//------------------------------// // 391. Dammed if you do or don’t pt. 6. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Moon Cell Realm, Cape City, Central Path, halfway point, Jeanne- A large shadow appeared and… the Commandramon on their vehicle popped out with three of those PLANT things, it looked like it could carry four. Wonder what made them came back so soon. The wheels soon popped out of the vehicle and it rolled forward away from the wall of water as six of them opened up on the several jellyfish that popped out of it after them. “You know what to do, get those to the castle, give those lazy Gazimon something to work on!” Sami called out and the Commandramon drove, before she turned to me and Canard. “Keep holding this point until we need to retreat, we’ll explain later why we’ll be retreating.” “Where’s Pom and some of the others?” Canard question was met with a quick grimace from Sami. “They have the most dangerous job at the moment, but the risk will be worth the effort. We’re not taking the territories within the larger enemy territory, they’ve given us an opportunity to do something much worse to them than fight for small territories while they are at a major advantage.” This was intriguing to hear Sami. This was said to be a suicidal mission at the outset, but nobody has died yet and this situation can be turned around? I looked up at the sea walls surrounding the territories in the city that we held. I held no illusions that we’d get too many victories without putting our spines into it. “It’s going to take Dormarch marking the PLANTs for us to pick up while he and Pom’s group will be quite busy distracting that whale and the servant. The waters are full of enemies, we don’t have the numbers or even capabilities to take them all on. So we’re going to follow Shanty’s suggestion and make a work around. They’ll distract while we pick up the PLANTs and bring them back to the castle.” We’re following the goat’s suggestion? Isn’t she a bit young to be having ideas worth following in a war situation? I held my tongue, until I saw the end results and would continue the maintaining a defensive posture. I would argue later, I wasn’t the one going into the waters with the enemy that had the environmental advantage like Water Types. We were doing pretty well so far, given we hadn’t been immediately crushed under a swarm of constant inevitable death. I was positive I would even see Valora again if I fight hard enough, thankfully there were no more of those Sahagin. -Left Path, flooded zones, Pom- All we had to do was swim around and draw attention to ourselves and then keep it, the digivice would automatically mark the locations of the inactive PLANTs for Sami’s group to pick up. Swimming up to the corner of a building I poked my head around it and looked out into the open waters in the street next to the huge black ocean of open waters. There was so much wide open space it was a little hard for the enemy to cover everything, but eventually they would have the numbers to do so. I’m fairly certain the open waters in the actual sea around the city were even worse in EPs numbers. The constant sunlight barely reached this far down. I spotted the glowing jellyfish and motioned to Rokusho, he nodded and moved out. He circled around through some building, snuck up on it and punched it with his explosive fist blasting it apart and then immediately started coming in our direction as it attracted a group of Caster Eels disturbed by the sudden destruction of a nearby EP. He was far stealthier than I would expect. As they were about to reach Rokusho, Pepper Cat popped out of an alleyway and destroyed all of them instantly with a blast of electrical energy that lit up the waters to an insane degree. None of the energy even went close to Rokusho at al as it fried the Caster Eels. The Caster Eels were an odd bunch, given that the ‘Caster’ designation had something to do with magic or manipulating territory. They were responsible for turning the surrounding cityscape into seabed, coral and seaweed, but they also had a rather nasty ability with the ability to pump magic into a target or drain it out completely. They’d pump it into someone like Dolly and she’d die from magical overload and the explosion from that wouldn’t be pretty, they suck it all out and she’d have been rendered incapable of using magic for a while. Things that don’t have magic would naturally be weak to such a tactic, so Caster Eels had a generally dangerous ability either way, but I doubt they’d want to mess with anti-magic and I didn’t want to find out if they would explode in my face or not. The Eel that had went after me previously had been set to pump me full of energy, which had confused Dormarch for a bit. Up until he explained it to me that he finally sorted through the coding of what Caster Eels could do. I had to explain to him that an energy manipulator was a major problem to deal with, thankfully they couldn’t do something like that at range. Not to mention they were the main reason the environment was changing so drastically in Cape City into a sea floor in the sea flooded sections. Apparently ‘Territory Creation’ came with a lot of applications in its usage and Dormarch could do something similar to the Eels to make a territory his own, though the way they did it was different. We soon saw a massive shape moving in our direction, the shadow as very much familiar to us now. Showtime Dormarch, let’s see if we can do something to this monster. Dormarch nodded as I let him wrap my right leg in his left tentacle and stuck my wool to his back for good measure as we prepared to swim up and draw its attention. Rokusho gestured to Pepper Cat and they quickly evacuated the area, they were a bit slow in water but the two digi-bots were no less lethal for it up close. Shanty and Dodo were also getting out of the way, Dodo could thankfully act as a mobile oxygen source for Shanty between short skirmishes. Didn’t exactly discover that Dodo could do that until recently, but I’m guessing he adapts to Shanty’s needs as most machines on Elhorn seemed to regular adapt to things in their surroundings. Dormarch queried if I was sure about what we were about to do, but I reassured him we needed to face it eventually and we had to draw it and the servants attention off of what the Commandramon, Pepper Cat and Rokusho would be doing for a bit. Dodo and Shanty were going to be supporting us if we got into trouble. Keeping the whales attention would be easy enough, I would be drawing every EP in the area to kill me from miles away and the priority kill order made it all too easy to be a distraction. I hated how my life was going in so many ways as this unfortunately meant we were about to set off a frenzy of hundreds of aquatic EPs to come after us all at once. The frantic swimming around would at least let us mark the locations of the inactive PLANTs for everyone else to collect and we’d be getting a lot of exercise, if we survived the several miles of underwater swimming against things that were bound to be as fast or faster than Dormarch is in the water. We’d swim around the left path and on to far lower edge if the city passing by the docks and then would start back up the down path right path back towards our AP held territory. Provided we couldn’t go back up the right path, we’d go through central. We’d be using alleyways, buildings, coves made by the Caster Eels and more to avoid being trapped or caught in a dead end. At least the Digivice could communicate the surroundings to Dormarch via making a holographic display in front of him. Unicorns could create visual images out of light, so it wasn’t an entirely unknown phenomena to me and didn’t surprise when I first saw it back on Dolly’s home world. Once the whale closed in on us, I patted Dormarch on the belly with my left hoof and pointed upwards, he meekly nodded and then started ascend and I helped by kicking with my hind legs and used my left hoof to add momentum to the both us. We were out in open water above what used to be a city and was now more like an underwater jungle maze that was a mixture of buildings and reefs now. The red sweeping light continued to look downwards and I decided to get in quick shot. “RrrrrrRRRRRRRrrgggg…. yip!” The Bark Breaker vibrational soundwave flew out of the bubble of protective wool around my head and fluctuated through the water before striking the deadly whale. The vibrations caused what amounted to a minor hairline crack in the things metal skin, one that was barely an inconvenience to something of its size. The metal whale roared, most likely drawing the attention of every sea based EP from miles around. I was blinded by the pair of red lights from its eyes as they focused directly on us. I grinned and waved with my left hoof at it in a very shy manner and mentally told Dormarch that we had inexorably gained its attention. Dormarch swerved and started pulling my downwards as the whale came towards us at a slow speed, a speed that was rapidly picking up as it opened its mouth. I looked back and saw hundreds of rotating teeth as its mouth started creating a vortex that was threatening to suck us up into it. I turned back forward and helped Dormarch with swimming downwards with all the strength I could must to not get sucked into that. Fear of being turned into chunky salsa was a fairly powerful motivator. We managed to reach the streets and started to slow down as the vortex got close to us, I managed to get a hoof on the building and fought against the currents sucking us towards that massive mouth and pulled Dormarch helped pull us into building. That’s when Rokusho and Pepper Cat unleashed the trap, we thought we could fill the water with ‘DCD Bomb: Water Mine Modification’ and the mines would surround the whale to damage it from the outside slightly with a remote detonation. In this case the outcome would be a little better as the mines would be far more effective than we could have hoped for as the whale started immediately sucking them up when they started floating out of the various buildings. Ten Commandramon making one explosive each of the same make that could be remotely detonated by one signal over the course of a couple of minutes when they could make them every ten seconds? Five hundred or so water mines were currently moving to clog up the monsters mouth as it continued to inhale them all. Dormarch was waiting until the mass of them was inside the whale and then hit the detonation signal, a series of muffled explosions went off in the mouth of the whale. The whale stopped moving forward and thrashed in place, Dormarch made a gesture to Rokusho and Pepper Cat to get ready to move the PLANTs we already detected in this area and motioned for Dodo to get ready to follow us with a paw. I could see Dodo’s eyes bob in acknowledgment as he was taking cover in a nearby building where we could see him. Afterward we were quickly off to the races while the whale was still groaning from the belly full of explosions, which didn’t seem to do much to damage it heavily. Dormarch launched out from the building we took cover in and we were heading for the far side of Cape along the path and passed straight under the whale that was quickly regaining composure. Once it did it started shining its lights around in a tight circle turning until it turned and caught sight of us swimming away down the street behind it. The reaction as immediate as the Berserker Sharks shadowing it immediately started coming after us at incredible speeds. Dormarch would not be able to out speed them, not with me clinging to him, but outmaneuvering was still likely as Dormarch performed a ninety degree sharp right and I kicked off the wall to push is further down the alleyway as one of the sharks got stuck at the entrance. Large, fast, terrifying and refused to die, we were most certainly not fighting Berserker Sharks on their home turf! We didn’t want the enemy to lose sight of us, but we also didn’t want to stop moving as the EPs in the region were going to swarm us. To that end at least ten Caster Eels started to flow into the Alleyway from above, coming at us with fangs bared. I swiped out with my left hoof firing off a magical wolf claw to fend them off and destroy a few of them with the swirling current of claw slashes. This didn’t stop the Knifefins from almost skewering us from the sides as we crossed an intersection of alleyways and we had to quickly figure out something as we didn’t want to get cut off from moving around. Any moment to stop and fight was giving a chance for the enemy to set up our doom by surrounding us with no wiggle room. A large school of Knifefins showed up at the end of the alleyway, Dormarch quickly fire a Surge Projector from his right tentacle and it blew through them all as the current of energy bounced between them and blew them apart. This allowed us to get onto a side street and swim up for a moment to get our bearings, I could see the far side of the city in the distance and we were still heading the right way. Looking behind us, a pair of unhappy red lights started shining down upon us as we swam for and I started kicking to help us pick up speed and urgently got Dormarch to take us back down into the buildings and alleyways. We quickly swerved right into an alleyway as a large pack of Assassin Jellies swarmed at us from head, Dormarch started picking up speed as we continued down straight into enemy territory with trouble all around us as the sea came alive with movement that wasn’t just the sharp coral or the seaweed. I hoped Shanty was being discreet with following us. -Sami- “Say can a number of you APs go help pick up the PLANTs at these locations while leaving some other for the defense?” The AP nodded to me and then simply walked into the wall of water and started swimming, the other APs from the other defensive territories started going into the flood zones too to scout and find our targets. “We’re going to take the right side, while the APs help Rokusho and Pepper Cat deal with the PLANTs on the left.” There is a lot of enemy activity out there, the APs are not coming under assault as all the EPs started surging towards where I suspected Pom to be. There was also the fact that the map my Digivice was showing was lighting up with various inactive PLANTs, so I gave the coordinates out to the APs. As we slowly moved into and subsequently through the water, there was no enemy presence which was disturbing how silent everything was. We eventually came upon our first PLANT to pick up with no one around to catch us loading it onto our vehicle. The vehicle could carry about four at a time and we could personally carry one PLANT with two Commandramon effectively, so we got to work. The commandramon started swimming towards it their flippers working properly, their breathing masks not outright killing them for unknown reasons or failures and they were working as a unit that I was directing. We were not the ones getting the short end of the stick on this detail, but the eerie silence still had us all on edge and we were staying well away from the more open waters. By the time Pom swept around to coming back, we would already have most of the PLANTs picked up. Good luck out there Pom and Dormarch, you needed it more than we did running an underwater salvage operation. -Shanty- “Keep them in sight Dodo, because they are going to be needing a lot of help!” I be discreetly tearing into the enemy EPs from a distance creating cutting arcs in the water. They apparently can’t be detecting me through it so I was going to be using that to my advantage to keep giving Pom and Dormarch room to keep moving. I heard a worried mechanical warble as Dodo continued to glide underwater and stay out of sight while not making much noise. -Heading towards the far side district or docks zone, Pom (More ‘The Lost Archenemies’ music)- Alright we just needed to attract the attention of the servant Rider Totsugeki and make sure she doesn’t catch us, we’d be drawing the enemy back towards our defensive lines. Dormarch was still pretty fast even with me clinging to him like a limpet, we continued to avoid the tens of hundreds of Eps coming at us. Every once in a while the red light would spot us and then those horrid Berserker Sharks would be either trailing us or right on top of us trying to take a bite out of me. Thankfully the reefs the enemy made was starting to work against them as we started to swim through the confusing maze of what were once buildings. Dormarch came to a dead stop, why did he come to a stop?! I looked ahead, up behind us to the left and the right, the sharks were farther off from the right, but they had use surrounded and there were eels and jellies all swarming at us and Dormarch was panicking. A window suddenly blew out with an arcing cut, I was more surprised there were any windows left intact after the tidal wave that wiped out the lower portions of the city. At least it let me know that Shanty could still see us and just gave us a way out. Dormarch there! Dormarch lunged us upwards as we were being closed in on from all sides, we went through the window as a Shark narrowly missed biting my right hind leg off. Dormarch opened the door in the room and moved us through, I kicked it shut as afterwards and a pair of Caster Eel fangs burrowed through the door behind us as Dormarch swam us downstairs. I glanced at the NPC reading a newspaper in a chair as it floated around upside down, why were so many things in my life this weird? The guy didn’t pay attention to our home invasion as we swam through the living room past him. As we past it, there were Berserker Sharks trying to tear in through the front door. Basement! Dormarch about faced from the front door and opened the basement door and used his free tentacle to close it behind us and barricade the entrance with a bar of coral covered wood as we swam down into the basement. There was a small window leading to a back alley street, pointing at it, he nodded and pulled me over to it. It wasn’t big enough for us to both get through at the same time, so him first. He poked his head through and looked around. Upon seeing nothing, Dormarch squeezed through the small exit and I slowly did so as the doors to the basement was getting destroyed. I quickly started pry myself through and Dormarch helped pull me the rest of the way out and we shut the window behind us before swimming for it as the home we invaded was swarming with all the aquatic EPs you can imagine cutting off every entrance except for the one we used to escape. Taking my hoof in his left tentacle we swam up a bit and got our bearings to aim at the far side once more and not a moment too soon did we start swimming down into the streets as a patrolling Assassin Jelly spotted us. Alerting every EP in the area to our location. -Shanty- Oh good they got out of the building, but now there were being EPs all over them again, that whale sure did be making a lot of them. -Close to the far side, Dormarch- This was ridiculous, how many of these EPs are they throwing at us, all of them?! I swerved and blasted out a window with a Surge Projector and turned right and then blew out another window and swam out into the street, blew through the front door of another building and suddenly found ourselves in a building that bled straight into being a slightly open coral reef area. Well no jackknifing through buildings here, just have to keep going fast and into trench, because mom was possibly drawing every EP in the water at us… Correction it was every aquatic EP in the water coming at us, event he slow Kraken we managed to get around because I was fast enough to avoid it’s grasping tentacles with Pom in tow. At least fifty Berserker Sharks were descending on us as we turned the corner in the coral field and mom started assisting me with swimming through a tunnel. She had swapped out her front fins for rear leg fins. I could feel her mind going through the places we could drop the increasingly large presence of EPs coming at us from all directions as we shifted up, down, left and right through the tube avoiding sharp bits of coral stabbing into us. Though the Knifefins might be the weakest among them, they were certainly the fastest and could catch up to us easily when they started showing up. Whereas the Berserker Sharks were being slowed down by the thick coral trench and tunnels we were passing through. We needed a quick out, but this was a straightaway full of coral in various places making us swerve through it. Wait, why were we worrying about the not destroying the coral again? It didn’t use to exist and we could just blasts through it into places it blocked off, because if we didn’t the oncoming Knifefins were going to skewer us if the ones behind us with the Berserker Sharks didn’t. There were also Caster Eels and Jellies coming at us from both ends, I immediately pulled us to a stop. I took aim at some coral where I could see nearby with a visible hole through to the other side of it and then loosed a Retriever Bark. Unlike mom, my bark attacks weren’t restricted underwater and after blowing a hole through the coral blocking our way I swam through and up and the red lights came down on us once more. That whale was quite incredible in how well something of its size could keep up with us. We turned and immediately booked it down the street away from the slowly opening mouth that would threaten to suck us in and there were a few Saber Knifefins in the way of our egress as we continued towards the far side of Cape. They were suddenly decimated in a flash of water, Shanty apparently cleared them out of our way for us as we swam right into the dock district with the lethal whale at our backs and slowly catching up to us. Pom pointed at something with her left hoof and I blinked as I saw an underwater canning factory and the warehouse connected directly to it. She was kidding right, she wanted to go into a place with heavy machinery?! Nope, she wasn’t kidding and I found myself putting my full strength behind going that way, at least the machinery wouldn’t be active with being so waterlogged. I felt something of a strain on my current evolutionary form as we burst forward towards a window of the factory, I’ve been holding onto my form for quite a while now and it was beginning to flag from holding it. I smashed through a window of the factory and made sure mom avoided the sharp bits of coral that floated out of our way. We saw that said machinery in the factory was still active, why wouldn’t it be? We were in a digital realm and it took me a moment to realize that the laws of physics, thermodynamics and plenty of other things were somewhat more of a suggestion here. This outer layer of Moon Cell seemed so real up to this point, that this is the thing that made me call foul was silly. A goggling Pom looked behind us as she scrunched of up her hind legs and fired off the coiled wool with a buck to one of the many berserker shark’s nose as it slammed into the window widening hole while snapping at us angrily. Mom quickly pulled me forward and gave me a worried look as we continued through the factory avoiding the machinery and the clouds of chum that seemed to be floating around from the Knifefins that swam in and suddenly got canned. Apparently the bits wouldn’t disappear if it was the results of the machines. I wouldn’t eat the seafood here. We reached a door, I tried it with a paw only to find it locked, Mom jammed her left hoof against the lock and turned it. Using her wool to act as a key and that unlocked and opened the door. She shoved me through turned and swam backwards closing the door behind us as something slammed into it knocked her away. Mom quickly swam back up to it and locked it, why would she do that? It’s not like they’d try the… The door knob jiggled a bit. Never mind, they would apparently use the door like it is supposed to be used. We were now in a warehouse and not a canning factory of horrors starting to fill with Eels, Jellies and Knifefins. Turning around Pom looked about for something, she got me to let her go and told me what we were looking for. A box? Okay… we’re in a warehouse with a lot of boxes, what could she tell me that would be more specific here? -Five minutes later, Knifefin T800- The warehouse was flooded with Saber Knifefins, Caster Eels, Assassin Jellies and more were after the priority target. Unfortunately it seems the priority target had gone missing in the canning factory and warehouse. This should have been functionally impossible given the number of scouting units scouring the surroundings. Aside from one crate that seemed to be moving, possibly due to a water currents glitch, it decided to report in. It would be back. -Near the docks, Rider Totsugeki- How could they have lost the… oh right, they were hunting something far more intelligent than them. I swear if Moon Cell wanted its targets dead it would give everything hunting the target far more intelligence and put it under the servant system. Moony was apparently afraid that one of the servants could find a way to code themselves into starting a rebellion… oh… right… exactly what we’re dealing with. Turning my head slightly to the left I saw box that wasn’t there seconds ago and the waters definitely couldn’t have put it there. Hefting my weapon up and swimming over to it, I grinned and thought about the ones shivering underneath the box and slammed the anchor down destroying it and revealing… nothing at all? It must have been my imagin… AGH?! -Pom- Dormarch thought she wouldn’t be fooled, but she went for the box and I managed to jam the paralance into the back of her right shoulder painfully with a burst of forward movement. From what I saw she had recovered from her injuries and we needed to get moving now that we had her attention. Dormarch quickly swam up to me and latched on to him to start swimming away. “Totsugeki!” Wait, she could shout that even underwater and still be comprehensible? That’s… actually kind of impressive as far as lung capacity went. I pushed us to the side with a burst of coiled wool from my hind legs and Rider Totsugeki shot by on the blue dolphin while swinging the anchor at an incredible speed, she was stupidly fast underwater and she almost tagged us with the anchor which was looking much easier for Rider to wield in this environment. Dormarch, please kindly swim us back towards central please, because I see the whales shadow incoming and we now have unequivocally gotten the servants attention. Dormarch immediately put us back on course for going back into the Cape City: Coral District and I told him we would need to juke once in a while, because Rider was not going to let us go so easily after I just blindsided her so easily. At least it would be easy to tell if she or one of her summons was coming at us, she tends to shout her attacks openly and probably needed to do so for the magic she used to work. -Right path side, flood zone, Sami- The APs were making the collection of the PLANTs go by insanely fast, also it was a little disturbing that we didn’t see any enemies on the way to bringing them back to the castle. Pom must really be in quite some trouble at this point and Jeanne still hadn’t found any useful Neutral NPC’s aside from the marketplace guy Torneko, a boat maker named Cid and someone weird girl named Welch who said that she had missed her opportunity to meet someone named Oleander and she got soul trapped in a computer again. That name sounded familiar for some reason and Welch might not be a normal NPC. Still it was interesting to have the NPCs that were in the taken territories of the city that were neutral to Moon Cell and were willing to see what we were about. Pom and Dormarch were on the move back towards central and there was a mass of enemy signals on them. It was sufficient to say they were surrounded by a sea of red, were it me and the boys we’d certainly be dead and would have gone down fighting. “Pom’s group is coming in hot, Rokusho, Pepper Cat, are you in range to hear me? Pom needs immediate evacuation help. Gather the Dhelmise and be prepared for a fighting retreat towards our territory.” Afterwards we would be retreating all PLANTs to Cape Castle and would then use them all at once to do something very peculiar, but Dormarch assured me the set up would work and it would at least deal with the whale monster somewhat. “They have a lot of EPs on their backs, most of the PLANTs have been successfully received thanks to the APs… do you read, Pom needs help!” “We’ll be back on the front lines as soon as we’re done placing the PLANTs.” Rokusho stated calmly as I started getting the Commandramon to start setting up some explosive help for Pom. -Entering Central Path Ocean Flood Zone from far side path heading for central AP protected territory, Pom- Dolly gather at the central zone, this is about to become a really bad fight! The red light was on us as we swerved through the trench load of sharp coral, I’m beginning to think its intentionally aggressive environment changes. With the Berserker Sharks on us we really couldn’t… nggg… I just took a Knifefin to the flank. Dormarch’s right tentacle reached over crushed it and flicks its dissipating body off to the side and I sealed up the stab wound with my wool immediately. Barely lost any blood that time…heh… ow. We felt the suction behind us as the whale started trying to draw us in. Looking back, I saw Rider Totsugeki was sitting on its head with her right leg crossing over her left and she tilted it back and forth looking to be humming something with a broad grin. Also we were about to be hit by two of the eels. We haven’t heard her shout Totsugeki or a name in a while, because most of her attacks were straightforward rushes and while fast, they really didn’t really turn on a dime as well as Dormarch could. They were burst high speed attacks that only move in one direction, almost similar to Dancing Flame and now I was on the other end of it. Why did she seem to be guiding the aquatic EPs to keep us in the trench though? They were swarming along the sides of the trench and not into it at us. Dormarch… ? It’s not actually trying to inhale us this time. The two beams of red light had us in its sight and it wasn’t inhaling anymore, its mouth was full of energy. The Commandramon sea mines we used earlier didn’t really do much too slow it down or stop it from being a threat at all did it? We were about to see what was really threatening about this thing and I had an idea that it was going to be a large beam, usually the kind of thing you’d expect in this situation when you were in a narrow area where it couldn’t possibly miss us. That caused Dormarch to start looking around for a spot to take cover in, the only reason why we hadn’t been taken down yet was because we were recklessly swerving through sharp coral and avoiding all kinds of attacks coming at us. We should consider ourselves glad that they didn’t have ranged attacks and most of the enemy were entirely dangerous close up, the whale however did have a range attack as did Rider Totsugeki if you counted her summoning ability. Thinking of attacks, I twisted and lashed out to kick an eel in the chin and let loose a coil of wool to blast its head off, I then lashed out my other hind leg and did the same to the other one. Dormarch suddenly swerved to the right and we avoided the jaw of a Berserker Shark coming down right on top of us. What?! Dormarch was about to lose his evolution form, now of all times?! At least he’s still be able to swim pretty fast as Dalmamon. This was still going to be a problem as we were surrounded and Rider Totsugeki was personally leading Moon Cell’s forces here, she’s not exactly as dumb as we made her look not too long ago. Come on, come on there’s got to be a place we can go, there Dormarch, shift us sideways in three, two… now! We purposefully slammed into the trenches wall and I glued us there and bunkered us with my wool. A second later the entire underwater passageway lit up brightly, the world was rumbling and I felt a surge of intense heat as the beam swept past the small hollow in the coral filled trench that kept us safe. Suddenly Dormarch shrunk to fitting in my hooves instead of being equivalent to a large dog. He was a Dalmamon again, he finally ran out of energy on his evolution. I quickly swam out and Dormarch still tried to help speed us up only for me to be grabbed around the waist by a Kraken from above. It was trying to crush me, but my wool was up to the task of holding against it for the moment as multiple jellies tried to close in. Suddenly a shift in the water and the tentacle was cut away and the Jellies evaporated. Right Shanty was still with us and… Dodo came zooming in with a large amount of bubbles coming out of his backside as he boosted towards us. I grabbed his extended wing and he quickly carried us forward as I clambered up onto it with Dormarch and held onto him as I glued myself to Dodo’s wing and carefully moved closer to the body. Shanty waved cheerfully to me with a hoof before turned back and lashing out with her hoof to tear apart the Kraken that was coming at us beak first. Turning to Dormarch, I asked how many Retriever Barks or Wild Barks can he currently do? Not many, he was fairly spent combat wise, swimming several miles through dangerous enemy infested terrain would do that. He could still carry out his plans for the collected PLANTs as it wouldn’t require any personal energy from him. Just an activation from his spirit core, he’ll reserve his energy for emergencies now. Dodo was fairly fast underwater not as fast as Dormarch was, but Dodo didn’t need to move his body to use up energy and even with our added weight he wasn’t any slower. That and he was a tough metal ostrich that could fly, swim and run… spew pastries… Shanty had a very capable familiar for traveling at the very least. A swarm of Eel and Knifefins came diving at us and were suddenly shredded, Shanty was doing good on the defensive at least. She was creating nearly invisible blades out of water and was taking out swaths of enemies that closed in behind us in wide cone shaped fashion, as you can imagine that would fit the wide magical cutting arcs Shanty made. Dodo turned his head to the side and let loose a glowing blob that a Berserker Shark ate and a second later it promptly exploded, the bits of exploded shark continued to chase after us with violent intention and would never succeed in battering us. I think the time they could keep attacking after dying was dependent on how much of the body was left, that was exactly ten seconds. “Totsug-ARGH!?” We were about to be hit by a charging dolphin, but Rider Totsugeki suddenly took a slash across the chest. Shanty was proving to be exceedingly dangerous when in water at any range, as Rider Totsugeki was knocked from the top of the whale. She wasn’t done yet however. “Totsugeki!” She came at us while riding the dolphin as Dodo skimmed through the reef and up onto a cobblestone path. We were getting closer to central and Rider Totsugeki was coming at us with a fairly determined look on her face. Suddenly the dolphin rider dodged and slowed down, I blinked. Did she, did she actually just dodge an ultimately invisible attack from Shanty, the nearby Saber Knifefins that split in half points to that being yes. You’d have to be precognitive or at least able to see the magic Shanty was using. The water was getting brighter, so we were closing in and I saw a large amount of small sea mines floating in dark corners of the various half buildings and coral sculptures shaped like they were buildings. I sighed with relief, we’re about to get some help. A series of blasts erupted behind us and Rider Totsugeki avoided it, the swarm of enemy EPs were not so lucky. The EPs being destroyed didn’t matter as the whale would just produce more in a short amount of time, but that was less directly chomping at our butts like the sharks that act like zombies after being killed. “Mr. Yamada!” Rider Totsugeki called out and the large pink smiling whale bursts out from below us hitting Dodo’s back end and making him unstable, just as we were about to exit the waters. Thankfully Mr. Yamada missed us coming back down, but then we started flipping out of control. A second later Shanty jumped out of Dodo’s back and went on the offensive in a bounding bubble. I suddenly could see sky and ground as we flipped out of the wall with a splash and then… Dodo landed upright on his legs and fanned his left wing up into the air while lowering us to the ground gently. “Always the show off, huh Dodo?” I said dryly as Dodo smiled at me expressively. As Shanty went flying past us as she was pushed back trying to deflect Rider Totsugeki’s anchor, Shanty landed on her hooves as Rider Totsugeki popped out of the water behind us and landed with the large metal whale poking its head out of the wall of ocean. “Okay, it’s time I stopped sitting around on my backside waiting for my sea forces to overwhelm you. I’m basically healthy again, so I’m going to take you out now!” Rider Totsugeki pointed her anchor at us. “Come on Moby Dick, TOTSUGEKI!” “Everyone fighting retreat, APs to the front to defend our retreat, everyone else to the back towards the castle!” I called as the whale spewed forth a whole slew of aquatic EPs all over the ground, like a massive amount of horrible smelling ambergris. “All active PLANTs retreat towards the castle!” Dormarch called a second later. Surprisingly our PLANTs started moving as ordered. I hoped whatever Dormarch was going to do with all of those inactive PLANTs would work, we were going to be quickly pushed into a corner. “You’ll not escape me, you don't really have many places to go and I know where you live!” Rider Totsugeki shouted as shield wielding APs threw themselves into her path and went skidding backwards upon taking impacts from her anchor. Shanty was swept up by Dodo as I was already running for the castle. Rokusho, Pepper Cat and the Dhelmise were covering our retreat from the Assassin Jellies trying to stab us in the back.