***
"For Holy Gaia!" the shouts were the only warning the knights had before the gunfire started.
Henry Kibou jumped to his feet, knocking back the crate he'd sat upon while he had chatted with Tomoe in the maintenance area. Those shouts and that gunfire could only mean one thing. "The Cult is attacking!"
He dashed for the exit tunnel, leaving Tomoe to grab her tools as he tapped his badge. "Recon Squad! Defense Squad!"
There was a loud explosion and the whole dungeon shook. Henry slipped, almost crashed face-first into the labyrinth floor, except that one of his bigger lynxmice was in the way. The orange lynxmouse cushioned his fall, the poor furry thing half squashed under Henry.
"Mweaaaak..." The lynxmouse gasped.
"Henry!" Tomoe zoomed up atop her Helijet. The car-sized Comrade hovered three feet over the heaving ground, the big propellers on its wings keeping it clear from all the shaking. Tomoe held out a hand to him.
Henry grabbed it, found himself hauled right off his feet as the Helijet ignited afterburners and all but blasted its way through the dungeon. "WHOAAAAA!!!!"
"You okay?!" Tomoe yelled as they sped through half the dungeon in five seconds flat.
Dragged along behind her like a banner, both feet clear off the ground and in no position to protest, he yelled, "YAAAHOOOOOOOO!!!!"
With that as a battle-cry, Tomoe and Henry blazed clear out of the dungeon and smack dab into the war-zone.
The first thing that greeted them was a green laser beam. It lanced from above and to the right, slicing the ground before them like a pillar of falling sky and very quickly closed in on them. Tomoe swerved, dodging it neatly... but Henry, flapping behind her, was all but thrown in its path.
"Yikes!" Henry let go of Tomoe's hand in a hurry, letting himself flutter out of control on the other side of the green beam before it fried him. He tumbled to the ground, tasted grass and dirt, and crashed a bit painfully into a tree. "Ow."
Tomoe meanwhile began warping in Comrades. Helijets, Helibooks, Heli-whatevers started fountaining out around her and taking to the skies after the Saucers.
But even as her Comrades and others of the Knights' were striking up, Gaian Drop Pods were raining down.
Henry got to his feet painfully, spitting out grass with a cough. He tapped his badge. "Attack Squad! Flank Squad! Artillery Squad!"
About fifteen Lynxmice appeared around him. Henry pointed at the Drop Pods. "Get 'em!"
They took off at a dead run, and he ran with them, warping in armor and a war-hammer, something he'd gotten only recently and only because of what developed from Rita doing what she did. She would be the first to ask him if she ever found out, he knew. {Why a warhammer, of all things? It's heavy, it's cumbersome, it's not easy to wield...}
He might say he wanted to leave a strong impression. He might say he wanted something harder-hitting, that he liked the high damage numbers. He might even say it just looked cooler.
But the truth was, getting a hammer had nothing to do with combat. The truth was, Henry got the hammer because it had uses outside of combat. A hammer was also a useful tool.
Rita would never understand. But of course, Rita wasn't a girl who used tools and she was not the girl likely to ask to borrow it.
"MWEEEK!!" Lynxmice charged forward, six of them wrapped in elemental auras, five more sweeping around the side toward the exact pod that Henry had pointed at. The remaining six had stopped and were charging up long-ranged attacks.
Fire streamed down from above. Henry glanced up to see dragons filling the air. Snakes, lizards and creatures like scaled goats all with wings and breathing fire or acid or lightning came swooping down at Henry's artillery.
"Defense Squad! Scavenger Squad! Recon Squad!" Henry called in everything he had left, feeling in the pit of his stomach that his Defense Squad wasn't going to be able to hold off these creatures on their own. {I need more defense. And more firepower. And more attack strength. I need more everything.}
A single explosion wiped out five of Henry's Attack Squad in a flash of light and sound. Gunfire raked his Flank Squad before they could even reach the pod. {There go both my strike squads.}
"Protect the artillery!" Henry gasped.
His Defense Squad rose to the occasion, raising shields as two goat-faced dragons and five flying wyrms darted in to attack. Henry's Recon Squad intercepted, tangling one of the wyrms, but failing to stop everything else. The Scavenger squad hurled themselves in the way of the streams of fire blasting down at the artillery and were wiped out in a moment.
{We're outmatched.} Henry knew it already, as he ran forward with his hammer raised. {We're totally outmatched. But even so... even so...!}
"Open fire!" Tomoe's cry was accompanied by thundering sounds of machine guns rattling. Henry spared her a single, surprised glance, only to see that she had made some rather extreme modifications to her Comrades.
Tomoe had, with her tools and with her hands, evolved her Comrades for war. Her helichair was now armored and armed with gatling guns under each armrest. Her Helibooks had been equipped with spotter scopes and her other Helis were likewise outfitted with missile tubes, grenade launchers, even a laser cannon in the case of her Helijet.
"How much did all of that cost?!" Henry gaped.
"A lot." Tomoe didn't elaborate as her militarized Comrades engulfed the dragons in a storm of firepower. "Thank you for loaning me your hammer."
"S-sure." Henry felt heat on his face.
He'd plain forgotten that he was in mid-charge. Having lost track of where he was and where he was going, Henry turned forward again just in time to crash into the pod he'd been intending to hammer. {Wha...?! Already?! How did I reach it without getting killed?}
But Tomoe had been protecting him. She had laid down covering fire and shot down the dragons attacking his squads. Either that, or she had drawn their attention to herself. Who was going to bother with a boy and his mice when there were heli-Comrades spewing grenades and missiles over there?
Henry's artillery squad fired. Their combined force hammered a lightning blast into the doorway of the pod just as it was opening. There was a lot of yelling and some return gunfire, but Henry whacked at the door's panel with his hammer and sparks flew. The door started opening and closing erratically as gunfire spat out just as erratically. Henry waited till the doors next shut and then hammered the external panel again as hard as he could. This time, the doors stayed shut.
{One down...} Henry fell back, panting. {We're not going to be able to keep this up. Our best bet is...}
"Defend Tomoe!" Henry ordered his lynxmice. There weren't much of them left, just the six artillery types and three of the Defense Squad. "Defense Squad, shield her if you can. Artillery, shoot whatever's attacking her!"
That wasn't hard to do. There were plenty of Gaians and dragons and whatever else shooting at her now. Armor or no armor, half her Comrades were gone, and Tomoe herself was sheltering behind a boulder, her Helichair already blown to bits and sent back to her respawn point.
{Odd. I thought she had more Comrades than that...} Henry ran toward her, once again raising his hammer. {Did she only warp in half of them, or...?}
The Gaians nuked her. They dropped a bright yellow bomb on her and even for Henry, twenty feet away from her, everything went white.
He respawned next to her at Bottom Hour, a fishing village at the southern tip of South Hour. Not many knights had set this place as their respawn point, but Henry and Tomoe clearly did.
{This is the second time I've respawned here tonight.} Henry sighed to himself. {Just now, I died my way back here from Lynn Airport. And now...}
"Well... we died." Tomoe stuck out her tongue a little.
Henry, for some reason, found that rather cute. He let out a small laugh before the sickness hit and then he felt too sick to laugh for a while.
***
Rita wasn't doing too well either. Like Henry, she had died her way back to South Hour to rejoin the war effort, except her respawn point was a logging village a lot closer to the dungeon. It was called Rumbly Mountain village due to how noisy fights in the dungeon could be heard from the village.
As such, when she died during the Gaian attack, she respawned only to find herself under a formation of Cultist Saucers. Setting her respawn point so close to the dungeon might not have been such a good idea after all.
"We have to get away!" Abby gasped at her from across the village square. "We have to warn them!"
"Warn who?" Rita had no idea what Abby was talking about. The Knights' Headquarters was already under attack. Who else needed warning?
"Everyone!" Abby told her. "The Gaians are using Guild Tracking! They know where we are! They know where we all are!"
Rita gasped. "That's terrible! Why, I remember...!"
"We need a comms tower!" Abby barked at her, completely interrupting Rita with no apology whatsoever. "We need it now!"
"Abby! Rita!" Dennis dashed up. "You made it! Oh wait..."
"We didn't." Abby summarized with a grimace. "We died."
"But you're here! That's the important thing! The barrier disruptor worked!" Dennis exclaimed. "We better get out of here while it lasts."
Two more knights respawned in the village square while he was saying that. They sat down with groans then looked at each other and started complaining about how tough that fight was.
"What about the others? They'll respawn here too, right? As long as the disruptor is up..." Abby said, then trailed off.
Dennis didn't say anything. He just looked at her seriously.
"What?" Rita glanced about. "Where's all the other knights who died? I only see those two. Surely there must be more knights dying every second, and I'm sure some of them set their respawn point here, so why? Why aren't any more knights appearing?"
Abby shut her eyes tight. "So... the disruptor has been destroyed."
"Already?!" Rita gasped. "But it hasn't even been five minutes yet! Why, I remember a time when..."
"Move!" Dennis barked to the last two knights to respawn there. "Get away before they capture us all! Tell everyone you meet that the Gaians are tracking us by Guild tags! We have to warn the leaders!"
"Where's Lord Geoffrey?" Abby asked, laboring to get to her feet, her face white and her knees shaking.
"I don't know. I think he and Lady Valkyrie led the counter-attack charge. If he hasn't died and respawned yet..." Dennis trailed off.
"He'll be captured!" Rita gasped. "Oh no! We have to do something! We have to find that barrier generator and destroy it! Or, or, or...!!"
Abby handed her a big orange gun. "Here. If you see Lord Geoffrey or Val, shoot this."
"What?" Rita stared.
"It's a flare gun." Abby explained.
"Okay." Rita blinked. "But why would I see them?"
Abby drew her sword and stabbed Rita with it.
The world turned red.
With a gasp, Rita respawned again, this time in the middle of the war-zone, surrounded by armored cultists who already had their guns pointing at the group of sickly knights respawning in their trap area. Off on one side, Rita distinctly noticed a pair of her new bees going Frenzied.
{Oh no... I just bought three of them tonight...}
She found herself staring at the flare gun. {Abby better compensate me for that re-kill. She better pay for those bees. But first...}
Rita looked around for Geoffrey or Val. She didn't see either of them here.
"Drop it!" the green man pointing a gun at her ordered.
{They're not here. That means I shouldn't fire it.}
Rita put the flare gun down. Then, knowing full well the Green Man had to handle it next, she emptied her stomach over it.