//------------------------------// // 387. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 2. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Moon Cell Realm, Cape, Dike Land, at the base of the stairs leading to Cape Castle, Square Plaza, Rider Totsugeki (Fish Frenzy Fish Girl) Vs. Pom Pawdore Lambchop (Priority Moon Cell Target)- Pom had two objectives here, repel Rider Totsugeki and protect the PLANT holding the territory. All Rider had to do was destroyed the PLANT to make everything that much harder on Pom. The two faced down between the fountain and the staircase with Rider swinging her anchor a few times. She was fairly slow on foot for a Rider, but her ability to magically summon animals more than made up for her lack of personal speed. It was of no surprise to a slowly inhaling Pom that she was alone in this fight as the APs were quite busy holding of the left path away from the castle. While the central and right paths were contested. “TOTSUGEKI!” With an eruption from beneath her, Rider was suddenly on a dolphin bursting nose first at Pom. Personally Pom thought that Rider’s voice was going to become grating if she kept shouting that, she exhaled and dodged the dolphin and swung the paralance for Rider. Only to miss as rider hopped off and brought the anchor around in a horizontal swing. Using the remainder of the Dancing Flame burst, Pom tried to bunker herself and put the paralance into the path of the large metal weapon. “Clang!” The anchor connected with the open Paralance, but Pom was definitively on the losing end of the blow. Pom had little idea how she was sent flying through the air, the portion of the ground she had bunkered on was solid enough and she had enough wool to soften the impact of her back suddenly slamming into a wall at a good fifty or so miles an hour. The Paralance was pristine after the blow and the back end of it had taken the brunt of the impact and had pierced the brick wall up to the point Pom’s back colliding with it. “I’m fine Dormarch, I’m just facing a servant at the moment. You and Dolly take your territories quickly, I can hold out long enough.” Pom mumbled slightly dazed as Rider Totsugeki stomped her way toward her as fast as she could go, which wasn’t very fast and even Rider thought so when she said that word again. “No, I can handle it and repel them, trust me.” “TOTSUGEKI!” Once again Rider came flying at her on a dolphin riding a wave of water like a Pokémon using Surf, the same one as last time and Pom was inhaling and slowly tugging the undamaged paralance free. Pom had at least learned that the Paralance was indestructible by the way it had survived the massive impact it had taken for her and that it was some form of legendary weapon according to Rider Totsugeki. She quietly released the grip of her wool on the chunks of street stuck to her hind legs after having been ripped from the ground by the blow and planted her hooves against the ground to get better leverage to free her weapon. Pom had to change her tactics, she could not afford to block hits from this fish girl, so Fleet Cunning Doe hit and run tactics with a side of Wolf-Fang-Hoof to disable her opponent’s ability to swing that mass of metal. Cow Kempo wasn’t going to be very helpful against a much stronger opponent unless Pom had time for a wind up and it would be stupid of her to try and wobble counter something so large. Huoshan Basic was still somewhat useful for the flexibility of the situation. Just as the dolphin was about to reach her Pom exhaled, pulled the Paralance free and jabbed it upwards as she dodged to the side so that the Dolphin slammed nose first into the brick wall in a rather and gruesome and painful display. Rider Totsugeki leapt off avoiding the spear as her Dolphin injured itself and disappeared into a quick portal, likely to heal if Pom had to guess after painfully taking itself out the fight for a short while. Pom knew it was going to be a short while, because she wasn’t that lucky that the dolphin was permanently out of the fight. Raising the massive anchor as she came down she swung it downward vertically at Pom with a wild and slightly angry look in her eyes. Rider really didn’t like it when her Mr. Dolphin got hurt! “Mr. Arisugawa!” Rider shouted as Pom spun away clockwise out of the path of the anchor as it tore a large hole through the brick building behind her along with rupturing ground in a fairly long straight line. Following Rider’s shout a seal popped out of a portal nearby. It went high into the air with an unusually colored red beach ball and Pom inhaled as she calculated something. The seal flipped spiking the ball at Pom. Pom stepped left once, angle the ball to hit the right side of the canopy of the open paralance and successfully bounced the ball into Rider, which promptly exploded and almost sent her careening over the edge of the square into the nearby water. Pom looked at the paralance wondering how it could be so stiff one moment and flexible the next enough so that it didn’t set off the exploding beach bomb. “Gah, no fair using Mr. Arisugawa against me!” As she said this while stomping a foot angrily, the seal disappeared back into the portal it popped out of. She was next to the left path and growled angrily, she pointed her right hand forward to issue another order. “Mr. Goshogawara!” Exhaling Pom, looked down and jumped straight up as a massive maw appeared out of the magic portal beneath her. She performed a perfectly split while raising her tail to avoid the many danger gnashing teeth of a large, heavily scarred, killer whale with a skull eyepatch tried to bite her in half. Instead Pom surprisingly landed her butt on its nose, she immediately raised her weapon high in both hooves and slammed it down into the whale’s chin causing it to flopped backwards and disappear into a portal. Landing on her hind legs, Pom steadied and readied herself with a wide eyed look and was shivering at nearly being bitten in half by a lot of sharp pointy spear like fangs that would have torn through her wool like butter. She had nearly died, had she been a second slower in jumping and got caught in its mouth… Shaking her head, it had occurred to Pom that she had just figured out at least one of the rules for what Rider could do with her riding summons. Rider could make them appear anywhere and attack at any angle, provided that she could see what she was targeting them at. It was obviously a really bad idea to fight Rider in water otherwise where she would have an advantage of summoning sea creatures that could really fight better than being exploded out of a portal with limited amounts of water. The rule was that Rider could likely only summon one creature at a time, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have more than one creature active on the field of battle. Pom would wait to see if Rider could involve more than one sea creature in the battle at a time and would try to stay in the plaza with the fountain, she could not afford to get knocked off into the water with this servant. “Sorry Mr. Gosho, but you were so close too! Do you think that Mr. Dolphin is the only way I can get around? Well I wouldn’t be much of a Rider if I didn’t have more!” Rider stated as she took a stance, Pom thought about Rider Horns and how Rider was a classification and narrowed her eyes. “Mr. Yamada!” What came out of the portal and what Rider rode at Pom this time had her wide eyed, a pink whale with a large glowing yellow star on its forehead that was at least twice the size of the killer whale that just tried to snap her in half, it was coming at her on a large wave of water. That was another thing, most of the portals tended to involve splashes of water. This would have been a much easier fight for Shanty at the very least with that in mind as she could manipulate water. Even Dormarch would have something of an advantage here, but no Pom wanted them to finish gaining more of a proper foothold in Moon Cell. Pom instead of standing there staring at the ridiculousness of having a whale magically thrown at her, shot forward at the wave of water under the whale and dove forward into it leading with a half open Paralance and shifting her wool a bit. The pink whale swept passed the fountain and soon disappeared, if Rider Totsugeki had been aiming at the PLANT she would have taken it out then and there. Pom had no way to stop such a massive attack and was likely glad it hadn’t been aimed at taking back the territory. “Huh, where did you… AGH?!” Rider Totsugeki took a powerful rising golf swing to her left kidney from the mystical weapon wielded by the ewe. Pom had gotten by Rider and behind her by swimming through the water, she did so by shifting her wool to being frictionless, as the wave hit her she pushed off the ground while in the water. This meant her wool didn’t absorb any of the water and left her relatively dry and capable of swimming fast enough to avoid the Mr. Yamada attack. So Pom used the shadow of the whale’s tail where the wave of water ended to pop up and over Rider Totsugeki. Pom really couldn’t afford to allow Rider to do that again and as she knocked the stumbling fish girl forward with a downward blow to the upper back. While Rider was stunned by the previous blows, Pom jammed the paralance forward and opened it with full force. This sent Rider flying forward onto their face and caused them to bounce off the ground at least twice so that they were more between the fountain and the central path leading away from Cape Castle. “Ow, ow, ow… how did you get behind me like that, you mean sheep you?!” Well Rider was trying to kill Pom so the ewe really didn’t care what she had to say and started forward at a slow pace on her hind legs and slowly picked up speed. “Dodomesazki!” Pom dodged around the sudden otter splashing out of a small portal while spinning with its clawed gauntlets held out and then did something to confuse Rider Totsugeki. She tossed her weapon up into the air. “Wha…” Rider couldn’t have known the legendary weapon was slowing Pom down. So Pom accelerated immediately and Rider went with a hasty swing, she missed Pom entirely as she learned to the left as the anchor came down into the ground and to her right. Using coiled wool on her rear legs, she sprang forward and slammed her right hoof straight into the fish girls other kidney stunning her again and lifting her off the ground. Getting her legs under her as the wool coiled, she launched a devastating upper left hoof to the girl’s jaw, while attaching wool to her left leg with her right hoof. With a sharp yank from the ewe’s right hoof the fish girl dropped her anchor and her body pivoted, she was summarily was slammed into the ground with the back of her head hitting the ground first. Pom, not believing this was going to be nearly enough for the tough girl, proceeded to brace her right leg with her left, spin clockwise one full revolution and then hammer threw her away from her weapon. “Wow… you’re a fast one… but you’re not going to UGH?!” Then the flipping paralance slammed point first into the fish girls head as it came down, bouncing of her skull, Pom launched forward using the wool on her rear legs again for a third time to intercept the spinning paralance in midair and used the vertical spin to bring it around it a horizontal flying low angled bat swing. Rider Totsugeki wasn’t a servant summoned by Moon Cell for nothing though, she regained her wits rolled under the swing deftly and immediately throws her right fist straight up into Pom’s belly. “YATA!” With a shout of anger Pom was launched high into the sky where she got a rather nice view of the Cape City as Pom tried to inhale after having all the air knocked out of her with a single painful blow. Pom was clutching at her stomach with her left hoof and she coughed up a slight bit of bile and blood before she started falling back to Rider Totsugeki, even without the anchor that blow had seriously hurt. Still she had the paralance held tightly in her right hoof as she came back down. Rider was already in the process of picking up her weaponized anchor, she quickly got an idea of how fast Pom was falling and moved to make an upward swing at where Pom would be. “You want to play ball with a spear, well let me show you my water polo skills!” With an upwards swing… Rider Totsugeki was thrown off balanced by missing Pom entirely. Pom quickly inflated her wool to stop for a necessary split second in the air and she tried to bring the paralance down on right top of Rider Totsugeki’s skull, only to be blocked by the anchors cross section and had to leverage herself sideways as Rider kicked the upwards before performing a second swing that narrowly clipped Pom’s chin and flipped her onto her back, the paralance was promptly flicked so that it was stuck point first into some nearby brick work. “You must have been quite some hero when you were alive!” As if Rider had already won and swung forward once, twice and then was about to slam the anchor down on Pom using centripetal force with her left arm. An inhaling Pom saw an opportunity to disable her opponent. “I don’t like being a HERO!” Pom shouted as she gathered her senses rolled to the side using the exhale of her shouted to avoid the anchor burying itself halfway into the street she bucked upwards with both her hind legs into Rider Totsugeki’s chest causing her to pull the anchor from the ground and stumble back a bit unbalanced. A wild look entered Pom’s eye as she dodged the anchor clumsily being swung down at her head, she then lunged forward and bit the inner side of Rider Totsugeki’s left elbow forcing her to let go of the anchor and start screaming as Pom crunched her arm with a sickening sound and a large amount of biting force. Rider managed to kick Pom away from her but the damage was already done, her left arm below the elbow was now hanging limply. Pom ignored the fishy tasted in her mouth and spat out the bits of flesh and some bone before she accidentally swallowed any of it, she started growling and her hooves started to glow slightly as she applied magic claws effect. “So you’re not a just any sheep, you’re like a Big Bad Wolf! Well I guess he would be the hero of his own story since he’s starving… wait… you’re not Mr. Wulf though, he’s male!” Rider Totsugeki wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, she hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t fighting a servant yet and that Pom was at least on par with one that didn’t have magic as a primary attacking ability. This should be worrying and immediately relayed to Moon Cell, but Rider apparently had other ideas. Rider Totsugeki’s battle instinct was better than Pom thought, even if Rider intelligence didn’t quite match up, for she avoided the two magic claw slashes as Pom went bipedal and surged forward by backing up precisely to just be out of range and then... “This situation is a looking a little bad, TOTSUGEKI!” Rider retaliated, Pom was knocked onto her back by the surging Mr. Dolphin, who now had a well bandaged nose, when he appeared to carry Rider. The dolphin surged past Pom and towards the right path edge of the plaza. Rider had grabbed up her anchor as she swept by it with her right hand and turned back to Pom as she shoulder it and reached the edge of the plaza while riding Mr. Dolphin on a hovering temporary blob of water. “When my arm heals up I’ll be back for round two, a jellyfish pirate never quits! This isn’t the last you heard of Rider Totsugeki, I’ll be causing you all sorts of problems for your plans to defy Moon Cell, just you wait! TOTSUGEKI!” With that Rider Totsugeki retreated from the fight in a large splash of water. The reason for her retreat was that she was about to be swarmed by APs, she was outnumbered and just took a severely hampering injury. She at least had some brain in her skull at least to avoid the Lancer Guardians when she couldn’t fight as effectively with a broken arm and they would have range on her. -Pom- … Closing my eyes I communicated with, Dolly and Dormarch, I managed to successfully repel Rider Totsugeki. I didn’t defeat her though. Dormarch was quite relieved to hear I made the servant retreat, but queried if she called herself Rider? I responded with a yes. The Rider classification apparently involved animals, vehicles or mobility in some way, shape or form, the given classification was known for it and there were a number of classifications involved in Moon Cell’s servants we knew at least seven of them. Huh, almost like the seven deadly sins. curious. The Rider could even be the vehicle or animal itself, which was terrifying if what I assume to be Rider Totsugeki’s specialty is fighting in water. All they had to do was flood Cape and they would gain the advantage, we also needed more of Moon Cell’s attention on us than just this… I sighed audibly and went to pry the paralance out of the wall. Casters of course used magic, enough said about that classification as Dormarch and I didn’t have to exactly worry about those apparently. We had anti-magic protection that would make any harmful magic bounce right off of us. If a Caster showed up we’d deal with it, everything else like Rider Totsugeki needed more thought… especially when she can throw whales at her problems. -In the waters of Cape City, Rider Totsugeki- Now summoning Moby Dick, I’m might actually need it… A blue shockwave went off and a portion of the right path territory changed over to the enemy forces as I got buffeted by the shockwave while underwater. Correction, I’m absolutely going to need it as the rogue servant has allies working on taking Cape’s city! I need to go for overkill, if the servant is trying to take even more territory, they were just distracting me from their other forces in the city! My personal programs, the Lancer Sahagins, are in position and since there’s more than just that servant I faced… “Sahagins now would be the time to show them what you’re made of!” I called from the waters of Cape. The Sahagins immediately started moving to retake the right path, while moving to reinforce the central and left paths. I moved to the far side of the city to rest and recover from the damage that was dealt to my left arm. -Cape, Central, Jeanne D’Arc- I was about to land the final blow on the third PLANT, central region had quite a large number of PLANTs, when my eye caught a glint of something. “Incoming!” I leapt back, as a green fish monster slammed their spear into the street where I had been and then spat a jet of water out at me that I narrowly ducked to the side of. Even if I were to destroy the damaged PLANT it wouldn’t cause a shockwave, which would only happen when the last PLANT in the area was destroyed and we took the territory. This is not how I imagined the first day on the enemies doorstep to go after passing through two portals into this strange world. “New enemy type, Lancer Sahagin! watch out, surface scans show that they are quite good at literally getting the jump on you!” Dormarch called out, then added on. “Also good news from the plaza, Pom managed to repel the servant, but they are still at large. These things are possibly the personal EPs of the servant that attack Pom, so they are more dangerous than normal EPs.” They were uglier too and despite the small number of them coming at us I could see how much muscle they had on them. Let’s see what these elite EPs are capable of then! I threw the banner and destroyed the PLANT, then surged forward as the Sahagin tried to spear me, it only grazed my right side as my Iron Defense move was still going quite strong. I Slammed my head against their chest and they went skidding back, but looked to still be doing relatively well despite taking a full Iron Head attack head on. That’s when the fairy, Curdle I believe her name was, blasted it with fire and its skin immediately dried out and it turned pale, looking both stunned and much weaker. I quickly took advantage by using Shadow Claw move to tear through its scales much more easily than the Iron Head would have, with my claws glowing with ghostly energy. “A water type that becomes weak with fire?” I stated with wide eyes, then looked to see Fighting and Normal Type attacks doing quite little to them, they were even starting to push us back. “They are strong against physical attacks? We Hakamo-o are at a great disadvantage here!” “They are not Pokémon, use different logic!” Dormarch shouted as he flash forward and jammed a tentacle into one of the Sahagin that were slowly starting to overtake and push us back. “Hold on a second, weak to hot and cold temperatures!” “Fire and Ice, so they are weak to drastic temperature changes, Ghost Type, Fire Type, Dark Type and any Ice Type moves, use them now!” I called out, not that we had many that could use fire aside from Curdle, but she was doing quite well with fending off the walking fish monsters. I quickly went to pick up my banner and started rallying the Hakamo-o back to me. “We will mainly focus on other enemies for the time being until these Sahagin are dealt with.” I at least knew that Ghost Type would be cold enough attacks to cause them quite a bit of discomfort as I just saw Shine tore into one a second later from behind when she erupted from the shadows one of the enemy was casting. A second later a Solar Beam hit multiple enemies, the beam weakened of energy weakened a number of them and pushed them back a bit, I had to thank Clef for being here. She didn’t have to endanger herself supporting this battle, but she still chose to follow us because Mr. Canard was here. Quetal and Curdle proved pivotal in at least keeping us in the fight. Quetal in particular was barraging every fish monster with shadow copies and this made them mildly vulnerable to physical damage. Ghost Type had more of an effect and I had Shadow Claw, I could still fight! “Hakamo-o support our allies, I have an effective move here, so I shouldn’t hold back!” I charged my banner with Shadow Claw energy and wielded my weapon to stab forward into these Lancer Sahagin. -Pom- With a yank I finally pulled the paralance free and tumbled backwards a bit, only to be caught by one of the APs and helped up. How strangely nice of them. I went to sit at the edge of the fountain and was alerted by Dormarch that they were now under attack by fish men programs called Lancer Sahagins, possibly Rider Totsugeki’s personal Elite EPs. They were highly resilient to physical beatings, but weakened drastically when it came to drastic temperature changes. He was warning me to be prepared as I might soon be facing an attack force of them from the left pathway soon. After a second of consideration, I relayed this news to Dolly. After a moment of silence, and currently knew Dolly was mostly okay from our connection, Dolly suddenly sounded ecstatic to know that these things had a weakness. Her board wasn’t apparently cutting it and having used Aero once, only to have so little effect meant she didn’t feel like using what little magic she had trying to figure out if Gravity would be effective. Dolly told me the fish guys looked like they’d resist the ‘gravity’ spell given how high they could jump and long falls didn’t hurt them one bit. The ‘float’ spell would only temporarily stop them from fighting. Good to know that Dolly was pacing herself at least and was thinking about her capabilities, knowing oneself as much as ones opponent would make a battle that much easier. As such Dolly was going to wait until she had the energy for an Aerora, one that she would make as blisteringly hot as she could get it. She had already used ‘Float’ a few times to protect Favela and Shanty from sahagins coming down on top of them with their spears, it was her cheapest spell for the useful effects it had and it was kind of her new favorite. Shanty was pretty much ignoring the Sahagin’s physical toughness with her magical cutting arcs, so that’s the reason the portion of territory they had taken on the right path simply hadn’t fallen back into enemy hands yet. It seemed Dodo’s explosive bread, if they could even be called bread anymore at that point with how Dodo made them, were quite effective at disabling the defensive strength of the Sahagin. He was helping out from above and was the reason that the territory fell so quickly, he was going to start sniping the PLANTs in central path before the Sahagin showed up to start causing problems. Favela was kind of getting a mixed bag as I connected to Dolly’s sight of what was going on over there, her Seed Bomb move was having some effect. Her vine whips were not effective at all. Using Surf against fish men sounded stupid to Favela and rightfully so, given water was the fish men’s domain. Swagger always worked on the Sahagins and made them quite sloppy in their fighting abilities at the very least, so Favela had that going for her. The Saber Knight and Lancer Guardian APs were having problems dealing with the Sahagin in a swift manner, but at least we had more to work with if we could keep holding the right flank with the central flank so embattled. Hmm… I got up and looked at the APs curiously. “Defend the plaza, I’ve got something I need to…” I coughed a bit, okay that blow to my chest from Rdier still stung quite a bit and I was coming off my spiking adrenaline. “Do…” We needed ‘fire’ power, well Ocellus and Smolder could help with the defenses… now if only Smolder wouldn’t shy away from me. Anywhere Ocellus went, Smolder wouldn’t be far behind anyway. I made my way up the stairs and shouted up to the parapets. “Commandramon, we could use a little help down here, do any of you have fire bombs?” That got me a curious look from the lizard digimon on the walls, the APs defending the castle were just loitering around doing little. “Also I need Ocellus and Smolder, they would be a big help if they came down here to assist in the defenses. APs can some of you please move to the plaza?” The bipedal computer things seemed to look at each other, then some of the APs separated and started moving down to the square to reinforce it. “I’ve got the incendiary, what do you need burned? My bullets and DCD bombs use Meramon data and nothing says firewall like real firewall data!” Well that was useful, I waved that Commandramon to come on down with a hoof. “If there’s a kill it with fire situation, there’s always at least one fire bug in any Commandramon unit that will quite literally have napalm ready for use… I’m surprised he doesn’t have a flamethrower like our CO Sami Soldier has a bazooka.” Another Commandramon said jovially. “Nice job fending off that servant, we would have helped, but we saw the writing on the wall… she was basically coded to be immune to bullets and we didn’t want to accidentally hit you or any of the APs holding the square. There was no way we were going to get close enough to that, ‘thing’, just to throw bombs at them without endangering ourselves. Whatever Servants are, they are far more than simply data and that terrifies us for some reason.” I was about to state something when I had a coughing fit and the Commandramon group gave me worried looks before looking to each other. “Medical help needed, here’s an Oran Berry, they heal biologicals right?” One of the Gazimon stated and I took the berry with a nod. “Wish we had more healing stuff for us Digimon, but we didn’t exactly have much time to get to the portal to get in on this counter invasion force and we only have what supplies we could pack on short notice.” I popped the berry into my mouth and chewed, the pain in my chest eased up by quite a bit. “Thank you, how is setting up in the castle going?” I asked while trying not to think about the battlefield as the ‘Fire Bug’ Commandramon showed up at the staircase with a salute. “It’s going, we’ve almost got things squared up.” The Gazimon said pleasantly and seemed happy to see me looking healthier. “Send Ocellus and Smolder on down when they are available, we’re going to need both of them for defensive reasons soon if we're to hold the plaza.” I nodded to Gazimon and motioned for the Fire Bug Commandramon to follow me down the staircase. So I told him why we needed him. "We got incoming enemies that are weak to fire and extreme temperature changes, I really doubt we have too many ways of creating ice so you're going to be a big help with the defenses as the enemy will be coming to the plaza from the left path soon." "Hold that thought!" Fire Bug Commandramon raised a claw, turned ran back up a few steps and yelled back to the castle. "Send 'Frosty' down here too, he has that Frigimon data that'll be quite useful!" A second Commandramon soon joined us in heading back to the square plaza at the bottom of the steps. It wouldn't be long before I got my first sight of a Elite EPs Lancer Sahagin and they were really ugly turtle kappa things with tridents. The Commandramon readied their guns in one claw and each of them were hefting their personal version of DCD bombs in the other as the Sahagin came at us. -Far side of Cape, near the retaining wall, Rider Totsugeki- "TOTSUGEKIIIIII!" I screamed and a giant mechanical whale know as the program 'Moby Dick' appeared, bursting forth through the dike wall. This sent massive chunks of stone raining down and it opened it's mouth readying to unleash the army of programs from within it to help me with the land battle. It was said to be far more dangerous than even some servants in it's raw power as a program, it certainly took up a lot of space and as soon as it freed itself from the dike, it would flood Cape and I'd have all the advantages with my aquatic units! Let's see the rogue servant top that! -Central region, Dormarch- "That... is one ludicrously large PLANT!" The others around me froze and looked at the whale head sticking out of the dike wall. "We have to speed up the capturing of territories or we will have to retreat to already captured territories when that wall give away!" "Agreed!" Everyone shouted and started fighting harder to reach the nearby PLANTs while the largest one in the distance was threatening to do what mom feared as it slowly started to wiggle it's way through the humongous dike and made a loud disturbing keening whale noise as water started to leak through the hole it made. The Lancer Sahagin were slowing us down immensely and we couldn't be stalled at a time like this, because I had a pretty good idea as to what kind of EPs a PLANT that large could generate. We'd need all the APs we could get to just survive our counter invasion in it's earliest stages. There must be dike repair and water flushing programs around here somewhere, or else the enemy servant probably wouldn't have done that so readily. Why the self damage to the local digital space we occupied would become quite highly noticeable to even Moon Cell, at least it would draw attention to us like we wanted. Mom was good enough to at least fend off the servant that Moon Cell sent at us on land, but in a sea battle... we'd be relying entirely on Shanty. We needed to properly defeat them and they were going to be a major issue here when the flooding starts, given they were a highly specialized aquatic servant the intention was pretty clear about how disadvantaged we'd soon be.