Everything happened all at once.
"It's a trap!" George shouted. He tapped his watch and said, "Code 9!"
The ground erupted. There was a terrible roar as Squirmy appeared in full combat mode.
"It's HIM!" Jonah was shouting. "GET HIM!"
{That voice! Those words!} The memories of most of his lifetime flashed through Colin's mind in an instant. The rage of years of being left out, bullied, and tormented erupted.
"Raiki! Kirin! Sonia! Eclipse! Foxie!" Colin called all of them except Shiro. "Hit Jonah with all you've got!"
"Jonah, watch out!" Larry jumped up. "Axe Squad! Spear Squad! Hammer Squad!"
Warbunnies armed with axes, Cavalrabbits with spears and Smithares with hammers appeared around him. "Attack Colin!"
Alicia, too, started calling Comrades. "Dirge Squadron! Defend Larry!"
A flock of big black crows appeared, and took to the air above her and Larry.
Jonah growled, his face dark, and his eyes narrow. "Damnaith!"
From the mists stepped a horse with fire for eyes and green smoke coming out of the mouth and hooves.
"Poison Swarm on Colin!" Jonah called.
Colin leapt aside to dodge what appeared to be arrows of solid green smoke. He drew his stave and lengthened it, eyes narrowed while his Comrades started fighting Larry's.
Meanwhile, the J-Knights with Katrin were warping in bears, sheep, deer, and several kinds of hedgehog.
Squirmy reared up and broke right through the roof. Thrashing around as he was, the Comrade Home was starting to fall apart. Aoi shrieked, and called, "Titania!"
A silver golem towering high above the ruined Home appeared, and grappled with Squirmy.
"George! I got the alarm!" Scarlet suddenly dropped in from above, dropped off by a fiery red bird as big as herself. Was that her Phoenix?! It was just a little thing last time Colin saw it, way back when.
May was with her. She growled. "Skipper!"
A blue-and-white wolfcat appeared, bigger than May herself and snarling fiercely. It seemed to crackle with electricity, but the first thing it did was unleash a Sonic Howl at Larry's attacking Warbunnies.
{That must be May's secret strongest… it looks like a mix of Shiro and Raiki…}
Shinji, too, joined the battle. "Rain! Squall! Gust!"
{Three} Storm Swans appeared, Rain being the largest of them, the other two of smaller size, but fiercer looks.
"Fyre!" Scarlet pointed to the Storm Swans. Her Phoenix charged in as she called other Comrades. "Infernos! Nettles! Laser! Ruby!"
Meanwhile, Katrin had her eyes on May, and only on May. "YOU! Gera! Rall! Bubba! Hit her with all you've got!"
Colin saw them respond, had just a second to wonder, {What happened to Gera, Rall, and Bubba?!}, before Jonah's Night Mare was on him once more and forced him to dodge.
May's blue/white wolfcat suddenly changed targets, snarled, and all her Comrades turned in on Katrin instead.
"Kat!" Colin gasped. "Raiki!"
Raiki understood. She diverted her latest electric combo with Kirin to blast May's 'Skipper' instead.
"Colin! What are you doing?!" May protested. "She's trying to kill me!"
It was true. Gera, Rall, and even Bubba were charging straight for May, throwing everything they had at her meanwhile, including some ice and snow attacks Colin had never seen them use before.
May barked more orders, pointing. "Lanta! Delta Strike those bears! Shar, Kosla, Beta Defense! Everyone else, Alpha Strike on Katrin's Comrades!"
Sonia, meanwhile, led Eclipse and Foxie right into Larry's formation of Cavalrabbits. The three of them tore them up from short range before the Warbunnies and the Smithares closed in.
Colin leapt away from Jonah's Damnaith, trying to get clear of the mess to try to make some sense out of any of it.
There was George's Squirmy and Aoi's Titania, both giants wrestling and smashing the Comrade Home and everything that didn't scramble out of their way quickly enough.
There were Shinji and Scarlet, one using mainly water, one using mainly fire in a furious boiling, hissing, snapping whirlwind of an air/land battle.
There were the four J-Knights with Katrin, struggling against George's smaller Comrades, lesser Frostwyrms, crystal-like cacti, and masses of thorny vines.
There were May and Katrin, fighting it out now that Raiki had decided to help her friends against obvious enemies instead of getting between two girls who were both supposed to be Colin's friends. Both girls were calling more and more Comrades into the fight.
And then there was Jonah, calling an army of gigantic bugs to attack Colin. Larry's rabbit types were defending Jonah against Sonia, Foxie and Eclipse. Alicia's birds and squirels were defending Larry against Raiki and Kirin.
Which basically left Colin and his staff to ward off everything Jonah threw at him.
"Blast it…!" Colin batted away two fireballs with the flick of a wrist, then used the reverse end to block an ice shard. He sidestepped to avoid a flurry of flying rocks, then ducked under a gob of acid, dashed away from more green cloud arrows, and almost ran smack into a trio of laser beams. "Raiki! Sonia! Hurry up!"
They hurried. Warbunnies and whatever else were getting slaughtered left and right and Colin's Comrades were almost on Jonah and Larry, but more and more of Larry's army kept getting in the way, and Alicia's air support forced them to defend themselves every other step of the way.
{There's no way I'm going to last all by myself against the entire army. I need help. But the only Comrade I have left is…}
"Get him!" Jonah shouted, and Damnaith charged, a cloud of Vampire Bats and giant spiders at her back. Jonah himself drew a big fat sword, Larry took out a halberd, and Alicia drew a pair of tonfa.
{They're on Import Links!} Colin realized. {They're going to fight along with their Comrades! That means…!}
Raiki was way ahead of him. If they intended to take part in the fighting, then she would have no qualms targeting them directly. She and Kirin combined powers, her Oversurge with Kirin's Triple Zap, aiming to take out Jonah, Alicia and Larry all at once.
Yet that sort of thing took time. Just a few seconds, but those were precious seconds that Colin didn't have.
{I'm not going to make it…}
Desperate, Colin knew he had no choice. He called his last Comrade in spite of everything. "Shiro!"
But nothing happened. Shiro didn't appear. At all.
"Scrap." Colin summarized, as an army's worth of shots hit him more or less at the same time and he died.
***
He respawned back at his Home Base feeling totally sick.
"Ugh." Colin grabbed Lynn's herb leaf and sniffed it, once again grateful for the relief it brought.
He was back. Back in the Forest of Legends, under the rich green leaves, the warm brown branches, the peaceful shade.
{I'm home. I feel sick and I just died, and I probably lost a whole lot of whatever, but I'm home… and it's good to be back. I hadn't realized how I've missed the Forest of Legends.}
Lynn. Was she around? His head spinning, Colin couldn't be sure. He sat down and waited, stroking his upset Comrades who had all respawned back here with him when he died.
{That's… strange. Didn't I set Crystal Cove as my Starting Location? Shouldn't I have respawned there? That happened at the West Lamico Forest, didn't it?}
{Oh wait. The Lamico Forester's Hut was my Outpost Base. It was more than my Starting Location. My Starting Location only works for when I log in, I guess. Respawning sends me home or to a temporary residence, like an Outpost Base.}
{Maybe I should set Crystal Cove as an Outpost Base instead of a Starting Location… although I'm not sure if it's possible.}
Groaning to himself, Colin set back to wait out the sickness.
***
Jonah, Alicia and Larry respawned back at Lamico one after the other in rapid succession.
"I got him!" Jonah crowed, jumping up. When he landed, though, his legs gave way, dropping him flat on the floor.
"He got us too. That Triple Zap combo took out all of us at once, just before Colin died." Larry rumbled. "Why are you after him so bad, anyway?"
"Why?! You don't even… know…" Jonah choked.
Alicia sat back with her eyes closed, holding her head. "How much money did we earn from the bounty?"
"Twenty thousand." Jonah managed, fighting hard to keep himself from throwing up.
"Oh." Larry settled back.
***
Meanwhile, Katrin and May were having a furious duel.
Katrin threw everything she had at May, even those Comrades who were in recovery and those who couldn't take the cold outside. Here in the burning, sizzling mess of a battlefield half sheltered by the ruins of the Comrade Home, she called them all. "Meek! Mika! Fireheart! Cour! Warc! Glide! Blackswirl!"
May was already drawing a pick-axe, wielding it like a weapon. Katrin understood at once – May, too, was using an Import Link.
{Suits me just fine!} Katrin growled, and drew her baton.
She charged, sending in the birds on the left, the cats on the right, and the bears, mice and saurus straight down the center. She herself aimed for May directly, and swung her baton for her head.
May blocked, deflecting the baton off the blunt front of her pickaxe, then shoved the mining tool forward rather than swinging it, catching Katrin in the shoulder. Her Glass Guardsman charged in, stabbing for Katrin from the right.
Gera mauled the Glass Guardsman. She whacked it with her claws and sent it skidding aside, then pounced and pounded on it with all she had, but then the slimy blob thing dropped on her and she stumbled back trying to claw it off.
Far ahead of them, Aoi's golem didn't seem to be doing much better. That giant wyrm was crushing it, and they could hear the squealing metal all the way from here.
More than that, Katrin didn't see. She was focused on going all-out to finish May and end it that way. She attacked as fast and as hard as she could, but May, her eyes narrowed, blocked with her big pickaxe, with hardly any movement at all.
From above, Blackswirl swooped. He was coming to help her, she figured. Since he struck from above, she'd strike from below, and between them one of them would get May. Katrin swung her baton low, going straight up for May's chin like Aunt Ivy had taught her.
May dodged, and kicked at Katrin's grip on the baton. Katrin barely pulled back in time, feeling the graze of the kick on her knuckle and wincing as her hand went a bit numb.
"Why, you…!" she began, when over to the left, Shinji and Scarlet unleashed hair-raisingly powerful attacks at the same time. Every Dreamer in the vicinity paused for a moment, and in that second, a whole lot of them vanished. In Katrin's case, it was because while she and May were distracted, both Blackswirl and May's Trihorn Pony struck.
The last thing Katrin saw on the Continent of Eternal Winter that night was a flash of bright blue light, accompanied by the feeling of her hair standing on end.
Katrin re-spawned back at Edward's Farm.
"Ugh." She felt like throwing up. Being hit with a charged up lightning bolt from a Trihorn Pony was no joke.
"Kat?" Edward blinked. "What happened?"
"I died." Katrin summarized.
***
On an entirely different continent, Shinji respawned back at Heaven's Mirror Lake, feeling roasted.
"Scrap!" he coughed. "That Phoenix…!"
High in the mountains as it was, the thin air didn't help his head any. Shinji grabbed a Steadfast Leaf and sniffed it, grateful for the little relief it provided. Then, he sat back with a grunt.
Rain, Squall, Gust, and all the other water birds he'd called into battle made loud complaints at him.
"I know. Me too." Shinji groaned. "Let's just take it easy, okay? We just earned ten thousand Clira. Maybe we should take a vacation."
Rain nodded her agreement. The rest did too.
***
Scarlet and May respawned at Burrow Hollow, colliding right into each other, then holding on for support.
"Blast. I almost got away with it." May spluttered.
"That cunning man… killed me at the cost of his own life." Scarlet grouched.
They took out Steadfast Leaves and started sniffing.
***
About the same time, Aoi respawned back at Crescent, at the J-Knights' Desert Outpost.
"I forgot to set my Home Base there!" she moaned. "Oh, great! Now I have to get another flight out… if there's anything left by the time I get back, that is."
***
Hari, Daud, Kancil and Amina respawned right back at Soft Snows. They survived for ten seconds before Squirmy spotted them and hammered his tail on their heads.
All three of them re-died on the spot.
"Emergency Base divert!" They called as they respawned a second time, just before Squirmy came crashing down.
Once more they died, but this time, they respawned at Cold and Crispy Village… with two Frenzieds.
The locals took half an hour to subdue the Frenzieds, during which three houses and a sawmill were destroyed. They had to pay for damages.
"And we couldn't even score a single bounty." Hari grouched.
***
The sole survivor of the battle, George looked around for a bit, found everyone else already dead and respawned elsewhere, then sighed.
He disappeared into Squirmy's mouth, much to the locals' horror, and vanished underground. About two minutes later, he surfaced near Burrow Hollow, picked up Scarlet and May, then brought them back to Crystal Cove.
Kishin eyed them askance when they arrived, two of them still feeling sick.
"That call was a trap. J-Knights were waiting. Shinji was there too." George summarized for him. "We… uh… we destroyed the Comrade Home. There are Frenzieds at Soft Snows. Sorry."
Kishin shook his head, killed George, then headed out to handle the Frenzieds.
George respawned back at Burrow Hollow, with a grimace. "Yeah, I knew that would irritate you. Sorry."
***
In short, all fourteen of them died.