Fed up with this battle, Xord pounds his hammer into the floor, and the shockwave throws the entire party back- though Shulk somehow manages to keep his feet, sliding away from the round-framed machine. As he stares at the approaching Mechon, trying to come up with something, a sudden diversion staggers Xord, sidelining him- namely, some kind of heavy ether shot. Confused, the giant turns to look- and gets cold-cocked in the face by an equally large mining machine, piloted by none other than Otharon. In deceptively calm tones, the older man actually starts trash-talking the hammer-wielder, engaging him in a robot fistfight and actually dominating the astonished Xord, at least for now.
Shoving Xord off his feet, Otharon starts delivering a steady beating, calling to Shulk and the others to save Juju. Shulk tries to tell the grizzled man not to do this, but his response is just more insistence that the group hurry up, prompting Sharla to go after her brother.
As the medic sees to Juju, Shulk is torn, sure that even if Juju is saved, Otharon will die unless he can come up with something. Then he recalls what Reyn said, and looks to his friend, who is helping Sharla with her brother. He seems to drop into a sort of trance, looking around sharply- until he spots a crane at the edge of the pit floor, and gets an idea.
Otharon shoves Xord back into the central pillar of the mining rig, but the Mechon is starting to catch his rhythm back, and begins slowly overpowering the man’s machine. He growls out a challenge, asking if Otharon really believes himself capable of stopping the Mechon. Otharon admits that he can’t- “But I can do this!”
Retracting his machine’s right arm, Otharon slams the fist of it into the wall of the mining rig’s pillar, rending a hole in the metal and causing a brief fountain of what appears to be liquid ether. The volatile substance takes a moment to realize the impudence, and then explodes, knocking Xord back down and causing the platform that he and Otharon are on to come detached at the end nearest the pillar. As the platform rapidly bends and tilts out of shape, Xord begins to slide down the sloped metal and towards the ether river.
Sharla is shaking Juju gently, trying to wake him up as Reyn looks on- but the tall warrior looks to what’s going on and then tells her to leave the rest of it to him and Shulk. Abruptly charging towards the giant robot fight, he begins shouting to Otharon, heading over to give whatever help he can.
Briefly engaged in a game of ‘mercy’ with the anthropophagus, Otharon finally succeeds in shoving Xord (and incidentally the mostly detached platform) off into the river, the massive Mechon cursing the soldier as he falls- at just the same time as Shulk gets the crane moving. Otharon’s machine almost makes it away from the platform before it finishes detaching- but then starts tipping as a good half of its footing has gone missing, starting to topple over the edge.
Shouting to ‘hold on’, Shulk activates an unexpected feature of the crane, its arm whipping forwards and sending the pincer-claw of the crane flying towards the slowly-upending ‘mech...
