Two large armies faced each other, both sides letting out their respective battle cries, only the side closest to the forest edge making various animal noises rather than the human screams of their opponent. Roars, growls, chirps, hoots, and all manner of different sounds reverberating through the trees down to the plains below. The Animal Kingdom, otherwise known as Whiel Cattan, was standing firm to these human invaders of the evil Vurtan Empire. This was the first time in a long while that two countries of this size duked it out, showing that things were about to get a lot more serious in these little war game simulations that they were having on this manmade island.
One of the humals, having a base of a human with dog ears and a tail, named Ralpho Lenzkip, stood near the front of the animal pack, his trusty dog bone almost as large as himself firmly held in place on the ground off to his side. With his sort attention span he was struggling to hold himself back, repeatedly asking the andromals, intelligent animals, if they were ready to kick those imperial butts yet.
"We must issue our great battle cry first! It's tradition!" One of the beaver warriors standing next to him said.
Ralpho screamed at the top of his lungs as he surged forward with his dog bone at his side, closing the gap between the two forces in about a minute. Meanwhile, the other animals also let loose and followed behind him, starting the battle in a flurry of claw, sword, and gun.
Morrigan stood at the head of a column, Vurtan Imperial shocktroopers in neat, orderly lines behind her with their sabres at their sides, their rifles at their shoulders and their battle standards held high, waving in the soft winds that flowed over the soon-to-be-battlefield before them. She felt most comfortable when commanding. Even more so when commanding from the head of the force, in her favourite uniform and boots. The Whiel Cattan forces were quite a ways off, but they had already begun to charge as she could hear over the rolling hills, as the roars and snarls reached her ears on the winds. She turned on a booted heel and strode along the length of the column, assessing the soldiers she was to fight alongside. Then, in a booming, harsh voice, she spoke in an attempt to up morale.
"Remember, people. We may battle here, but we cannot die here. There is no do or die, there is only do. So do for your Empire as the Empire has done for you so many years before and will do so many years from now when you are old and grey. While we may not be able to die here, we can still lose. But that is not an option. These animal's incursion upon the lands and peoples the Empire protects must end. They must fall!"
A rousing cry of agreement went up in the ranks and spread to the entire force as they held up rifles and unsheathed sabres to reply to her. She strode up to a rather large boulder and bent her knees before bounding up to its peak to gain a vantage point and see the forces before her and those still on the way from the Whiel Cattan. With a dark, satisfied smirk, she raised an armoured, insectlike arm and pointed to the advancing animal forces and gave a yell of terrifying volume before bounding off to advance with the men and women following her.
"Charge!"
As the force surged forward, firing off rifles and yelling their cries of 'FOR THE EMPIRE!', and Morrigan advanced at the head, greatcoat and dark hair billowing as she ran. Fierce determination showing through her one eye, as her eyepatch covered the other. She clenched and unclenched her fists in anticipation as the animal horde grew closer, itching to use The Arms after such a long time out of the action. She could feel them almost whistling and chirping alongside her with excitement, drawing upon her willpower a bit as they woke up. Nothing she couldn't handle.
Towering above most of Whiel Cattan’s forces was Leonardo Proudmane, a lion anthromal and the de facto leader of this warband. His allies were many: badgers, foxes, frogs, birds, hyenas, boars, lizards and various more. Few of them compared in power to the likes of him, but he knew he would need every man to win this battle. If only Ravage was here as well, victory would be more certain, but alas, fate had seen fit to split the two of them. They would have to make do.
“Warriors of Whiel Cattan!” he bellowed in his deep, throaty voice as he cracked his knuckles in preparation. “This battle may be a turning point in the course of this competition. We have to make it count! The Vurtans may value their discipline and their technology, but we have something they don’t. We are more than human. We are a force of nature! No army can stop a hurricane, and no army shall stop us! CHAAARGE!”
Voices of a hundred different types filled the air with battle cries as they followed Leo into battle. It didn’t take long for both armies to close the distance to each other. A hail of bullets came down upon their vanguard, striking bright sparks as what might’ve otherwise been fatal hits were absorbed by the All-Life Achiever. Several frontline fighters were knocked out by ranged assault, but others quickly advanced to take their place, while those who weren’t charging in with various melee weapons were returning fire upon the Vurtan gunners with bows, javelins and various other projectiles, even a few firearms.
What few hits Leo took were absorbed by his Kevlar-laced trenchcoat. When the armies connected, he charged roaring into the enemy lines, immediately using his momentum to bash two Vurtan soldiers to the ground at once with a full-body slam. After that, the sound of gunshots was rapidly drowned out by the clangour of sword and axe and bayonet, and Leo found himself furiously swiping left and right at the incoming forces in an attempt to sway the battle in their favour.
The rapid rattling of gunfire and the slicing of cold steel through the open air made Morrigan feel as if she were at home once more. On the training grounds with her father, sparring with the troops as he looked to make an example out of her. Oh, how she showed him, so many bones broken, so many muscles bruised and torn. Just as they would be here. The charge came to a very sudden halt as the Imperial forces collided with those of the Cattan. Steel connected with fur and stone, powder ejected rounds into soft flesh and bone, the crack of rifles could still be heard coming from the rear of the columns as Morrigan waded her way through the enemy vanguard, fists knocking troops to the ground like toys.
Each blow she threw and each animal she grappled with shone with the light of the All-Life Achiever, mending fatal wounds and reviving those that succumbed to their mortal injuries. With each powerful blow, another light went off as if Morrigan were boxing in the midst of a fireworks show. She gave a growl of indiscriminate anger as the jumped towards a rather large soldier reminiscent of a Rhinoceros, grabbing him by the horn before using the momentum to bring him to the ground and drive his head into the dirt, snapping the horn clean off. The speed and power of the blow bounced the large man's body from the earth, and with a quick lash of her other fist, she followed up and knocked him away into a gaggle of what seemed to be three badger people.
Acting only on muscle memory now, she dipped low and swept the legs from a bear-man, before driving herself backwards and up into the air and bringing down a leg into the bear's back, landing in a crouched position as she dragged her leg from the fallen soldier's body. Sparks of light whirled their way around his back and legs as he was pulled away from the action by some smaller doglike soldiers. Morrigan stood up straight and quickly surveyed the surroundings, only to find fighting as far as the eye could see. There was something that caught her eye. Singular.
A larger soldier, most likely an elite soldier. With the visage of a lion, and the figure of a greek god. Morrigan's eye widened at the sight, and The Arms seemed to chitter and chirp with excitement as if to say they had found a target for her. She wasted no time in advancing upon him, dashing quickly and leaping forward, a fist reared back as she sailed through the ranks. She intended to strike him with a good amount of force, just to judge.
Although his allies were taking heavy casualties around him, Leo charged on fearlessly, inspiring the other animals to do the same. The Vurtan troopers came at him with swords and bayonets, but their steel weapons were no match for his size and strength. He swatted aside the bayonet of a charging trooper as if swatting a fly, then punched the man in the chest with such force that, with a burst of bright sparks, he was sent flying into one of his allies further back.
Two others charged him, brandishing their sabres, but he dodged their slashes with a surprising agility for a creature of his size, before grabbing both troopers by their necks and raising them off the ground. He knew another hail of gunfire would follow, so he held the two out like a human shield as he charged towards the line of gunners, pushing aside the troopers that stood in his path. Before they could do much to react, the two troopers in his grasp were riddled by a hail of bullets while Leo remained safe behind them.
Once he reached the line of gunners, he flung the unconscious bodies of the two troopers towards them, knocking out two of the gunners with each one, before charging in to take down the rest personally. They struggled to take aim in such close quarters, but he was upon them before they could, causing their rifles to fire off fruitlessly into nowhere as his claws split apart their chestplates or their masks with every powerful swipe.
This made him feel alive alright. He was literally bred for battle, after all. The scent of rage, fear and gunpowder was strong in the air, but there was something else as well. A scent that, however faint, stood out from the others. He’d smelled its likeness before, it was the scent of something alien. One of the Super Enhanced was here, and she was coming right towards him. Like her allies, she was a dwarf compared to him, but he couldn't risk underestimating her strength. At the very last moment before she reached him, he jumped to the side, out of the way of her charge, and transitioned into a 180° spin in order to rake her in the back with his claws as she passed, provided she didn’t halt her charge in time.
As Morrigan sped across the battlefield like a bounding gazelle, she could see her soldiers being swept aside like pieces of cardboard. It filled her with a rage she couldn't describe to see her people being dealt with like common insects. She swiped out at a cat soldier and snapped the spear he was thrusting at her as she passed him and the large lion man. She felt hot lines of pain streak across her back, biting into her flesh and making her groan slightly as she heard her coat shredding behind her. This was her favourite coat too!
The Arms chirped and whistled angrily, eager to be of use. Acting as quick as she could, she lashed out with both arms and attempted to catch the arm as it raked at her back, intending to gain a lower centre of gravity and then using this momentum against him to throw him to the ground, over her shoulder. She thought that her strength should be more than substantial enough to accomplish this feat, and though he might be faster, she felt as if she were slightly stronger physically, despite her stature.
Leo knew his claws had hit flesh, but he had no further time to respond before he found himself being lifted off the ground in a shoulder throw. His momentum alone couldn’t account for this; she was strong, probably stronger than him even. But she was lighter as well. In mid-air, he made a grab with the hand she was grappling him by for one of her own arms, trying to get a strong grip on her forearm so that she couldn’t disconnect from him as soon as the throw was complete.
After a brief moment in the air, he hit the ground hard on his back. The air was knocked out of him, but he wasn’t quite stunned enough to let the momentum of the swing go to waste. Provided his attempt to grab her arm had succeeded, he would pull the same trick on her, pulling her into the air and flinging her over his downed body to crash into the ground at his feet, something that upper body strength alone wouldn’t save her from.
The lionman fell with a satisfying thump, making a humanoid-shaped indentation in the earth below, and Morrigan smiled a wicked grin. She could feel her heart pumping faster, her muscles were pulling with a reassuring tightness to tell her that she hadn't reached her limit yet, and The Arms 'spoke' to her again as her enemy lay before her. For an instant she felt very good, even with the claw marks streaking across her back. Her father always told her that size wasn't everything, and many instances he had been correct, especially this one. She smiled at the thought, but it quickly faded as she felt herself being lifted from the ground and into the air. In her distracted state, she had neglected to ground herself!
She hit the ground at his feet hard, making a small crater as she rolled to no effect. She had let herself be caught off-guard and she paid the price, a new bruise on her spine. She growled as The Arms grumbled, and yanked her body into standing straight as it replied with a sickening series of cracks. Pain lanced down her back, but it was nothing she was not used to. She pounced forward to land on Leo's chest, straddling him in an attempt to keep him on the ground before bringing her fists up to send them sailing down into his maw. Left, right, left, right she pummelled, pushing a bit more brute force into each blow than, before she brought both fists into the air and prepared bring them down at the same time upon his head.
Leo hadn’t fully risen yet when she was upon him once again, straddling his huge form with her smaller one. With a burst of white sparkles and a painful crack, she struck him in the jaw, jerking his head to the left, then back to the right with another powerful strike. But before the third could connect, he snapped back into action, catching her incoming fist in his hand and using all his strength to stop it before it could reach his face.
It was clear now that she was indeed stronger than him, so he couldn’t allow this to turn into an arm wrestling standoff if he wanted to win. When her next punch came in, instead of stopping it like the last, he pushed his forearm against hers to push her arm off to the side, hoping the momentum would cause her to end up punching the ground instead of him. If successful, that’d put her in an awkward position, which he would try to take advantage of by pushing away her right arm, in order to flip her off him and onto her back. If successful, he would roll with her in order to fully reverse the situation, and make a swift swipe for her face with the claws of his right hand.
Each crack of a landing blow made her smile and laugh a bit more, her mouth curled up into a dimpled smile before disappearing completely as she felt her fist stop for a moment, then strike hard earth and make an indentation. This beast was far from stupid, and that was all she could hear herself thinking as her body lurched forward with the strike and she was swept to the side, head colliding with the earth solidly as she rolled. On the ground, she lay dazed and confused for a moment, until he returned into her vision as he flipped over to reverse the situation. She felt more streaks of hot pain as her head was jerked to the left by his swipe and growled in pain.
His strikes were quick and deadly, but he had put himself in a situation where speed mattered nothing. Careless. She moved in the short lull left by him striking her, and lifted herself to deliver a quick headbutt into his flat, catlike nose before driving her fingers into the ground and trying to pull herself out of his grasp. If she wriggled out in time, she could lift her legs and move him away with either a swift push with her legs or a great kick, depending on his distance at the time.
Leo flinched back with a growl of pain when she headbutted him, which gave her just the bit of wiggle room she needed. As she escaped from his grasp, he had a mind to dive right onto her again, but decided against it, figuring that freedom of movement would work to his advantage in the end. His backing off did grant her the space to pull off her kick, however. At the last moment, he saw her pulling in her legs and crossed his arms defensively to intercept it. Her boots struck his forearms with considerable force, which caused his paws to slide across the dusty ground as it pushed him backwards. The slide quickly transitioned into a backward stumble, but he kept his balance and soon regained his posture.
Although fighting was still going on all around them, it was all about the two of them now. It was as if the spirits of war willed it this way. He was badly bruised and probably had a few bone fractures, but he was far from defeated. For now, he allowed his opponent to rise to her feet in order to observe her next move, all the while baring his teeth in an angry snarl.
The lionman snarled and snapped like a beast caught in a corner, looking eager to lick the wounds she had given it during the process of their fight. She wiped at the claw marks that streaked down her face, and The Arms whistled happily in reply as they drank the small droplets of blood from her cheek. Morrigan's smile grew wider as she looked behind the lion's formidable silhouette to see the marksman squads and reserve battalion slowly marching over the hill, await an order to move in. This battle was one that she would not lose, but the thoughts of victory and defeat were pushed from her mind when she saw how intently Leo was staring at her. She felt the tenderness of bruised flesh predominantly on her face and back, and the cuts from his claws throbbed and ached with the prospect of infection looming closer each passing minute. But she needed to finish this, it had been a long while since she had met as formidable a match as this.
With a quick movement whilst her opponent was sat, just looking at her, she stepped forward and crouched down to push her fingers into the earth in front of her. The Arms made various cicada and cricket-like noises and she jerked herself up and her hands brought a beachball-sized chunk of stony earth up into the open hair. As if moving in slow-motion, she withdrew her hands and pulled back a fist, a growl growing in her throat. With a flex of all the muscles in her arm, she launched it forward and struck the stone with her palm to send it hurtling at her opponent. It splintered in its flight, turning in to a rain of dirt and stone shards. Nothing too dangerous, save for some of the larger chunks, but merely a distraction for her to run up, stance low, and aim a high-strength uppercut as his jaw with the intent to knock him out.
When Leo saw her pulling a chunk of rock from the ground, he at first expected her to throw it whole, and thus stood ready to dodge when she would. But when she launched it at him in pieces, he was left little time to improvise. Instead of dodging, he remained in place and raised his arm to protect his eyes as the hail of pebbles struck him. The more jagged ones left shallow cuts where they landed, particularly on his unprotected hands and abdomen, but nothing he couldn’t deal with. Although he’d temporarily blinded himself to prevent the shards from hitting his eyes, his sharp ears picked up the sound of her footsteps even below the clatter of falling pebbles, and he’d been in enough fights to know that she wouldn’t launch an attack like this without a follow-up.
Lowering his arm, he had only a split second left to see her follow-up coming and react to it. With catlike reflexes, he turned his chest sideways and jerked his head to the side, sending Morrigan’s fist bristling through his mane as it narrowly sailed by his face, missing him by less than a centimetre. In response, he pulled back a balled fist as well and made a powerful strike aimed at Morrigan’s ribs where her uppercut had left her wide open.
Morrigan was too caught up in the momentum and motion of the uppercut to dodge the strike aimed at her ribs. It collided with her hard, and knocked the wind from her lungs. She could only gasp loudly as she looked her opponent in the eyes with a look of rage and disdain. Summoning her will once more, she stood her ground against the blow, feet planted firmly upon the ground. She was sure that she could feel the internal spreading warmth and solid clicks of a few of her ribs finally breaking, and her blood seeping into her body as she bled internally. Around them the battle was all but dwindling, either side being pushed back in turn as the stragglers dragged off the injured or watched on in awe. She would need to finish this quickly, and he was much too fast for her to outpace.
A loud, shrill cicada song came from The Arms as she began a quick motion with both arms, making a move to grab at the arm that Leo had thrown at her stomach, intending to put a vice-like grip on it to hold him in place. Her other hand went to her thigh holster to draw Red Rum, a shell already loaded just in case a situation like the arose. With a click, she flicked the safety off and brought it to bear, bringing the barrel in line with the lion-man's knee. "Lay low, creature!" She gasped out as the barrel ignited and hoping she held him in place for long enough to hit the shot. "Or else the next one goes in between your teeth!"
Leo roared out in pain when she fired off her shotgun at point-blank range. He was fast, but not fast enough to dodge a bullet, nor did his Kevlar-laced pants suffice to stop a shotgun blast from this distance. The pellets tore many small holes in the fabric around his knee and caused an explosion of white sparks as they pierced into his flesh and cracked his bone. The affected leg quickly gave out, causing him to painfully fall down to one knee in an attempt to shift his weight.
Crouched down as he was, he was nearly at eye level with her. He couldn’t allow her to get another shot off, or this wouldn’t end well for him. She needed both hands to reload, he assumed, so he had an opening before she could fire again. Quickly, he twisted his hand to grab onto the arm she was holding him with from below, engaging in a mutual hold. His other hand reached out to try grabbing her gun arm by the wrist, while simultaneously he opened his jaws wide and lunged forward with his head, aiming to bite Morrigan in the side of her neck with his five-inch fangs.
One arm at locked in a mutual hold, the other restrained and unable to aim her weapon, Morrigan was in a very precarious position. She growled and tried to wrench herself free but the hold was at much too awkward an angle for her to escape easily. The fact that she was going to lost to a miscreant like this was beginning to get to her, breaking through the carefully maintained façade of cool, calm sternness that she upheld whilst in command. It broke even more so as she felt the long, knife-like fangs sink into her neck with little resistance. She gasped out a yelp of pain and felt tears sting at her eyes, this was not good at all. With the pressure being applied to her neck, it was becoming harder to breathe and the white sparks flying from Leo's maw only confirmed that.
But with him bent over, on the ground and her arms near his centre of mass, she felt there was only one thing she had left to do. The troops had all retreated at this point, leaving the battle as a conceded draw. Morrigan felt that maybe the battle she was fighting should mirror that of her troops. With her arms locked, she dropped Red Rum, and as it clattered to the ground she took a handful of his fur in each of her taloned hands. Using both his centre of mass and the anchor he had on her neck against him, she tried tilting back and pulling in an attempt to perform a sort of suplex and break the grab so she could pick up her gun and beat a hasty retreat. She felt her muscles straining as she struggled to pick him up, but hoped that the reserves she had left was enough to perform this manoeuvre and flip him off of her.
He had her now, he knew. Where her alien technology didn’t reach, she was still merely human, and no mere human could hope to withstand a lion’s bite for long. Which was probably for the best, considering the battlefield around them was clearing and Leo was heavily injured himself. He’d do well to finish her off quickly.
But even now, she was refusing to be defeated. With a jerk of her powerful arms, he was swung off the ground and into the air, only for the both of them to slam back down on their backs shortly after. Due to the leverage, Leo hit the ground a lot harder than she did, and the force of the impact caused his jaws to jerk open and his grip to loosen, giving her an opening to disengage.
He growled out in pain as he landed, and made a wild swing with his clawed hand from his downed position, which just barely missed Morrigan as she escaped out of range of his arms. Rolling into prone position, he saw her retreating back to the meagre remains of her army. He dug the claws of his hands into the stony soil in order to start leaping after her, but when he tried, his leg was filled with a stinging pain and immediately gave out on him, ending his chase as soon as it began. More sparks were flying off it as the strain was only further worsening his injuries.
While a few smaller animals emerged from the remains of his own army to help their wounded leader back to safety, he let out a loud roar in Morrigan’s direction, enraged that he had to let it end like this. He would remember her, that much was sure, and one day they would meet again to settle this conflict. Today, a rivalry had been born.
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