"The Protectors work with millions of unique and varied species, but we do notice certain trends among lifeforms that eventually achieve sapience and last long enough for us to meet them. Capability for Logic and Community are two of the obvious common traits, but one we've yet to truly determine the reason for, at 62.6% of all species thus far, is a love of watching explosions." - Protector AI Prynn, when asked in an interview about what other aliens are like.

  The three Samurai watched the Antithesis crawling in and out of the canyon hive.

  "So, that seems easy. We can just drop a bomb in and clean up the stragglers, right?" Hayden asks, frowning at the picture.

  "It will not be that simple. The hive likely goes deep into the ground. A traditional bomb will not reach the various nooks and crannies with the crevice venting the force, and other types of explosives you could purchase at your tier will also not suffice." Athyna replied.

  Elliot frowned. "Right, that makes sense. Could we just plug the canyon, then drop something that should spread through the tunnels."

  Hylios jumped in to reply. "That should work! Mecha Suit Maiden could use a big C-Foam grenade launcher. Stick the grenades down in a close enough pattern and then boom, whole thing is covered in thermal resistant foam. Then we just use a heat bomb to turn everything inside into barbecue, and that will clear it!"

  Irys had an admonishing tone "It will also turn the hive into a large shrapnel bomb, so you would also need to clear the area before setting it off."

  Quinn pondered this. "What if there are other entrances, would we need to plug those too?"

  "No need! As long as the big hole close by is gone any smaller ones won't really be an issue."

  The drone suddenly started spinning out of control after something impacted it, and went dead as it impacted the ground a few moments later.

  "Well, that eye's gone, want to buy the launcher and we can get to it?"

  "Sure, Irys can you buy me a C-foam grenade launcher then?"

  "Of course, Darling."

  New Purchase: "Rapidfire Nova" Grenade Launcher, Vehicle Grade

  Cost: 80. Points reduced to... 3833

  New Purchase: Thermal/Kinetic Resistant Sticky C-Foam Grenade, 30 count drum mag.

  Cost: 8. Points reduced to... 3825

  Quinn bent down and extracted the grenade launcher from the box, holding it in Cassie's hands. It was a stubby little thing, with a large magazine sat in front of the trigger.

  "Lets go then." She started marching towards the hive, with Elliot and Hayden quickly following.

  They crested the hill, and Quinn immediately started firing her laser into the scattered antithesis that were milling around on the surface. A horde of Model-1s swooped down from above, and one of the floating drones shot an arc. A zigzagging pattern of the murder birbs fell from the sky, blasted to char by the electricity. Quinn ignored them and continued to push forward.

  Blade Dancer pounced on a model-4, ripping into it briefly before moving to a new target. Elliot put precision shots into larger model-6s, his rifle packing a significant punch against the car sized beasts.

  They fought their way to the canyon, rarely needing to even slow. It seemed either the hive had burned a good amount of their heavy hitters already or was saving them, and they quickly made it to the lip of the hive.

  Quinn soon had small glowing circles on her HUD indicating where the grenades needed to be, and she started moving down the canyon, placing grenades as she went.

  Quinn was just about half way done, and starting to wonder if it was going to be really that easy, when Elliot called out over comms, alarmed.

  "We have a number of large antithesis coming in from the air. Probably a deviant hive? Hylios, should we be leaving?"

  Hylios still had his usual cheer, which was probably a good sign. "They could catch you if you ran and they were determined, but I think you can take them anyway! It would also be best to destroy this biomass rather than let any antithesis hives take it."

  Elliot shrugged and casually shot a Model-3 that was moving towards him. "Sure, lets try it. I'm sure we can buy something to get our asses out of dodge if needed."

  "That's the spirit!"

  Quinn continued her demolition while they watched the skies. Soon enough a collection of large silhouettes, accompanied by swarms of smaller flyers, were darkening the horizon.

  Deciding to try her luck, Quinn briefly took a knee to fire off a beam at one of the front-runners. Her aim was ever so slightly off however, so the beam went wide, scattering a cloud high in the sky as it streaked past her target.

  They killed stragglers from the main hive while they waited, and quickly the shapes resolved in the forms of Model-12s and a new Model, looking like a Pterodactyl of old.

  "What are the non 12 fliers?" Quinn asked.

  "Those are Model-11s, transport and heavy attack models. They are more dangerous than a Model-6 in direct combat, but less so than the enhanced Model-12 you fought yesterday."

  "Understood, I'll be careful."

  She considered trying another long range shot, but the detached nature of her current controls meant aiming was harder. Elliot appeared to have no such issues however, as he drew his odd revolver, aimed down the sites and fired.

  He fired three shots, a couple of seconds between each trigger pull. His first and second shots didn't seem to land, but the third removed one of the wings, ans most of the shoulder and torso, from one, which spiraled down to crash into the ground.

  Quinn watched the horde getting closer, suddenly finding herself concerned at the number of huge birds bearing down on them.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Irys, could I get a large deplorable hardlight shield, maybe twice my height and a few times my width? I don't need it to last for too long but it needs to be strong."

  "Of course, I see you have something in mind."

  New Purchase: "Plexiglass" Extended Deployable Hardlight Shield

  Cost: 15. Points reduced to... 3910

  She quickly extracted a small disk from the box that materialized in front of her, tucking it into a nook between hand and grenade launcher before returning to her placement. She was getting close to finishing, but the deviant forces were rapidly approaching.

  She watched as one more just dropped from the sky as Elliot gestured at it, its flailing wings failing to produce the lift needed to keep it airborne against what was presumably massively increased gravity.

  "Stick close to me, I'm nearly done. do we want to drop the bomb in now?" She called out.

  "Roger, coming in. Blade Dancer you got the bomb covered?" Elliot replied.

  "Can do." Blade Dancer spat out between mouthfuls of some unfortunate Model-4, his words slightly snarly. He dashed over to the edge and grabbed a barrel sized cylinder that fell into his arms before hucking it into the chasm.

  The Model-12s had landed some distance away and were now disgorging smaller models. The Model-11s were still flying onward, maybe 500 feet out. Small swarms of deviant Model-1s swooped down upon lone true antithesis, tearing them to pieces while only losing a couple of their own number.

  They were going to finish laying the C-foam grenades before the deviants reached them, Quinn just had a couple more left, and then maybe they could leave without even much of a fight.

  In a moment of somewhat predictable Irony, the true Antithesis hive chose that moment to throw everything into chaos.

  In a rough semicircle around the landed Model-12s, Model-18s burst from the ground in showers of rock and dirt. Similar to the previous attack, smaller Models began emerging from the holes and leaping into combat with their deviant brethren.

  A second group, significantly smaller, burst out closer to the three Samurai, quickly turning their attention on the lone humans.

  "Well Damn, I feel almost insulted." Elliot quipped. "But uh, are those new holes to presumably the hive going to cause problems for our plan."

  "Unfortunately, Yes." Irys replied. "You'll need to plug the new holes, or there's a good chance the heat will dissipate too much to be effective."

  "Shit, that means we're going to have to wade into a three-way then?" Quinn said, turning away from her grenade work to fire at the rapidly incoming horde.

  Elliot put two more shots of his revolver into one of the oncoming Model-18s, carving out enough of its head to drop it before it had even fully climbed out. He gestured at a second, and it strained to try to heave itself the rest of the way out of the hole. Seeing an opportunity Quinn lined up and put a particle beam through its neck. It slumped over, weakly scrabbling at the edge of the hole.

  She caught movement on the screen to her far left, and turned just as a set of the Deviant Model-11s swooped down towards them. Clearly the three way was coming to them. She dropped the grenade, snatched up the hardlight shield and threw it down just as the murder pterodactyls reached them. A translucent barrier sprung up, and there was a series of huge thumps as three Model-11s impacted the hard-light like a bird running full force into a window.

  A fourth managed to swerve around, and began swooping back down towards her. She snatched up the grenade launcher and dashed right as it impacted. Before it could turn again, she hit one of its wings with a grenade, then immediately detonated that one. The bird was immediately engulfed in a mess of foam, trapping it on the ground.

  She glanced around to see how her allies were doing. Blade Dancer was apparently playing Elden Souls with the last remaining Model-18, slashing at it with his larger sword and dodging around its sweeping attacks. Elliot was sprinting towards her, the flak guns on his shoulders thinning out but not significantly denting the mass of Model-1s that were now reaching their positions.

  "Shit, are you safe from electrical blasts, Elliot? I don't think you should get too close if you aren't."

  He halted a few meters away from her. "Fuck, you're not wrong. Can I borrow your hard-light catalog."

  "Sure."

  She saw him turn back towards the murder of Model-1s, delaying the front-runners with a burst of gravity that sent them suddenly flying into the sky. A moment later a small capsule dropped into his hand and he dropped it on the ground before tapping the top with his foot. There was no immediate effect, but as she drew her sword to plunge into the trapped Model-11, she caught glints of reflected light around him. Model-1s swarmed towards her and her orbiting drones opened up, blasting swathes of them out of the sky. A number managed to land on her proper, pecking at the armor on the mech, but a few blasts and they were fried just the same.

  She dodged around a True-Antithesis Model-6 that charged her, activating her Hardlight bracer and lunging at it in a tackle. It went skidding off the edge of the Canyon before tumbling into the depths below, and she turned her attention to other threats. Elliot was apparently safe from the swarm, but covered in sap with strewn pieces of Model-1 covering the ground around him. He wasn't firing any weapons, but various Models around were falling to the ground, being suddenly shoved in odd directions, or being tossed bodily into the sky. She couldn't see Hayden directly any more, but the flashes of blades scything through avian and canine alike in the distance indicated he was holding his own for now.

  The Deviant Model-11s that hadn't avoided the sudden window were recovering, though one was now in a duel to the death with a True Model-18 of its own, and another had been swarmed by small antithesis and seemed to be slowly losing the fight, though not without casualties. A third turned to help its friend with the true Antithesis' heavy hitter, while the fourth loped around and at her at surprising speed. It was no juiced up Model-12 however, and she merely dashed to the side and unloaded a plasma disc into its torso, causing it to collapse and fall into the canyon.

  With the heavy hitters in their immediate area mostly dead or dying, Quinn quickly finished placing grenades around the chasm itself, before jogging over and doing the same to the new tunnels near them. The one with the dying Model-18 she finished off with a plasma blast, before slicing it in half, shoving the top out of the way and planting grenades around the revealed lip of the hole.

  Elliot had moved away from his makeshift antithesis blender and was glancing towards the battle still raging significantly off in the distance. "We need to get moving, we've got more Deviants on route. Hayden, can you drop the bomb into the hive? Quinn, go get those remaining holes grenaded quick, then we need to leave."

  "Got it.""Will Do." they both answered simultaneously.

  It wasn't hard to sprint over to the other holes and prepare them, the fighting between the two Antithesis groups had mostly moved further out as the True Antithesis drove the deviants back. It wasn't all one sided however as a number of Model-18s lay dead or dying, and a few seemed to have switched sides and joined the Deviants. As she watched while filling in the last few holes, a large of Model-5s shot barbed harpoons into another Model-18, dragging it to the ground where a Model-12 savaged it. A few stragglers decided she was a closer target and moved to fight her, but not enough to be a significant threat.

  "Done!" Quinn called out as she placed the last grenade, dashing repeatedly as she ran towards the other two, who were already beating a hasty retreat themselves. Quinn detonated the rest of the grenades as they sprinted towards the hill, and with a hissing pop the canyon was suddenly covered in a grey goo. They continued sprinting over the hill, and when the battle raging was out of sight they slowed down, mostly to give Elliot a breather.

  "Hold up, I wanna watch this." He grinned, before summoning another of the recon drones and sending it flying back towards the hive as they walked. "Right, hit the button Hayden."

  Nothing much happened for about a minute, the battle still raged on as the Deviants brought in another set of reinforcements. It made some sense to Quinn, after all in their mind if they won the battle they got their own biomass back as well as the biomass of the enemy.

  The first signs were a slight buckle in the ground around one of the tunnels, and then there was dust and shrapnel everywhere. The main fight was too far to get more than a little pelted, but the few antithesis close to a hole were shredded.

  Elliot managed to get out a "Huh, that was…" before an entire section of the plateau near the battle erupted in a deafening roar. Huge boulders were flung into the air before raining down on the battle and nearby environs. Quinn crouched over the other two and activated her hardlight vambrace, steadying herself as a rain of stone and dirt, along with a few decent sized rocks, smashed into the shield and her chassis. One managed to land directly on a sensor, and she lost a tiny sliver of her vision where the two on either side didn't quite overlap.

  "Holy Shit." was all Hayden could muster.

  "Yup." was Quinn's reply.

  Glancing between themselves, they set off away from the remains of the hive, watching the rest of the battle as they went.