//------------------------------// // 396. Probing the Moonlit World. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Several Digital Days later, Moon Cell Outer Inner Layer, Night Land, Mare Melum, City of Lost Destiny, Farmland Outskirts, Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Pom- We arrived and immediately saw the beautiful view of a moonlit city that appeared before us and I stared out at the splendor with a sad frown. This place was to be our next battleground. “Deploy the new APs, Alexander enter defensive position.” I called as the walking Alexander came to a stop in the open fields. Mirage Mew and the Mirage Collective would be protecting our backs while we made a push, they also helped us acquire a new type of Allied Program. They would also be tending to the other routes to keep some of Moon Cell’s resources busy, mostly by raiding Colosseum and Arena Labyrinth intermittently and securing a retreat route. I was hoping for Rider class to assist our Lancer Guardians or Saber Knights, maybe a Berserker class for strong offensive purposes since we were pushing forward into Moon Cell’s territories. Even if the bersekers APs couldn’t take territory without crushing the entire territory because they couldn’t take PLANTs. We could have even used the Archer class for more of a ranged advantage against enemy EPs. No… what we got was the ability to field Assassin class APs, not very strong in direct confrontation, but very good at ambushes, scouting, stealth and overall information gathering. Everyone was kind of upset that we got Assassin Class APs considering we needed strong combat capable units to support our forays into even more dangerous Moon Cell territories, but we haven’t seen what they are capable of yet. As I sat on the throne next to Dormarch, I watched as a screen came up and the APs appear on the field. Our Assassin APs were… odd. At least they spawned in large numbers because of their particular uniqueness, even if their combat capability isn’t as great. “Dormarch, do you by any chance have something to do with them being what they are?” I know I’ve asked this before, several times in fact, but I wanted to ask again just to clarify and I watched Dormarch every time he answered. He’s been getting closer to cracking on telling me the truth about them. Dormarch did have a small fascination or passion for lapines, because he perked up when he first saw what kind of APs we managed to produce. I don’t think it was just because of Ms. Bunny Shuttle, he was just attracted to rabbits for some reason. “No…” Dormarch stated in a slightly weak uncertain tone with his ear wilting. Even he had some doubts about whether or not he had a great influenced on the kind of APs we got, given he worked directly on making them from the ‘Assassin’ class data Mirage Mew got us. The fact was we were looking at a bunch of large fluffy bunnies of brown, white, black, grey and dark blue colors starting to spread out on the screen, all of them moving away from our position. “The Assassin Caerbannogs are going out and mapping the area now and are scouting for enemies, at least they have some defensive ability with their flak vests and seem to be very good with those rope darts when we tested them out back in Cape. They are fast, stealthy and can get around in any environment… I’m sure they’ll pull their weight.” We did at least given them a field test in Cape City to test them out before encroaching on Mare Melum, so there was that and they were good at looking like they were good at moving about at least. This was a field test against actual present enemies and Moon Cell mostly left us alone to recover for the last few days. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear Fou was hunting me in here somewhere. They were large rabbits to be sure, I mean they were like three to four feet tall or long if they were running on their hand paws and were fairly large, kind of looked and acted like Pooka’s back on Equus. Pooka were generally small population and not enough to be a kingdom outside of villages in the forests around the Meadow Hills region, one would think they breed like the rabbits they looked to be, but they don’t. Like Lambkin were sheep adjacent, Pooka were simply rabbit adjacent and you could tell the difference at a glance with the ones that live in trees or in underground burrow cities. Like Pooka’s, these rabbits just didn’t look very… threatening… that’s the least likely word you’d apply to the mostly adorable APs we were sending out. They were still shorter than our other bipedal APs, but not necessarily smaller and didn’t look as capable in a fight like the generic spear and sword guys. It left me wondering what they were truly capable of, because apparently they were supposedly ‘unique’ APs. I thought we would have been better off with Berserker Vikings personally, apparently they could throw those heat axes with lethal accuracy at short range. “We can only hope, we’ve barely recovered from the last fight and here we are pursuing a new one.” We were on digital time, meaning a minute in the outside world could be weeks here and we’ve had plenty of time to recover from our injuries by comparison for the days we spent for the feasible seconds of invasion going on out there. Shanty’s injuries were the quite concerning to me personally given that Dormarch said they, on a lesser and less physically damaging scale, resembled the kind I had after using Shock Ram. Thinking of Mirage Mew and the Mirage Collective, most of them were legendary mirages or digital legendary Pokémon. Surprisingly they had the power akin to Ultimate and Mega Digimon, which was a little odd to Sami and Frizzle, but Dormarch didn’t seem to think it was all too odd at all. They were definitely securing our butts. “Huh, enemy detected, but it’s… not alerted? The Caerbannogs are running a scan on it and transmitting the data back to us, that’s very useful.” Dormarch popped up a new screen that showed a few of our rabbits getting a visual on a bipedal machine, mostly huge legs, leading to boxy hips and a large boxy head on top of it looking left and right. “It’s currently idle and hasn’t detected the Caerbannog yet.” “Can they get past and into the city to detect where the enemy PLANTs are?” A moment after my question Dormarch did something and then looked to me. “Yes, they can scout the enemy region and possibly find the location of the PLANTs for us, but they won’t be able to do any attacks unless they want to be discovered and wiped out real fast.” The Assassin Caerbannog, as Dormarch pointed out were stealth specialists and sneak attackers. Their main form of attack was apparently disable and then kill. “No signs of any servants in the region yet or what they could possibly be, but I’m sure Moon Cell wouldn’t leave Mare Melum undefended.” “Tell the Caerbannog APs to remain in full stealth.” I was worried that they would give away the fact that we were here, because the enemy doesn’t seem to be aware of our presence quite yet. Though I had to wonder how you would miss the fortress sized dog with a castle hump on its back in a wide open space like where we were. “Look at it this way mom, they are far more intelligent than any other AP types we could feasibly field.” Dormarch proceeded to have the rabbits remain in stealth and not draw attention to themselves, despite being large rabbits they were good at sticking to shadows in the moonlight. “So they can act a little more autonomously than other APs.” Well that was probably a good thing, given they’ll take targets of opportunity at least if they are to live up to the name classifications of ‘Assassin’. -Mare Melum Valley, ???- Where are they? You’d think they would have attacked by now or launched a small force I could wipe out or something. Even Moon Cell says they would prepare for several days and then try to take Mare Melum. The School was taken and Colloseum was facing a few light raids, but they were never taking Colloseum with that kind of bottleneck. Not much information on what was going on anywhere else was happening, at least they weren’t going all in anywhere. I brought a taco up to my mouth with my tail and bit into it. Ugh, the food here could taste a little better. Needs more spice, maybe some jalapenos. Looking around at the fifty gekkos aiming grenade launchers in the general direction they would probably coming from any moment now… Any moment now… … “ANY MOMENT NOW!” I screamed, yet nothing occurred. What are the chances they would try to pop in directly inside the city? Not likely, they’d be slow to get into an advantageous position and the PLANTs would have alerted us to that happening. I really doubt they’d try the farmlands, but I already had the area watched and the Gekko there weren’t detecting anything yet. What was their detection range again? -Castle Alexander, Throne Room, Dormarch- “Some heavy enemy presence has been detected in the valley to our right over the mountains. Apparently one of our Caerbannog heard something.” I called out as the four defense towers went into an operational state and our minimal territory was placed down. They were still on manual control until we could get them automated. We still weren’t detected and the Caerbannog units were getting some good Intel on the enemy units, the few they spotted were called Archer Gekko. Two legged walking war machines with twin machine gun cannons and combat tentacle, grenade launchers were optional, they are basically walking gun turrets and even mom wouldn’t survive being under fire from them for very long if they surrounded her. Archer’s in general weren’t supposed to be good at close combat, but those things would be halfway decent at it with their combat tentacles. I had to wonder how the Caerbannogs even got that information about the Gekko having tentacles without alerting them. With that in mind we were fielding Saber Knights defensively around the perimeter of Castle Alexander, we’re not sending them out until we had an idea of what we were doing here at the edge of the city. Lancer Guardians would be horribly useless against spraying bullets, but the Saber Knights could use their shields and I’ve been specifically summoning tower shield wielders. Sure it was slow to summon them with those bulky shields, but those guys would survive quite a torrent of bullets in comparison to half a second before being immediately obliterated. “See, told you they’d be waiting somewhere. They likely have the valley entirely on lockdown, not that that’s where we would have chosen to come in at.” Canard stated as he came into the throne room. “In any case, those machines look far more threatening than your bog standard Saurian Hunter Drone.” “Well you were right, some of the Caerbannog see a lot of Archer Gekko over that way. That’s what those machines are called.” I sent targeting data up to the Commandramon in the defensive gun towers, but told them specifically to not shoot until the enemy was alerted to our presence. We were trying to do some things quietly while we still had the initiative at the moment. “Surprisingly we have the advantage in the open field when it comes to defense if we keep the enemy at a distance. We don’t exactly have the power to move while using all the towers without draining all the energy out of Castle Alexander, but we can use them indefinitely if we stay in place.” “We kind of want to be on the defensive with our main source of territory.” Mom stated as we sat here quietly while waiting for more reports from the Caerbannogs. “Not to mention it being our only bit of territory in this area.” The cute and cuddly rabbits were showing their usefulness so far, much to my enjoyment, but the lack of PLANTs was… unusual. Also if they were Assassin Class, then why weren’t the Caerbannog capable of assassinating PLANTs? Several reasons really, EPs could take out our PLANTs and that’s because Moon Cell had priority on that sort of thing. Speaking of, the Caerbannogs were running around the city and weren’t finding anything… however there were signs of PLANTs being present given the humming noises, they were probably inactive. Yes, APs couldn’t take PLANTs by themselves, with one minor exception I hadn’t mentioned… by crushing them via territory overwhelming like what Moby Dick threatened to do to us with an absolutely large number of Aquatic EPs. Even with how powerful the territory barrier that Castle Alexander produced, it wouldn’t hold up if the enemy presence was overwhelming. We just didn’t have the number of APs required to do that, but Assassin Caerbannogs could sneak into and weaken territories greatly for later capture easily enough. “There’s humming there, but I can’t see a PLANT anywhere.” The scene was a roof, two different tiers with steps, the sound of a PLANT could be heard, but there wasn’t one in sight. “Do you think they might be hiding it somehow?” Mom asked as she looked at the screen curiously. “Some intelligence gatherers, if they can’t find something hidden despite it being right there in front of them somehow.” Dolly stated while looking bored as she clambered up onto the armrest. “I think I might know what’s wrong.” Our attentions turned to Sami. “The PLANTs we dealt with before were operating out in the open and quite loudly. In this case, the PLANTs are hidden because we might be dealing with elites.” “Elites?” Mom queried. “Yeah, they showed up on the ships we destroyed on the way to Valora, but that’s the only time we saw them, every time we beat an Elite Enemy Program a PLANT would reveal itself or become vulnerable. Also I got that information from loading portions of an Elite Berserker Viking’s data.” Well that would certainly complicate things. “To get elites to show up you need to take out an excessively large number of enemies in the area a PLANT is spawning them into, basically proved you’re threatening enough to be worth the elite showing up and then the elite will pop out. Defeat that and you’ll be able to target the PLANT directly when it becomes vulnerable.” “So not only do we have to directly fight the numerous enemies this time, then the elite when they come out, but we also have to possibly deal with a servant too on top of that?” Aw mom, don’t look so broken… even if you do have a good reason to be. That gold color taking up the wool of your right leg is barely noticeable… in a glaringly over the top obvious way. Right, I can’t deny it, mom really needs hugs. I nuzzled up to her side affectionately. “Well there’s also the other issue of special EPs units being in the area, which would be like the Lancer Sahagin in the previous realm.” Say could you do me a favor Dolly and cuddle mom while I think about this? “This time it’s the Archer Gekkos. Judging from what Dodo did in Cape to stop them from appearing, they will likely have a PLANT that’s mobile and moving throughout the Mare Melum zone, since it is mobile it’ll be harder to get at.” Dolly latched onto mom and wrapped her paws around her neck to start nuzzling her affectionately, mom calmly started holding Dolly and happily returned the affection. My big sis was all smiles and agreed that Mom need to stop worrying so much, we had to keep her mood up constantly. “What are the chances we’ll have to defeat enough of these Archer Gekko’s and then take on an elite version to deal with the Elite PLANT this time?” It might be a guarantee at this point Canard unless special PLANTs couldn’t hide themselves and the mobility was their defense mechanism because they couldn’t hide. “I’ll just say it’s a one hundred percent chance that we can’t just hit it from long range like we did the last one if it’ll be moving.” The reason I hadn’t pulled the Caerbannog units yet was because they were still mapping the city and areas of interest for us, such as marking the various PLANT territories. There were a lot of smaller territories around the rooftops in the middle of much larger ones in the streets. We’d have our work cut out for us, because if we tried to just take the larger territories then the smaller ones will be in the middle of them and start taking them back. If we focused on the smaller ones then the larger Moon Cell ones could territory crush the smaller ones as soon as we take them, we couldn’t do the same for a lack of numbers or Moon Cell’s resources. A ping drew my attention to the screen… yep… that was a servant. A very odd one that drew Pom and Dolly’s attention. “That would be the servant, how are the Caerbannogs getting that close without being spotted?!” A black and grey canine shaped robot, wearing a sombrero and poncho, with red glowing eyes. It looked goofy in the clothing, but I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover if Moon Cell placed them in our way. “Almost feels like I’ve gone back to Elhorn…” Mom muttered as she stared at the Servant who shifted into a more bipedal appearance and started checking a red blade. “Please tell me that’s not an Assassin classification.” “No, the Caerbannogs are getting of a more Saber vibe from it.” A powerful, all purpose, offensive classifications with decent resilience to magical attacks. “That servant is going to be a tough one to bring down, I can already tell judging by the schematics… which I’m not sure how the Caerbannogs are getting. Weaponized prehensile tail, twin chainsaw wings, heat knife launchers around the body, high frequency claws and their main weapon seems to be a High Frequency Blade that would cut through most materials… yikes, that thing is several realms of lethal and you wouldn’t want to block any attacks from that sword unless you had something like the Paralance to put between you and it. Again how are the Caerbannogs getting all of this… threat assessment skill?” Apparently the Caerbannogs heard me questioning their abilities and sent me some information about their ability to assess threats and to know what they were equipped with so they could better react to what they might do. Given some more time they might even get some of the history of the threat. The threat was confirmed to be a Saber a second later and that meant dangerous with sharp edges of any kind, the entire robotic canines body was quite edgy in that respect. “So we have to actively go out and defeat EPs within the enemy territory boundaries, then fight the elite EPs when they appear so we can finally deal with the PLANTs and we have to do that multiple times. Great, so this is going to be a very long, highly drawn out, dangerous process that inevitably leads to us suffering.” It was concerning when mom mostly meant to her own and wouldn’t say it out loud. “Are the Digi-bots ready to go? I think we’re going to really need their help here. Who do we have available to field?” “I’m capable of getting into the fight, as is Canard. As for the Digi-bots Pepper cat is going to be a while, she took a lot of damage and her tinpet is still trying to restore itself and her parts. Dazzle is still in recovery after being directly hit by a water beam from Leviathan. Metabee, Krosserdog and Rokusho are good to go. Frizzle and the rest of the Pokémon Companions can still fight. The three Valora units have made full recoveries. I suggest we keep Frizzle here on the defense and see if we can field the Gazimon to support the Saber Knights.” Sami reported and I gave the orange soldier a thoughtful look. “They are getting a bit too lazy and they could stand to put in some effort into helping aside from logistics like working on the farm. As for available Commandramon, aside from the ones on the tower guns that can provide us artillery support, the rest of them are good to go and urban city environments favor us. We can use the roofless APC to move through the city pretty quickly.” The Gazimon were good at farming though, Patch Cabbage really liked them and their work effort to get tasty food at least. They really liked his cabbages too. “So have the Caerbannogs fully mapped things out?” After mom asked that, I brought up a screen to show a top down map of the city. We were in the farm lands what looked like the west or left side of the screen, the valley was to the south or bottom, to the north or top was the upper city district on an upwards slope and overall many sections of the cityscape of Mare Melum lead to a shrine in the east. Overall the map showed a large circular area and the small amount of territory Castle Alexander was generating, the castle wasn’t fully repaired from the damage the serpent caused and we were having power issues… but we were capable of solidly holding this territory… from EPs. The servant was likely to bypass our defenses easily. “At least we aren’t going to be pressured with an oceans worth of flood water this time.” “All those enemies were dangerous at short range though, the Archer Gekkos are dangerous at long range and are generally decent at shorter ranges. So really they are going to be much harder to deal with and could feasibly shoot Dodo or a Skarmory out of the sky.” If they had armor piercing rounds like I thought they feasible could have, then we need to be careful in how we start fights and where. “There’s not a lot of cover around here from the hundreds of bullets they can fire from the two cannons, not to mention the grenade launchers some of them are equipped with. They’d be easier to avoid in the city.” “Yeah, I’m not too happy to be going in front of guns, especially not big walking ones.” Which was a fair response to being told we were all going to be shot at eventually Dolly. “How are we going to start things off though?” Noticing that she was getting stared at by all of us, mom sighed, dragged a hoof down her face and then started inhaling to speed up her mental faculties and exhaling without moving anywhere. “Well to start off if it’s going to constantly be night around here if the constant day time of Cape was anything to go by… we’ll need to think about where and when we’ll be fighting. We’re at the edge of things here on the map and the battlefield is a full huge circle for us this time and not the land within a circle. The Servant is likely to be focused on me this time, given Moon Cell saw me, so the possibility they sent one of their stronger servants to come at me is a given.” Moon Cell really hated mom being among the living. “You could stay safe here in the castle mom.” I offered, because no one was in danger unless they left the castle… which would draw mom into going out to help them. The flat stares I got made me admit the truth. “Right, that’s not going to work if your condition makes you go out to help our friends in the field.” “Sacrificing is a major issue for me Dormarch and I really dislike the fact that you are right. Anyone that goes out and gets into trouble, I’ll be bound to run towards them upon hearing it and can feasibly help in some way. I can’t exactly ignore the idea of anyone being out there and in possible danger either, while I’m here safe and sound.” Functionally we’d have to render mom insensate or entirely unconscious to stop her from rushing out to help anyone in danger unless she was doing something even more dangerous that is required for our continued survival. “So where should we start and how do we avoid the servant when they come after us, because I seriously doubt my canine magnetism can do anything to them.” What you weren’t saying mom, was that they were likely to be an opponent similar to Fou. At least you were telling me and Dolly, because we were likely to be with you. “What if we just go nuts?” We all turned to Canard. “If we’re overthinking things now, then we should just rush all the nearby territories and figure out things from there. Either that or try to confuse our enemy into making a series of errors using the Caerbannogs, while we draw attention away from some of our activities we can grab a workable territory to hold onto with artillery.” “Hmm… I’ll do us one better, I actually have a plan!” Mom stated loudly with a grin. “Unfortunately it puts me in grave danger…” There was a twitch of her eyes as mom said that last part. “Well, what are we doing then?” Sami asked pleasantly and I groaned out, please don’t encourage mom to endanger herself more than she has too! “Well the servant seems specifically geared to fight me.” Given it’s a heavily bladed wolf, that wasn’t a hard guess mom. “With that in mind, first we need the Caerbannog find all the cardboard boxes they can and attack the upper districts of the city. This will draw the Servant in that direction, I’ll intercept in them in the middle, they’ll likely be trying to kill me anyway so might as well bit the bullet there. The Valora units will work on taking the upper district. The ones who will take the valley will be the Pokémon Companions once I’ve drawn off the Archer Gekko and servant into hunting me, I’ll have the Digi-bots with me. Sami, Canard and the Commandramon will have the hardest job though.” That got our attentions. “Which will be?” Canard asked with a frown on his beak. “Find the Archer Gekko PLANT, deal with it as quickly as possible. Sami still has that motorcycle bar thing or at least the plans for it right? That, with the roofless APC, means you guys will be constantly on the move and on the lookout for the one major problem in this battle, our enemy having a ranged advantage on us. Also take targets of opportunity when you can.” Here mom turned to me. “Dolly will be with me, but… we need someone here as mission control. Can you give Dolly your Digivice?” “… you’re leaving me behind mom?!” Kneeling down in front of me mom looked me in the eyes, nuzzled my cheek, kissed my forehead and then answered my question. “Yes, and not because I’m a worried mother, we need someone here to direct us. Welch can you manufacture communication devices like what the Digivices do when they connect with each other when in range?” The rabbit NPC saluted Pom. “Also maybe project a map of the city and our locations in it?” “Sure thing on both of those, Big Boss!” Welch stated with a smile. “I’m sure that even the Assassin Caerbannogs would be capable of using them… if they could talk that is. They’re silent like Snakes generally are, I wonder if CODEC time is going to be a thing here...” “Please get to work on that now.” Mom stated as she turned to Cid. “How are the repairs?” “We’re doing fine with getting most of our systems back online, but it’s sad that I can’t get this guy airborne again so soon. I want to quite literally want to fly this puppy!” Cid answered while shaking his head. “I’m heading to engineering and I’ll hire Torneko’s goons to support our further repairs.” “What’s the farm situation?” Pom turned to a waiting Patch Cabbage. “Two hundred and fifty percent efficiency and that’s even without sunlight, thank goodness for existence of sun lamps!” Patch Cabbage chuckled loudly, then left and came back in pulling a wagon loaded up with Sitrus Berries. “Yeah, we’re going to need quite a few of those.” Mom immediately moved forward and picked up a few while examining them. Everyone in the throne room was now staring at the insane farming NPC as mom hefted the healing berry grown from our food supplies in a hoof. “Spread them around to all the teams. In fact give one to Shanty, it’ll hasten up her recovery considerably.” “It’s all in the name of Moon Cell’s destruction ma’am, I’m proud to be a part of it!” Patch Cabbage stated. “Also those Gazimon are quite the farmers when they are not being viral pests, they dig good fields.” Well the botany and food supply section of Castle Alexander was doing really well with that in mind. “Torneko Talloon, do you have anything to add to our current goals?” Pom asked of the rotund merchant. “You know… I just might, do you need land mines that can take out Archer Gekko in one blast? I can assure you that they’ll never go off on one of your allies.” Following that the jovial guy waited for a response. “What’s it going to cost us?” I finally asked, because for a merchant Torneko really didn’t seem to be asking for much. “Just need the Caerbannog to grab a few things in the city for me before you kick off the battle… just a shopping list of stuff really and I’ll supply you all the Friend or Foe mines you could need for this battle.” Torneko grinned with a twinkle in his eye as he produced such a list, the Caerbannogs were stealth experts so smuggling these items to Torneko shouldn’t be too hard. “Granted, Dormarch transmit this list of items to the Caerbannog.” Mom passed it to me after looking it over and I sent out the order. We’d soon be quite loaded with explosive devices, being neutral apparently gave Torneko some ability to procure things we wouldn’t otherwise be able to get. So his neutrality wasn’t entirely a bad thing, but it was still suspect and worrying. -A few hours later, central Mare Melum, Pom- “Dolly, are we ready for this?” I asked as we were in the city proper and on a rooftop. There was the hum of a PLANT nearby, but it wasn’t quite active it would be as soon as the Caerbannog started the plan. “Are you kidding, Dormarch got to steal the show in that last battle, I’m going to prove myself as good as he is with this one!” Right Dolly was a very competitive dog, probably should say something about that attitude. “You do realize that because we’re family that I will always love you right?” “Yes.” I answered as she put her helmet on, adjusted her board on her back and took up the mystical stone bone in her teeth. Ocellus still couldn’t get Smolder to be in the same room as me, but she assured me that Smolder was still quite jealous of me as much as she was afraid and that might be a good thing. Those two were going to be safe in the castle and making sure Shanty doesn’t run off to join the battle with her injuries, not without a headset at least. The headsets gave us good tactical data on the movements of the Archer Gekkos and that would be a very vital thing to know at all times with the Caerbannogs spread out as they were. “Okay guys, show time, the Caerbannogs are about to make some noise in three… two… wait what the… where did they get something like that?!” A huge explosion went off in the upper district and I turned and saw a mushroom shaped cloud of dust and debris rising into the sky. “Phew, at least it isn’t radioactive and has no fallout… but still, how?! That definitely damaged several territories worth of PLANTs. No casualties from the Caerbannogs in that area despite apparently being at ground zero for that. See mom, they are really useful and not as adorable as they seem! Wait, is that a good thing or not?” “Don’t know what to tell you Dormarch, but apparently the Caerbannogs are as you might have said… highly resourceful. I don’t know what that was, but when I imagined them making noise, I didn’t imagine it being something quite like that.” I felt a wave of slight heat pass me by in the seconds I called in from the headset Welch provided me with, the roof started filling up with EPs from the sudden disturbance. “Remember Dolly, no showboating please. You’re the elder and top dog in this situation, so please don’t start a competition with your little adoptive brother about who’s better.” “Right, right, you know I’ll watch your back Pom!” Loyal Dolly may be and willing to throw herself in the path of danger for me, I’d rather die first than let anything truly happen to her. Which was saying something about my mental state when Dolly had to hug me mentally for even thinking that thought out loud. As soon as the EPs spawned, which were generic Knight, Guardian and Vikings so far, that’s when Rokusho, Krosserdog and Metabee descended on them and started tearing them apart. I brought the Paralance out and ran forward to jam it directly into a EPs side and then opened it to send it flying into a group and it blew a number of them off the roof. Dolly was already digging into them with her board and momentum boosted hits, it wouldn’t be long before the Servant got those two legged death machines running in our direction. -Mare Melum Valley, ???- “What the… why the smug ass bastards, they snuck up on us and nuked us!” I immediately switched into quadruped mode and ran towards the upper district with the mooing machine squadron on my heels. Multiple territories just came under attack at once, one of the defense NPCs in particular caught sight of my target in the central territories with several combat robots and a dog. A feral grin crossed my lips. Aw yeah, finally getting some action! I quickly sprinted in that direction ignoring the strange amount of little bunnies in the valley area innocently nibbling on carrots or being playful and cute. Moon Cell wasn't paying me to pay attention to glitching oddities... in fact it wasn't even paying me at all! Not that I mind, as Jack wants to rip it's enemies apart.