!"
"Oh, you're cheating," Anji called, whipping a chaotic bolt at a group of smaller beasts. "That's at least two per punch!"
"Not my fault I'm efficient," Ken retorted, grabbing a monster mid-leap and using it as a battering ram.
Akamatsu, standing calmly amidst the chaos, raised a hand. The air shimmered, and the monsters in his path froze in midair as if caught in invisible strings. He tilted his head, studying them like they were art. "I think they'd look better upside down," he mused, flipping them with a casual flick of his wrist.
"Show-off," Anji muttered.
Just as the fight seemed to lull, a massive beast twice the size of the others barreled into the clearing, roaring so loudly that the ground shook.
"Oh, great," Simon groaned, shifting back into human form. "Who ordered the boss fight?"
"Not me!" Zane yelled, finally standing up with his freshly-assembled laser cannon. "But I'll take care of it!" He aimed the cannon, which promptly fizzled and let out a pathetic pew.
The team stared at him.
"Well," Zane said, shrugging sheepishly, "back to the drawing board."
Ken sighed and cracked his knuckles. "Fine, guess I'll do it myself."
Before he could charge, Elena stepped forward. She pulled out a small explosive sphere Zane had made earlier and tossed it casually at the giant beast. "Duck."
The team hit the ground as the sphere exploded with a deafening boom. When the dust cleared, the massive monster lay unconscious, twitching slightly.
"That still only counts as one," Anji said, grinning.
"Fine," Elena replied, brushing dirt off her coat. "I'll just have to kill more than all of you combined next time."
"Bring it," Ken challenged, as the remaining monsters scattered into the forest.
The team regrouped, bruised but victorious. Zane examined his broken cannon with a pout. "Well, at least I got some good data."
Simon raised an eyebrow. "You mean you didn't even know if it would work?"
"Science is all about experimentation!" Zane protested.
Anji laughed, clapping him on the back. "Next time, let's experiment on them, not us."
The group burst into laughter as they set off again, ready for whatever insanity awaited them next.
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