//------------------------------// // 379. Enmity Swarm. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Pokémon Realm, Within Ironclad City, Canard- I was getting better at punching out these Enemy Programs with digital energy, I took down another Saber Knight and looked around and noticed the sudden odd change in their movements. “Sami something is up with their movements!” I called out to the lizard with a gun, she was currently covering my back and blowing through Archer Seraphs. “I think something is going sideways with this incursion!” “What?! Hold on a second I’ll track, their movements with the digivice after I’m done gunning these grunts down.” Sami continued to gun down our flying digital enemies and tossed a DCD Bomb that wiped out a group of Saber Knights, the ones with shields were a bit harder for her to deal with and that’s why I’m here. Give me any weapon and I’ll fight to the last. “Frizzle and Dazzle already got the last PLANT, but Moon Cell’s influence is already spreading, soon they’ll be able to drop more PLANTs than we can handle without sending a counter incursion ourselves to stem the tides of them coming through and we’re definitely not ready for that, the Steel Types might be tough and willing to fight, but they are completely exhausted.” A pause in the action made me look around, it was eerily quiet in the damaged city, I turned to Sami holding the Digivice and she had a curious expression on her face. “It’s a mass exodus, hundreds upon hundreds of them and they’re all heading… northwest? Why would they… hold on… getting a Digivice signal outside the city, Yggdrasil System information sharing activated?” After a moment of looking at the devices data, Sami looked up at me with a look of concern on her face. “Is it a trap?” I asked as I pulled out a sword from the scabbard, didn’t need this for the Saber Knights. If we’re going to be dealing with something more dangerous… well I haven’t exactly mastered using digital energy with the sword and my fists were surprisingly enough more effective at taking out the Enemy Programs at the moment. The Sword was given to me by the Steel Types local manufacturing industries after I helped save their manufacturing zone from an incursion, couldn’t get a puck pistol or a hockey stick, but a new hockey stick was coming soon at least. It would be made of the sturdiest metals this region could provide, until then this sword was for defensive purposes and very much needed. “No… I wouldn’t think so, considering the Digivice signal is reading as the one Pom and Dolly own, only there’s an oddity with the signal.” Sami responded as I looked over her shoulder as a mass of red bore down on the Digivice. “It’s definitely them though, no one aside from Pom can draw that much trouble to herself. Also I’d swear Moon Cell hates her guts with how many Enemy Programs it’s throwing at her and most of them are Assassin Reapers.” “What is it that seems odd about the signal?” I asked as things seemed too quiet now, a unit of Beldum floated over to me and Clefairy came running up to me with a smile. Good to see she was okay, she’s been a cheerful and powerful companion since she evolved. Beldum were Pokémon that resembled floating camera’s. The back flat end of their mostly cone shaped bodies were three claws. The front end had their heads that were spherical with single large eyes that were usually red. They were made entirely of metal, magnetic and were generally acted like robots, but no, they were biologically alive and could even lay eggs. It was a common trend among Steel Types to have tough bodies and they were some of the most technologically advanced beings on the planet next to the Psychic or Electric Type Pokemon, but that certainly doesn’t prevent them from having problems. Steel Types were slower and far heavier than most other Pokémon, the large ones s also with all the constant fighting, their bodies would be fine, but they would be almost too exhausted to move. “… There’s an active Digimon connected to the device, it might have some unusual implications.” Well if it really was Pom and Dolly, we needed to gather everyone and get over to the northwest side of the city immediately, before they were crushed by the swarm coming for them. “I can at least guarantee that it really is Pom though… Moon Cell seems to want her turbo dead from what we’re seeing. Who’s the closest to the northwest that we can contact?” “Shanty is in that direction making sure the Safe Zone lives up to its name, it’s not going to be safe for long with as many problems as we got here. Whoa those EPs are basically blitzing towards Pom.” This city has seen far better days and I was looking at the tall towers with lots of damage, along with the digital lines of Moon Cell’s slow attempts to gain a foothold in this world. We were only slowing it down, but we had done a lot to make sure it was as slow as we could get it. “Beldum unit, we need you to spread an emergency alert to everyone about the change in situation. Some friends of ours are about to be hit hard by the Enemy Programs.” Sami turned to the six floating eyeballs staring at us blankly, they all gained serious looks and their round heads bobbed up and down in acknowledgement. Sami looked down at the Digivice as something changed on it. “Pom’s Pokémon companions unit is already on the move to assist her, hopefully Dazzle will be able to get there before Pom’s group is taken out because that is a lot of Assassin Reapers.” -A few miles away, Ironclad City Outskirts, Pom- “Dolly, remember when you said how many there could be… yeah… that was tempting fate.” Dormarch stated dryly as more than hundreds of those Reaper things coming at us. “We got a lot of Enemy Programs incoming!” “If I had known she was tempting fate, I would have said something.” Well it wasn’t like any of us expected you to learn to speak dog Quetal. “Honestly, we have a good position right now.” We were on a somewhat big hillside when we caught sight of them coming at us from a distance, that and Dormarch was improving his range of detection. “How so, there’s too many of them and I think I can see far more coming at us behind them.” Which was an assessment from Dormarch that I was wishing we didn’t need to hear. “Spheal gather up and start attacking when they come into range!” The Spheal unit gathered in a line at the top of the hill, we needed to protect them. Sure they weren’t traditionally an artillery unit of Fontaine, but they’d do well enough in a pinch. If they weren’t here I’d be trying more for a stealth approach, but it would take forever to get close to the city with that many enemies around. “I’m going to move forward a bit to set up a trap field. Quetal, what are you and Curdle going to be doing?” “Covering you, we’re not splitting up.” We barely rated two units, we were horribly outnumbered and Quetal chose to stick it out instead of sneaking around the veritable army coming at us to get help. It’s what I would have suggested at least, no point in all of us dying when some of us could still survive this. “Our enemy seems to really have it out for you Pom, especially if they are sending this many of these Reaper things after you. Really doubt we could avoid them, as they’ve already spotted us. Also you’re right, this might be the hill we die on, but it’ll at least give us some ranged advantage. Now go set up whatever it is you have in mind.” I tested the wool on my body, I haven’t grown enough back to do too many big things, but I could at least fire wool based Thousand Spears from my front legs. That would be taking up a mass of wool for a slight mid-ranged advantage. Doing the Thousand Spears physically required me to put stress on myself physically instead of mystically. I immediately made my way down the hill as the Spheal stayed behind. Once I got to the Bottom I moved a bit forward and readied my throat for what I was about to do. Once I got far enough away at the base of the hill we were about to be assaulted on, I barked up a Bark Buster. The liquid magic blob plopped onto the ground and then I started moved horizontally barking up more of them, counting each one that would be waiting for me to remote detonate them as I planted them. I started to move back curve to go in the opposite direction while spitting up more. This was going to leave my throat a little raw, but I think it would be worth it in the end. “What does it taste like to bark that stuff up?” Dormarch asked innocently. “If you knew what coughing up mucus was like, then it is far worse than that.” I said hoarsely as a second later I spat up another one. “Yeah, feeling how it feels for Pom to do it, it’s really gross… useful and really awesome, but gross.” The moment Dolly finished adding her two scents, six ice elemental beams lanced out overhead at a downwards angle. Something Distracted Dolly from what I was doing and I looked up at the air to see more of those bow wielding Seraph flying above the Reapers and were coming at us much faster than the ground bound enemies. “Well dog, does anyone have any way to deal with that?” “You can do that Dolly, Curdle too.” My voice was getting all scratchy now and I still continued to spit up Bark Busters onto the ground in a wide area while slowly backing up, my replication of Oleanders dark magic explosion traps had worked fairly well thus far. This was using up a lot of my natural magic too and I wasn’t tapping my golden energy for any of this until I direly needed it. I was going to need to pace myself afterwards and use my wool for Thousand Spears only and would use my more physical capabilities after I used all these wads of explosive magic up. I would be once again abusing Dancing Flame like crazy, Dormarch was going to be upset about my health after this if we even survived. I just mentally sent Dolly the idea to summon a huge tornado using Aerora or using Gravity over as wide an area as she can feasibly manage to knock them out of the sky, maybe both in combination? Aerora to draw them in and Gravity to take them all out, she should be able to create a vortex like that. Curdle had Dazzling Gleam to hit a number of them if they got close enough for the magical flash of Fairy Type energy to hit them. Another spray of ice beams lanced from the Spheal as they continued to pepper our opponents at range, who knew how successful they currently were at taking down any of the things coming at us. There was a bit of a hill in the way of my sight to see how close they were getting. I had Dormarch moved up the hill to get an idea of how close the enemy were as I continued to spread Bark Busters until my throat couldn’t take it anymore. After a moment I tapped his senses for a few seconds and got a quick visual. My connection to Dormarch was quite a bit different from Dolly’s, but we still made it work. Right, now was the time to put in a retreat, I’ve done as much set up as I could. I wasn’t going to throw out my voice in the hopes that we could deal with it all in one go, I should give my throat a rest now and pulled back with Dolly, Quetal and Curdle following me back uphill. There were far more than those Reapers and Seraphs coming at us a lot more and we didn’t exactly have the ability to fend them off or run from them. Thankfully the other Enemy Programs as Dormarch called them, were much slower than the Reapers and Seraphs, so we were would be hit with waves if we dealt with them quickly enough instead of a constant bulk of them all at once. I looked at Dolly and sent her a mental message to try and deal with the Seraphs when she thought was a good time to do so. I was trusting Dolly’s judgement on this, her response was that she was going to need a quick recharge afterwards. Once up near the Spheal continuing to fire as much as the cute little beach balls could into the horde coming at us, I turned around and got a scope of the situation. I glared at our enemies and had a single grim sentence for the fight we were about to be involved in, these guys were related to the one that sent Dormarch’s body after me and I only had a few words for it sending more at me. “Bring it on.” We were likely garnering enough attention that if Shanty or the others were in the city proper they’d find a way to help out soon. “Uh, Quetal do you know anything about large metal birds that could be Steel Types?” Dormarch drew my attention to the city as specks rose into the sky were flying our way and Dormarch had better eyesight than I did as he could tell what those dots were. “That would be units of Skarmory, one of the more dangerous Steel Type Pokémon that can actually fly despite how heavy they are, if the Steel Types still have an air force around we might might get some help quickly.” Quetal called out and took a forward position in front of me as we faced down the hill. “Here they come, incoming attacks from above, ready up!” The Seraphs started by raining shots of sparks of energy came raining down on us from above, this unfortunately made the Spheal stop to avoid getting skewered by the hundreds of shots the hill was taking. I don’t think the Seraphs were even trying to be accurate, they were just trying to prevent us from dodging in a clinical fashion. “Uh Dolly.” I hoarsely tried to say as I dodged a stream of shots focusing on me with a leap to the left, there were some rare shots going after the others, but being the direct target was more to our advantage as I leapt to the right to dodge even more energy blasts trying to skewer me. “I’ve got this, trust me Pom.” Dolly said with a grin on her face as she adjusted her skateboarding helmet. I had to skip backwards to avoid becoming a pincushion and the Spheal were bouncing around wildly trying to avoid all the shots raining down on us, no longer able to concentrate on the incoming ground forces. What was Dolly waiting on?! “Almost there… come on.” Dolly was glancing between all the static Seraph and the Seraph moving closer to them to take up a static position to continue shooting at us, to the wiry Reapers charging along the ground for us. It was then that I figured out what Dolly was waiting for. “Aerora!” Dolly raised both her paws to the sky and managed to suck in a huge clump of Reapers, but not only that the large tornado also pulled in a large amount of Seraph too as it built up to a large degree and had quite a lot of them in the tornado’s suction. “Gravity!” The Reapers that weren’t sucked up, started moving forward again when the tornado’s grasp left the ground, only to be crushed by a massive splash of light cubes as the gathered mass of enemies from the tornado exploded against the ground violently. That took care of a number of Seraph, but not all of them and the Reapers were still closing in on us and my trap. I let them keep moving forward until they were at the Bark Busters nearest to us. I never thought about it before, but when did I become an army devastator or are these things just that weak? In the distance, I could see more different types of these things coming. It was like I drew every Enemy Program in the city here. The Bark Busters all ignited in a flowing forward wave of explosions that pushed into the oncoming, rightly terrifying, large horde of enemies. It at least pushed them back and off of us for at least a few more seconds before we really would have to start fighting for our lives in close quarters. Wait, close quarters… what if they couldn’t reach us? “Spheal, ice the hill around us…” Quetal’s voice got the Spheal moving to ice the hillside over with Ice Beams as I continued to dodge a few more shots of those light arrows from above. “Agh!” One of said shots ripped into the right side of my face making me bleed a bit before I closed up the injury with as little wool as I could feasibly put towards sewing it shut. Dolly soon leapt up on my back and her board was now absorbing a massive amount of fire coming for me, it was somewhat of a good thing that the Seraph were focusing a majority of their attacks on me. The more shots coming at me, the less that was going for the others managing to hold the hill. The Spheal managed to ice the hillside the enemy were coming at us from, but instead of stopping they kept coming. Sure a number of them slipped down or were taken out by flurry of ice beams firing down the slope as the Spheal learned to fire them while dodging, but the rest simply reversed the grips on the knives they held and started using them to climb the slope. They looked like creepy large bugs with how they were doing it too. They weren’t even trying to go around to climb the portions of the hills slope that weren’t frozen over, they were just coming straight as us or more likely for me. Yeah, I’m pretty sure this Moon Cell thing needs to be dealt with if I’m ever to survive long enough to reach Tambelon, since it’s going to throw everything thing it has at me and I had no clue as to why. Quetal was firing barrage after barrage of Beat up into the swarm climbing the ice up at us, the Spheals were continuing to pour on the ice beams, Curdle timed her Dazzling Gleam to knock the ones higher up the slope back down it and took out a few of the Seraph still aiming for me as well. Sometimes Quetal would even target the enemy up high in the air with his Beat Up attack and launch shadow copies into them. The flying upper torso archer angels were particularly fragile if you could hit them. I raised my right hoof and took aim, I fired off a Thousand Spears and the jet of air struck true and took a spinal tailed Seraph out of the air, it rapidly dissolved as it fell. Dolly was still blocking hundreds of shots for me and I was taking aim patiently with my right leg to shoot at the swarm of Seraph. They were starting to spread out to make Dolly’s job of protecting me that much harder as the angles their energy arrows were coming from were getting hard to dodge as I slowly fired back. I was still pacing myself, but I really couldn’t do much as I already expended a lot of energy to set that trap and took out a good number. It’s just that there were hundreds of them swarming at us and it was impossible for us to keep up with this many for much longer. Concentrating, I was making each Thousand Spears shot count as Dolly continued to clamber and hop around around my body deflecting energy arrows to the best of her ability. That was up until I felt shot go through my left hind leg and I crumpled to the ground in agony and quickly sealed the wound with the wool with a thought. I wasn’t the only one taking injuries, but I was the one that was being targeted to Tartarus and back. Something made me start to panic once I realized that our defensive position was missing someone aiding the fight in his own unique way. Where was Dormarch in all of this? -Where Dormach was in all of this, Dormarch- Just had to keep dodging and try not draw attention to myself, not hard to do as mom just took a hit to the leg and was getting a majority of the focus. I growled angrily at the Archer Seraphs and prepared for my retaliation that’ll give us at least ten second break in the fight and take care of those nasty things out too. Dolly was blurring around her, probably reacting to dozens of triangles, but she couldn’t block absolutely everything. I was paying attention to a mental charging meter, I was building up for the attack program Wild Howling. P-Wild Howling was barely more powerful than P-Wild Bark, but what mattered was the difference in range. Wild Bark would be used in a short melee range for a quick stun, Wild Howling would be used while you were surrounded by a lot of enemies and would cause paralysis in any enemy caught up in the attack. Unfortunately my body required a slight charge up time before I could even use Wild Howling… said charge up time was almost finished and I set up three code commands to enact in quick succession. Search Hunter, was set up twice in a row for if I needed to do it a second time, but I could skip and immediately use Wild Howling after either Search Hunter. I pinged mom and Dolly, to tell everyone to get down. -Pom- Dormarch sent a mental message and I blinked. “Everyone down!” I crouched so that my belly was touching the badly singed grass and Dolly held her board above us. Quetal had several small nicks from the energy arrows, dove uphill to press himself against the ground. Curdle just looked confused. The Spheal tried to cover their heads with their tiny flippers, ridiculously cute critters, but that might be a bit ineffective for whatever Dormarch was about to pull. With a flash and then a after a moment of hanging in the air, Dormarch disappeared in another one he appeared above the horde almost stepping on the unfrozen grass to get at us and inhaled. When Dormarch exhaled he let loose a bone chilling feral howl that rippled outward and caused the Seraphs above us to rupture and explode violently, the ones that were slightly further away that got struck by the shockwave froze up and fell to the ground to splatter in a splash of cubes. A mass of the reapers that were close enough to the howl followed the same pattern, those that were closer ruptured and those that were further away stopped moving. The ones outside the range of the howl were still moving for us however and climbing over the ones that were downed. Dormarch quickly popped back next to us and started to draw in a large amount of the light cubes that was considered digital blood. He must have expended a lot of energy to be drawing in as much as he could as he stayed next to me. “My body can’t handle the stress of doing that again too soon, not without a digital evolution.” Dormarch was supposed to be capable of that and I think he tried to do so once before, but now… he didn’t exactly have anything stopping did he? “Then why not do a digital evolution?” I asked as we were having less problems with Seraphs at the moment, there were plenty more on the way though with the rest of the Enemy Program horde that looks to be wielding swords and shields, axes, spears and plenty of other things. “Not ready, also I don’t know what I’ll become… do you want me to become a Machinedramon?” Dormarch asked with worry. “No, if you need to take your time to figure something out, then take your time. I’m sure we’ll... figure something out in the meantime.” My ‘no’ came out a bit strained, I didn’t want to deal with Machinedramon or Chaosdramon, but if Dormarch became them and was still in control of himself then I’d at least trust him to not kill me with all that power. I was a little wary after what happened to Frizzle when she became Growlmon Normal. I said as the first reaper got onto the grass and lunge for me, I was up on my hind hooves and deflected its attempt to stab me with its left knife using my right hoof and leg to twist it away from me with a quick grapple. It tried to swing around its other arm from right only for Dolly block it, as she was still clinging to me and hadn’t let go. Balancing on my injured left hind leg and launched a right thrust kick straight into its chest to send it falling back into the horde of Reapers, the ones that were paralyzed were slowly regaining the ability to move and the ones that were still moving were about to hit us like a tidal wave. “Guys, whatever Dormarch did is wearing off.” Curdle unleashed a Dazzling Gleam to push the horde back slightly. The Spheal were continuing to attack, but they were tiring out, I think they had done the most damage out of all of us and even more than that. The little guys were truly troopers and deserving of their title as a Fontaine Special unit. “Pom, we’re about to get covered here, what do we do?” Trying to find the words for Quetal as his claws tore into a Reaper that started rushing me once it climbed up to the grass, I couldn’t think of anything. “Does anyone have anything to randomly pull out of your backsides?” In the next ten seconds of fighting I tore the head off of Reaper and stabbed the next with its own knives before putting it back in the horde with a Dancing Flame empowered kick. “You could all just leave me… here…” The response was immediate, but everyone yelled at me. “NO/SPHEAL/NOT HAPPENING/MOM/REALLY POM?!” They all shouted, even the Spheal looked upset when they heard me try and suggest they abandon me to all of this. “Why are all of you looking to me for answers here, this situation is rapidly devolving and… Rrrrraghh!” I pausing to slash out two magical claws and drained myself further shredding three knife wielding Reapers apart entirely mid leap, there was a bit of a golden glow on the second slash and I looked at my right hoof to see a slight bit of gold seeping upwards and mentally crushed it from happening. That means I was pressing my magical limits already and started slipping into sacrificing outright. “I have none that are good options where I don’t make a sacrifice, at best we can fight and hold out for those Skarmory to hopefully do something before we all die!” Curdle continued to use Dazzling Gleam to push them back, but even that was failing as more and more Reapers were surging at us. Dormarch fired off several Retrieval barks and at best was delaying the inevitably, because those Skarmory were nowhere close to reach us in time. Another reaper charged in as I inhaled and then exhaled to tear off its right arm with both my hooves and then spun about to whip its one eyed head off with its own limb. Even then its left arm went to stab me and missed before Dolly tore it in half vertically with the left edge of her skateboard after leaping up and flipping forward once. “Charge me, we need it!” Yelled Dolly as the next wave of Seraph started firing on us, the wave of shots thankfully fell short of us as they weren’t in range, but it was close enough to be worried about. I stomped my right hoof down on the board and I heard Dolly whimper with the impact, but she stayed standing. “Aerora!” The tornado pushed the mass of the Reapers away at the very least and took chunks of ice with it they tore into the numbers inside the swirling winds, but the arriving Seraph simply avoided the massive forward moving tornado and Dolly was rubbing at her head. There’s a reason we weren’t actively constantly charging her up and having her constantly cast spells, we discovered it long ago that while Dolly can cast a lot of spells in a short time, but it’ll build up exhaustion exponentially between charge ups to keep being rapidly charged up and casting. There was a whistling noise and then the entire tornado lit on fire and explode taking out the smaller hill next to ours. Whatever that was it bought us some time. Ten second later, another whistling noise was heard and then a group of Seraph were blasted out of the air. What had done that? That’s when I saw fast flying shadow shooting overhead and swerved around to come at us. There was a half formed smile on my face. Another part of me was horrified she made it here in time to get swarmed with us. It was Shanty and Dodo, and they had come from… the southwest? Must have swung wide to avoid the swarming Enemy Programs and reach us. Also… was Dodo always that big? The flying metal ostrich swooped down and then seemed to be coming for a landing, only it overshot our position and Shanty leapt out, also not coming for our position. In fact it looks like she was going to dive into a lot of trouble. “Glad to be seeing you Pom!” Shanty shouted as she passed by falling back first onto the slope of the hill to skid about half a foot before she immediately curled up into a ball of rapidly spinning death via the arcing blades that created a protective force field around Shanty, once she hit the bottom of the slope she started bouncing through the mass of reapers. Her Bouncing Blades technique had certainly improved quite a bit as it became a full on protective field of selective cutting force, because Shanty wasn’t cutting into the ground as much as she was the Reapers. They couldn’t even get a knife near Shanty before she shredded through hundreds of them with each bounce in seconds, but I doubt Shanty could do that for too long without getting dizzy. While Shanty was assisting us there, Dodo floated backwards and up with jets of flame coming from his feet until he was hovering above us. He opened his beak and fired out something black with orange colored cracks in it. That was what making an odd whistling sound that had Dormarch and Dolly wincing before it exploded into another group of Seraph. Dodo warbled merrily at me while hovering in place with his wings spread out protectively above us and giving off a strange humming noise, this was what I could vaguely hear before he fired off another whistling explosive thing. I silently wondered what kind of pastry could do that and what was my life that I was thinking about that more than the battle that was currently going on? In any case Shanty and Dodo weren’t going to be enough alone, even as Shanty tore through swaths of enemies. “Blade Storm!” Popping out of her spinning form while spreading all four of her hooves, Shanty created a spherical explosion of cutting arcs that blasted everything away from her in the general vicinity. I could really see the use of such a deadly move in this situation, but she better not do that around friends or allies. She immediately started dodging, deflecting and deflecting attacks as she quickly making her way back towards us and slashing her way through hordes of Reapers while dashing in a zigzagging pattern. Soon she was up here on the hill with us, breathing and laughing merrily as she nuzzled up against me. “Am I being glad to be seeing you Pom!” Yeah, when the sword, axe and spear guys were almost upon us as well Shanty. I only knew the axe ones were Vikings. “Those Assassin Reapers are being the worst of them, they be able to fight without a head or most of their body really. You be drawing every single Enemy Program in the city to you and they be leaving all their PLANTs defenseless, how did you be doing that?” “How else, something is trying to kill me again, it must be quite advantageous to be so hated I guess.” My flat delivery made Shanty hug me. “At least it’s a good thing for the city, but not so much for me!” Still, glad to see her and I hugged her back, I’m surprised she even made it back up the hill in one piece after she lost the momentum from her Bouncing Blades attack in the middle of the swarm and had to drop it. “Guys, now isn’t the time for feelings and hugging here!” Quetal stated as he fended off three attackers expertly and performed a flipping Aerial Ace that mimicked Shanty’s Blade Storm somewhat to shred them to cubes of disappearing light. “Do you have any ideas for how to save this situation Shanty?” “Yeah, more be coming to help, we just be needing to hold out for a bit.” Well that’s good to know, you were mostly fresh and in the city apparently. It was probably safer there than here. “Dry powdered sugar is being a thing according to both Smolder and Ocellus, they be warning me about taking cooking classes with a pony named Pinkie Pie… in fact, that is being why Dodo can even be making volcanic bread loaves. They are being stronger than TNT and that is being an awesome thing to know! Also to be answering your questions ahead of time, Dodo be eating a lot of metal when we got here, he’s apparently been needing it for a while.” “I’m so far beyond questioning the things that come out of Dodo’s beak anymore…” Despite my tired resignation, at least Dodo was covering us from the Seraphs. I brought up my hooves and Shanty took up a position next to me, I lunged forward and slapped my left hoof into the eye of a Reaper and then retreated it before the thing could stab me in my extended leg. “Just don’t die!” “I can be doing that!” Shanty stated cheerfully as she tore down several Reapers like a reaper herself when she brought her cane scythe out and around into the fight with an impressive flourish. “It’s you I’m worried about! What’s with that bit of gold on your… that’s your wool? Is that being Dormarch?! Hey, Dormarch, nice to be seeing you back among the living!” Shanty became somewhat concerned the ring of gold wool above my right hoof and then got distracted by the fact that Dormarch was protecting the Spheal so they could continue to unite their attacks against the swarm. “Kind of busy here Shanty, we'll talk later!” Dormarch whined as he continued to blast away with Retrieval Bark at the Seraphs and Reaper trying to target me or the Spheal that were keeping a majority of the ground forces off us by icing them over.