47 Phase 39: Farm Wars III

Back when Colin and Satrox had been trying to find Scarlet and rescue May, Satrox had discouraged them from using the Gym to train their Comrades and techniques.

{Using the gym, doing the same boring things over and over again might build their bodies up, but doing that too much can make your Comrades go stupid.}

Thus, he'd introduced them to a training method that they nicknamed 'Farm Wars' since it was basically a friendly war on Edward's Farm.

{"There will be three games. The first is building your forts; these will be placed all around the pond evenly. The second game is to defend your forts. You can attack from your own forts at long range, or send your Comrades over directly. The third ignores any locations; just fight it out in the open, no need to defend anything.}

Obviously, whoever built the best fort in the first stage had a big advantage in the second. Whoever still had a fort by the end of the second stage had an advantage in the third.

So far, Farm Wars had been held every night since Satrox introduced it. Both times, Farmer Edward won. He had the most Comrades, after all. The first night, Colin and Katrin had ganged up on him halfway through, but didn't quite manage to match his Comrades' numbers and strengths. The second time, Katrin had asked Colin to let her duel Edward on her own with her new Squirrel Squad, so Colin didn't take part, but Edward said she nearly won.

Colin itched to see how much stronger he and his Comrades had gotten since the first, last, and only time he'd taken part in Farm Wars. There was just one problem.

"I still don't understand what you were doing with the squads." Colin admitted to Shiro, as he, Katrin and Edward gathered their Comrades around the pond. "You're going to have to show me what you had in mind."

"Yip." Shiro assured him. Then, he turned to the others. "Yip. Yip, yip."

"Rawl." Rall raised a question.

"Yiyip." Shiro replied.

{I haven't a clue what's going on.} Colin turned to watch Edward and Katrin finish gathering their Comrades. He took one look and shook his head. "We're grossly outnumbered."

Image link: (basically, Fort Edward has 40+ comrades, Fort Katrin has 20+, Fort Colin has 9)

https://imgur.com/jxRltoU

Shiro didn't answer, too busy barking orders (literally!).

Colin worried about the numbers again. Edward hadn't been this serious before. He'd left a few Comrades still working around the farm.

This time, though, he was going all-out. And he had new Comrades to add to the mix.

{Kat and I are going to have to gang up again, and we probably STILL won't be able to win…}

"You guys ready?!" Edward shouted across the lake.

"Yeah!" Katrin called back.

"Okay!" Colin said, but he felt a lot less certain than he sounded.

"GO!"

***

Shiro was gone before Colin could call him. The others, too, had dashed away the moment Edward gave the word.

{That was quick. Shiro's marking trees for cutting already. At this rate, we'll run out of trees to build with by next week…}

Most of the others were on their way to join him and start cutting and carrying the logs over. Sonia, oddly, seemed to be digging.

{I get it. If she digs fast enough, we'll have a shallow basin to bunker down in, and won't have to build the walls so high. In fact, if we get enough digging done, we'll barely need a layer of logs or two for walls, and then the rest can go into piling a roof on top…}

Shiro was done and on the way back by the time Colin finished thinking. He joined Sonia with the digging. "YIP!"

"Okay, okay! I'll help too!" Colin said. "I'll help carry logs."

Edward and Katrin, Colin noticed, didn't lift a finger to help build the fort. They had so many Comrades, they didn't need to. When Rall, Bubba, Fireheart and Colin came back with two logs, Katrin's crew came back with five, and Edward's seemed to have brought a whole forest with them.

Shiro had marked out six logs. Colin, helping to carry them, felt more like a Comrade than a Commander. Shiro was the one barking all the orders and Colin just went back for a third round of carrying logs.

Kirin was proving to be a splendid woodcutter. Her beak was the beak of a swan, but for some reason, when she pecked the log, it broke through like a chainsaw. She barely seemed to need any effort at it. Warc and Raiki seemed to be saving their powers, physically tearing off small branches and leaves.

Meek, meanwhile, seemed to be carefully picking the nicest leaves around for her nest.

{Oh well… she IS pregnant, after all. I guess her nest and babies are more important than our war game.}

"DONE!" Katrin yelled, before Colin could even get the last log back to their fort site. She'd already built a reasonable-looking circle of logs, with her long-range attackers positioned all around it.

Odd. The way they're positioned, it looks like she's prepared to fight off an attack from me…

Edward, once more, seemed to be building a serious fort, with two layers of walls, spikes and a trench around it, as well as a tower on top. It was only half done, however, and Katrin was already sending the Squirrel Squad over to attack.

She'd made changes to the Squirrel Squad, Colin saw. The beavers had been switched out, leaving the Flying Squirrels, while the Rainducks and Watergulls had been switched in to make for a very fast air attack group. There were seven of them led by the pink flying squirrel.

Edward replied with long-range fire from his tower and the completed part of his fort. He'd began building at the side that faced Katrin, Colin realized. Which meant…

{He's got little defense against my side!}

"Shiro!" Colin called. "We have to attack Edward's fort!"

Shiro took a good look, and turned to Raiki. "Yip!"

"Mew!" Raiki replied.

She jumped on Kirin's back. {What the…?!}

Kirin leapt into the air and spread her wings. {Kirin can FLY?! But she's just a baby…!}

Apparently, baby Storm Swans could fly from the night they hatched. Warc, too, took to the air, and suddenly Colin realized that he actually had an air attack squad. "Cool!"

"Yip!" Shiro barked to Rall.

"Rrawl!" Rall replied. He and Bubba dove into the lake. {They're going to swim across and attack from the water?!}

"Yip!" Shiro told Sonia and Meek. "Yiyip!"

And he, Sonia, Fireheart, and Meek all dashed across to the left side.

Colin stared as his Comrades attacked Edward's Fort from land, water and air, and shook his head. "I didn't even {think} of that!"

Fireheart, Colin noticed, hadn't been given a single order from Sonia. Shiro did all the barking, and it was Shiro who now led their charge around the lake. The wolfcat led wolf, cat, and lynxmouse at a blurring speed.

They reached Edward's fort at the same time as Colin's air squad. Bubba and Rall were barely one-third of the way over when Warc, Kirin, and Raiki on top of Kirin's back started launching sonic and electric attacks. Shiro and Sonia sliced into Edward's forward defense line from either side, Fireheart following Sonia, Meek following Shiro.

On the other side of Edward's Fort, Katrin's air squad was making an attack run, but her land Comrades were…

"They're not moving?!" Colin stared. "What's she doing?"

Katrin's Comrades all seemed to be clustered tightly together in her little encirclement of logs.

Shiro, meanwhile, had come under heavy fire and was busy dodging. Meek didn't quite manage to dodge so much, and at a bark from Shiro, scurried away. She looked like she was headed right out of the battle zone.

{That's right… stay safe, Meek. You're pregnant, remember?}

Warc had taken a few hits and tumbled from the sky even as Colin watched. She sat down on the ground and shook her head, but didn't move. She was 'out'.

Kirin, amazingly, kept in the air and even managed to dodge a few shots. Raiki seemed to help a lot, shooting smaller sonic bolts to intercept the heaviest stuff being thrown at them from below.

Fireheart let out a yowl even as Colin searched for her. She went tumbling along with what looked like a flat slab of soil that looked quite a bit like Rall's earth barrier. Whatever it was, it finished her off, leaving her holding her head and sitting still as the fight went on. She heaved a sigh and laid her head down to watch it continue.

Sonia, meanwhile, was huddling behind a rock as a stream of long-range fire rained at her from the Fort's tower.

A huge glob of mud suddenly flew out of the lake in an arc. It landed right on top of Edward's Fort tower, covering his best long-range attackers in gooey mud. {I can't even SEE Bubba! Did he and Rall do that? It had to be them.}

Raiki redoubled her attacks, raining sonic bolts on Edward's long-range attack group keeping Shiro and Sonia down. The pair of them, freed from long-range fire at last, quickly took advantage of the support and went on a rampage.

It was at that point that long-range attacks suddenly poured out from Katrin's 'fort'.

"What the...?! From that range…?!" Colin trailed off, suddenly noticing just where Katrin's fort was. "You've got to be kidding! She MOVED her fort?!"

https://imgur.com/nsrNPUG

Katrin, in her mobile fort, finally sent out her front-line melee units under the covering fire of her long-range attackers. How they crossed the river, Colin couldn't begin to guess, but while Colin and Edward had been fighting each other, she'd brought her entire army AND her defensive bunker into attack range.

Raiki and Kirin were pulling back now, letting Katrin's crew continue the bombardment while they flew back to Colin to take a break.

Edward was sending Comrades into the water after Rall and Bubba. Graybark, Edward's own big wolfcat, seemed to be challenging Shiro to a duel. Shiro didn't seem to accept it; he and Sonia went at Graybark from both sides.

On Katrin's side, her ground troops were having trouble with Edward's Firebull and his six Megants. His Rainducks suddenly splashed out of the water almost on top of Katrin's Fort.

{Rainducks can swim underwater?!}

Katrin, now under Rainduck bombardment, recalled the survivors of her air squad, relying on her long-range attackers to batter Edward's fort. Velvet, Katrin's purple beaver, was running circles around the Megants with the Firebull on her tail. She dashed at the wall, dodged, and let Edward's Firebull crash into his fort.

{I've seen THAT before. Wonder how many times we've used that trick by now?}

Edward, though, had more new tricks up his sleeve. This included one huge moving vine that surged out of the water with both Rall and Bubba caught in its thorns. It dropped them off on the shore near Edward's Fort, and neither of them got up. They both sat down and started playing cards. They were 'out' too.

{Where did they get CARDS from?!}

The big vine thing of Edward's had disappeared underwater again. Colin wondered if it was headed for Katrin's base, or his. {If it comes here, I'm done for…}

Shiro and Sonia, too, had finally had enough and were running for their lives. They didn't manage to break through into Edward's fort itself, but they did cause some serious damage. Edward's army seemed to have been cut down to half already.

{Meanwhile, I'm down to four survivors. Katrin's lost three of her air squad, but most of her Comrades are still safe in her fort, even despite being bombarded from above.}

Katrin probably planned this from the start. She built only what she needed to pull this off, and started the second stage as soon as she was ready, catching Edward and Colin both unprepared. So far, it seemed everything was going according to her plan. Edward and Colin had both lost half their forces and she still had most of hers active.

{And all four of my survivors are exhausted. They're coming back to take a break, but they're going to need a long break before they'll be in any condition to fight on.}

Shiro and Sonia arrived, panting, about the same time as Kirin and Raiki. The four of them just clumped around Colin and sat around or on him.

"You okay?" Colin asked Raiki, sitting on his head.

"Mew." Raiki replied tiredly.

"Kirin?"

"Kirr." She answered beside him, leaning her head on his shoulder.

"You two?" Colin looked at the two cubs sitting in his lap.

"Yip." Shiro managed, heaving.

"Auu." Sonia gasped for breath. Even for her, it must have been tough keeping up with Shiro.

Then the roof was ripped away and Colin found himself staring at powerful thorny vines.

"Forfeit!" Colin called. "We're out!"

"Chokethorns!" Edward shouted from across the lake. "They're done! Head to target B!"

{Chokethorns? Must be that big Vine's name…}

The mass of vines looked over them for a moment, then pulled back and headed away.

{That's it, then… it's over for us.}

Colin sighed. "Still, we fought a good fight. Well done, Shiro. Well done, all of you."

"Yip." Shiro leaned his head down on Colin's knee and closed his eyes. He sounded relieved. "Yip, yip."

"Kirr!" Kirin nudged Colin happily and all of them fell over.

***

Katrin won. Edward was shaking his head as they started cleaning up. "I thought having Chokethorns around was going to swing things in my favor, even against both of you, but that moving fort really surprised me."

"Me too." Colin admitted. He looked at the remains of Edward's fort. "Katrin's getting good at this."

"For now." Edward said. "I got a few ideas for tomorrow."

Colin grinned. "And I need more Comrades."

Katrin came over then, and called, "Good fight, you guys!"

"Yeah." Edward chuckled. "Congrats, Kat. I'll get you next time."

"Maybe." Katrin grinned. "Maybe not."

She was smiling, cheerful in her victory. Colin smiled too, relieved to see her looking like herself again.