Team Hydra (STRIKE TEAM THREAD)

[Stygg Whitefeather]

Retort’s noxious grenade proved, surprisingly, useful as it smothered the immediate tunnels below the ponies with its chocking gas. Several dogs emerged from various holes nearby, grasping at their throats as they coughed blood, chocked and wheezed, as they gasped for the life-giving air of the surface, only to find their lungs burnt, flooded, and useless. Many died before making it to the surface, clogging their bolt holes with dead and dying bodies. The current underground tunnels where now useless, leaving those Dog fortunate enough to have already made it to the surface being the last of the front-line forces in this immediate area. The dying Dogs moans and death rattles were unsettling as they echoed from underground and out the small holes they had dug.

Fortune favored for the ponies as Retort’s grenades had sent a shiver through the spine of the Diamond Dog push. Seeing their fellow pack-mates die in such a horrific fashion caused many to route, fleeing back into the Everfree Forest in an attempt to escape the gas which would never have actually hurt them. Confusion ran through the ranks as the pack-leader tried to maintain order against the flood of retreating Diamond dogs. With Blink and Javelin’s assault with blade and wing laid into them, it would seem the enemy could not maintain their current stance. Barks were yelped, calls to retreat and reorganize inside the tree line – for now the ponies had bought themselves a moment to reorganize, but it wouldn’t last.

[Lucky Charm]

After a few more throws of the chakrams to keep the dogs from turning back around, Blink pulled them back to her harness and looked at the others. "Everypony up here!" She called. "I've found solid rock!" The dogs could dig fast - they were famous for it - so they had to hurry. "I can move around if we need to flank them, but we need a solid defense plan. They'll be back, and probably better organized."

She turned to look around. "This plateau will stop them tunneling up right under our hooves, but it's also vulnerable. They can surround us at any moment, and only Javelin and I can reposition past them. Out in the open, with numbers on their side, it isn't good." Finally the soldier turned to look at Selenia, the most experienced of them all. "So, what do we do?"

[Selenia]

Selenia dusted herself off as the dogs dropped their weapons and retreated, terrified of being butchered by Javelin and Blink or asphyxiating from Retort's dastardly concoction that brought many of their soldiers to grisly, merciless ends. No doubt it violated all manner of international weapons treaties, but it's not like that would actually matter at a time like this. Post-war, though. "We've pushed them back, but not for long." Selenia stamped her hoof, not discharging her horn or taking her eyes off the fleeing dogs. "This is a make-or-break battle for them, and they won't give up so easily." She turned to the alchemist, "Retort, if you can keep those grenades coming, we can deny them the underground completely. Give some spares to Javelin so she can drop them down new holes as soon as the open up, in case the dogs try tunneling again. We get them out of their warrens, we can engage them up here, at range, on our own terms. Until then, follow Blink's advice and stay where they can't easily get under you, we only need to stay there for as long as it takes Retort and Javelin to keep them out of their tunnels." Selenia quickly charged her horn and dropped a kinetic bomb into one of the remaining empty holes, aiming to collapse it, punctuating her point.

"Don't let your guard down, however. I've been in enough battles to know your enemy always has some new trick up their sleeve, something you didn't account for." Her eyes narrowed and she turned away from the forest, walking back to their line. "Blink's right, they'll be back with a new tactic, and their commanding officer is probably thinking up a new strategy as we speak. Keep your eyes and ears open- we need only to keep repelling their attacks." Selenia primed a shield and eyed the treeline like a hawk, catching the last few shadows of retreating dogs.

[Javelin Razorwing]

    The bomb that Retort had dumped down the Diamond Dog tunnels had been devastating. They scrambled out of the ground only to collapse from internal damage or choking to death. Javelin could tell from the blood leaking out of their orifices that whatever had been in there had been something extremely nasty and anathema to living flesh. It had done the job, but the dogs had died gruesomely. Javelin was a little horrified by the results.


    The rest of the Diamond Dogs had fled back into the woods to regroup. Javelin had little doubt that they would be back with some clever strategy or perhaps some powerful ally. Although, she would prefer the former. Diamond Dogs Team Hydra could handle. With other creatures Javelin had her doubts depending on what it might be. No matter what came for them, though, Javelin would do her best to make sure her whole team survived.


    Selenia was taking charge again. The mage had the most experience, so it made sense to at least consider what she had to say. Her statements were reasonable, so Javelin would keep doing her thing. She nodded to Selenia, signing her agreement. It had been a few moments, and Javelin had not felt any differences crop up from the potion she had consumed. She decided to ask Retort.


    “Hey, I haven’t turned to stone, but I don’t feel any different. Are you sure that potion you gave me worked correctly?”



    A moment later, Javelin took to the air circling above her team. She would keep an eye out for whatever the dogs would send their direction and alert Hydra before whatever it was started to bear down upon them.

[Mortar Retort]

Retort scrambled up the rocks with the others, somewhat like a chubby puppy trying to climb stairs as he rushed up the boulders. He rolled onto his side, his saddle bags rattling and clanking. He then rolled back onto his hooves and was downright giddy about what had just happened.

"Did... did you see that!" He exclaimed, his face awash with surprised pride. "It worked! It really, really worked!" He stared off at the field of dead and dying Diamond Dog, positively gleeful, to the point of bouncing on his hooves like a little filly. He snapped back a moment later as Selenia took charge. He made a sharp turn and saluted, "I'll see what I can do."

Retort removed his saddle bags and begun to rummage through them, placing various items out around him, including several more grenades though the last of his prepared ones. "Here," He said as he nodded to the grenades in a little pyramid pile beside him. the last ones I have ready."Give me some time and I can whip up something else. Oh, here, Cherry-Brimstone and..." He displayed a corked bottle of some red powder, setting it aside then rummaged through his packs, then brought out a pressurized cylinder, "Olefiant gas! This gives me an idea - Javelin! Probably going to need you soon, just a heads up - oh, about that, if you haven't noticed anything, then it worked, probably." He brought out and opened a wooden case, revealing a compact traveling alchemy set and begun to work, right there upon the large rocks, mixing and combine various components together. "If it starts to smoke around me, hold your breath - like really, hold it, or you're dead. Might want to close your eyes too." He said rather cryptic and matter-of-fact.

[King Tidal Wave]

Not a moment after Retort had begun to set up his travel alchemy set, a lone diamond dog scout came sprinting out of the Everfree. The speedy dog didn't even take a moment to pause, turning tail as soon as he had spotted the ponies, and darting back into the treeline. They could hear him barking something in an unfamiliar language as he disappeared into the shadows of the forest.

Not long after did the next wave of Diamond Dogs appear. Archers, a row of them, all stepping out of the treeline on command from their unseen leader. With another word a volley of arrows was sent towards the three unicorns clustered together on the small, rocky plateau. The entire rock was about to be pelted with arrows, the ponies along with it.

While the idea of death-by-arrow was already occupying their minds, a swarm of diamond dogs came rushing out to surround them. Unlike their previous foes, these dogs were equipped like warriors, built like warriors, and trained like warriors. Only the most ardent denialist would believe that these weren't diamond dog warriors. The armor-wearing dogs came running at the rocky platform, wielding swords and maces and hammers and all sorts of nasty weaponry.

While it was unlikely they'd suddenly fly up and strike at Javelin, the pegasus did have to worry about the series of unsynchronized arrows the archers were now firing right at her.

[Javelin Razorwing]

    “I see… a scout. He poked his head out, but ran back into cover.” Javelin called out to her companions as she circled over their heads. She had barely seen that guy, so in order to remedy her perceptive difficulties she swooped around closer to the forest. A moment later, a great amount of movement was visible in the edge of the forest. When Javelin saw what it was, she somersaulted around and flapped as fast as she could to her team.
   

     “Enemy archers! Take cover!” Javelin shouted as loudly as she could. Once she was certain the message had gotten across, she once again turned around mid air and faced the storm of arrows. Many flew past her, missing completely, but this did not mean that they were bad shots. It simply meant that those arrows had other targets. The airborne mare dodged, juked and evaded as well as she could. She was intent on bombing those archers until they ran back into the woods, whether they were aflame, poisoned or missing a few limbs, it made no difference to her.


    The archers noticed her advancing quickly towards them, and so they began to take potshots at her trying to keep her from making progress. She looked on helplessly as the Diamond Dog warriors advanced up the field. The archers were keeping her pinned down, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about the warriors until she had dealt with the markshounds. The ground ponies would have to hold out on their own for now.

[Selenia]

Selenia took a few moments to quickly down Retort's stoneflesh potion. They had cut through the first dregs with only moderate surprises, and she figured their rank-and-file soldiers would be a lot tougher to scrap with. She tossed the empty bottle aside as Javelin called out contact. It was a single dog in proper armor who ran back into the treeline, which moments later exploded in a crowd of dogs, dogs with bows. "Scatter!" She hollered as the dogs drew their bows to the sky and fired. Then came the footsoldiers, clad in thick, gleaming armor and wielding all manner of weapons.

Selenia sized up their options. Javelin was juking like mad while advancing towards the line of archers, clearly with disruption in mind. If they were occupied with her, they weren't raining fire down on Selenia and the rest of their team. Hopefully she could take a few out. "Eyes on the sky everypony! We're all unicorns save for Javelin, use teleportation to your advantage. Retort, find some better cover while you brew- we're completely exposed up here, and Blink; aim for the joints, this is diamond dog military, your chakrams might not even scratch their filigree" Selenia was more than wary at trying to use a shield to protect from diamond dog arrows. What she had read about them and their military history told that they were adept at countering magic. Most notable of which was the Silver Core and their specially crafted arrows, downing the nigh invincible dragons by the hundreds during the Dragon Wars. Selenia knew these weren't the same dogs, but they certainly had the means to recreate ancient weapons of war, and that possibility presented a risk Selenia wasn't comfortable taking.

If Javelin's stint found success and cut down on the arrows flying their way, they couldn't blindly pepper the defense line and would have to at least aim at their team. Arrows had travel time as projectiles, governed by physics Selenia knew all too well, and unless they had some nasty form of tracking, their team could simply teleport or run out of the way. Additionally, if Terragon's mission had succeeded, then the flow of supplies to the enemy front lines would be disrupted or cut entirely, meaning the dogs would run out of arrows and reinforcements eventually.

Selenia kept on her hooves while she charged up a quick teleport to use on demand and launched a volley of tracking bolts at the advancing dogs. She would test the waters to see how their armor would react to her attacks. If the concentrated power of a full-force buck didn't shake the balance or speed of the armored mutts, she would have to get a little more creative.

[Mortar Retort]

Though lost in thought and calculations, unaware of the impending Diamond Dog doom, which was occurring just a few meters, away, he was quick to snap back as the team of ponies called out to take cover. His ears perked up, turned towards the sound of arrows whistling through the air, and then rolled off the rocks to the others. His horn alit with magic as he snatched up his saddlebags from atop the rocks along with him and dragged them down to use it as momentary cover against the felled arrows – in hopes that wooden cases inside would catch any which would fall upon his head. The bottles and vials clanked and rattled angrily against one another as it was all swept and plopped before Retort, who now lay resting on his haunches and with a tail covered with burs.

”Are Diamond Dogs always this misbehaved?” He muttered to nopony in particular as he resumed his work, muddling some foul smelling paste with a caustic liquid, ”When a bad dog makes a mess, you need to rub their nose in it –“ He slapped the muddled paste into some paper, wrapped that to a fragile, glass orb, zapped it with magic from his horn and tossed it towards the advancing line of Dog warriors.

If the toss was true and landed before the Dog line, it’ll pop – not like a grenade, but like a small firecracker, barely a snap – almost laughable, if not for what blew out with the pop. There would come a egg-white powdery smoke, bloom for several meters across and, if the winds were as favorable as they seemed, over the Dogs’ rank. The smell would be overwhelming, even for the ponies; it was a horrible foul to such a degree that the sewer of Tartarus would be a meadow in bloom in comparison. For the Diamond Dogs it would be beyond a scent that a pony nose could comprehend. He hoped that would slow their advance and buy him and the others some more time.

[Blink]

Well, that first assault went well enough. Now, however, they had archers. And armor. And proper weapons. Just bucking wonderful. The good news: Blink was ideally suited to avoid arrows at this distance. The moment the call came out, she teleported off the rock and into cover, and she could keep doing that much longer than any other pony she knew. Rapid, short-distance teleports were her thing.

Knowing the flash from her appearance would attract dogs, she quickly crept into hiding - rough, but good enough for a quick ambush - and readied her chakrams. As soon as they arrived, she pounced, sending the spinning discs of death at them, then drew them back and used another quick teleport to move to a different covered spot. She couldn't fight dozens head-on, but she might be able to whittle them down by hitting and running.

Selenia might have underestimated the chakrams - spinning as they struck, they sawed through most armor after just one or two hits - but then, diamond dogs were supposed to be pretty good with metal, so she did try to focus on precision over raw strength or number of attacks. It would have to be enough, since trying to fight this teleporting hit-and-run battle with archers shooting from the forest's edge was not easy.

[King Tidal Wave]

The first of Javelin's grenades dropping down on the Diamond Dog archers veered just a tad to the left, but to everyone's surprise, Retort seemed to have packed a surprising amount of death into it. The five nearby archers were blown to bits, and several others were left distracted with their jaws hanging wide open. The others were met with moderate success, but by the end Javelin had wiped out half of the archers in sight.

The alchemists' saddlebags proved an effective makeshift shield, though he'd soon discover that one of the diamond dogs' arrows jutting out from it had penetrated the wooden case inside. The corner of his bag was now soggy with the liquid from a broken vial, a liquid he'd recognize as highly flammable. Something to keep his eye on.

Retort's powdery deterrent proved reasonably strong, but neither the wind nor his aim were in his favor. The orb veered off far to the right, and when it popped it created a noxious cloud quite content to expand but otherwise stay in place. The dogs on the right of the line were forced to move around their route to get to the ponies, but the ones on the left and middle were quite able to continue their advance towards Retort and the others.

For Selenia, her attack proved moderately effective against several of the charging dogs. One knocking a dog back and without his weapon, while another seemed to hardly do anything. The rest though, manage to cause the dogs to stumble forward or fall back. It looked like a good buck would at least provide a decent opening.

For Blink, the chakrams had mixed result. A well-aimed throw right into a warrior dog's skull sent him straight to the ground and out of the battle. A followed up on another dog made hardly a scratch in his armor. Teleporting away for another attack against two new dogs had almost the same result, though in reverse order this time.

The dogs were now close enough to strike the land ponies, and this seemed exactly their intent. The majority charged towards Retort and Selenia, one each at the lead about to strike the two with malicious looking swords. The dogs forced to travel around Retort's noxious cloud followed their fellows, a short distance behind them. Blink had also caught the attention of a small group, who she would have to deal with if she didn't move herself.

The archers, now halved in number, focused their fire directly on Javelin, firing their shots in unison to aim at knocking the pegasus straight out of the sky.

[Blink]

Blink's hit-and-run tactic was going about as well as could be expected. Dogs were dying, not in droves but in ones and twos, and she was unharmed. The sign of a successful plan. The bad news, though? Her success attracted too much attention. A small group of dogs was headed her way. However, with the archers busy trying to take down Javelin, she had much more freedom to move without being perforated.

As the dogs came for her she launched her chakrams again, recalling them after two or three strikes, then teleported behind the group just before they got in range to attack her. There she repeated the attack, aiming mostly at the backs of their legs and necks - a crippled enemy was just about as good as a dead one. This became her pattern: Attack until they adjusted to her angle, then teleport to a new one, staying a few steps away from spear range. With luck she could kill them before they could counterattack properly.

[Mortar Retort]

”These dogs are literally the worst!” Bemoaned Retort as the Diamond Dogs continued their advance on Selenia and his position. He had to react fast; thankfully, he knew another quick concoction and had plenty of material to spare for it. He removed several oil filled vials from the damaged case from the now oil soaked sidesaddle bag. It was a mixed blessing, on one hoof, he now had an excuse to lighten his load of explosive elements, while on the other hoof, and it was a really nice saddlebag now permanently stained with foul and terribly flammable oil. In hindsight, putting Salt of Tartar (potassium carbonate) in oil may have not been the most sensible idea, but the alternative of distilled cider or water was just, well, terribly explosive. And that is exactly what the stallion indented to treat the Diamond Dogs to.

Taking the bits of waxy Salt of Tartar from the broken vials, Retort used his magic to break it apart into a fine powder, before he flung it over to the advancing Diamond Dogs – followed by a burst of water, popped by magic from a thin, round glass decanter. "CONTACT!" With the oil having been stripped away from the Salt of Tartar by the air, and now mixed with the water, the element would suddenly and violently explode, combusting in the air together to create a wall of concussive fire, powerful enough to part extremities, blind, and deafen the advancing force – especially the acute hearing of the canines. Using the blast as cover, Retort retreated back, taking with him the remains of his saddlebags and their contents with him, clasped tightly beside him in a veil of magic.

[Selenia]

With Javelin downright crippling the archers' capacity to rain arrows over the battlefield, Selenia could afford to lend more attention to the dogs barreling towards her. Blink and Retort seemed to be handling things just fine on their own, with Blink staying well away from any harm and Retort's bag serving up an impassable wall of tricks for the dogs to contend with. Most of the dogs Selenia hit were down for the count or a quick followup away from it, while a singular mutt had plowed right through her magic like a linebacker. He was poised to take hits from the front, but not from anywhere else, least of all above.

She charged up another rack of bolts and took one of Red's more recent lessons to heart- she teleported them a few meters above the dog, streaking downwards, aiming to pancake him into the dirt. Without even waiting to see the result, she quickly charged a short blink to get in the midst of the still dazed dogs from her initial attack, looking to blast them flat or buck a few muzzles as they scrambled to recover. Curb stomps were good too. If she got lucky, she could grab a sword or spear from the field and wield it with her magic to keep well out of range. Melee wasn't her forté, so she simply prepared herself to teleport right out of danger again if things got tense.

[Javelin Razorwing]

    Javelin had inflicted heavy casualties on the archer dogs. She could be pleased with that accomplishment. Even better, they weren’t trying to feather the rest of her strike team with arrows anymore. Unfortunately, the tradeoff was that they were very upset with her and were focusing their fire exclusively on her. By her count, Javelin already had enough feathers. She was out of goodies to drop on the ranged fighters, so she would have to engage them in close combat. Hopefully these dogs didn’t have the right equipment for up close fighting.


    Javelin dove towards the nearest Diamond Dog, intending to swoop down and slash him as she flew by. She aimed for his hindlegs. She had never seen anyone able to shoot a bow without legs. After the first dog she flew back up into the air and assessed her foes. Her next attack would be to land in the largest group of them and attack with her wingblades and hooves. She continued her evasion, until a lull in their firing tempted her to make her attack run.

    She descended, gaining speed and sweeping side to side to make herself a more difficult target. With a head on attack such as that, she would have to rely on the metal plates covering her body as much as her agility because it wasn’t difficult to lead a target dive bombing towards you. She struck out with her wingblades as she neared the group of dogs and then pumped them quickly to gain enough lift to cushion her from the rapid descent. As she landed, she gazed about her, looking for any dogs off balance or wounded. Those she would target first. If she couldn’t find any, then the closest would suffice. Joints and faces often proved vulnerable to being smashed with hooves. With a grimace, Javelin attacked.