Ali hadn't played cricket in years but with her very first swing of the bat in her hand it came quickly back to her.

She stopped and watched as the rabbit thing she'd hit with all her might flew away, even the creatures around her stopped to watch their pack mate being launched like a bullet towards one of the nearby apple trees.

The horned rodent like thing twisted in the air at the last moment before hitting the trunk of the tree solidly with its legs, leaving a deep indentation in the wood, splintering the trunk and sending splintered pieces flying everywhere.

Then the creature rebounded from the impact landing on the ground with a rolling bounce.

Then it laid still.

Ali could hear her heart beat as she watched the thing on the ground.

The others of its kind around her also looked morbidity at their fallen pack mate.

It was under their collective gaze that it's body twitched after being still for a time.

Then it was back on its four feet looking dazed and shaking it's head trying to regain some of its balance or focus.

Ali on the other hand after seeing this set her jaw and tightened her grip on the bat.

"Maybe you understand me, maybe you don't, but this is my bloody orchard, my home. She said stabbing the dirt with the bat.

So one of us is going to leave and I pay bills here so it's bloody well going to be you lot." Ali said to them not moving. At the sound of her voice the horned rabbit like creatures heads turned to each other before again locking in on her.

Ali stood waiting for them to charge, too many weird things were coming in her life as of late and this was the last straw falling on the camels back.

Like she would run from rabbits, even entertaining the very notion would have been just plain silly, her grandma used to make them into stew, not that she ever ate it after she found that out but still with or without horns she wouldn't run from a damned rabbit.

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The creatures looked at her with their gleaming red eyes, the intensity was there but no longer the intent. A few of them turned their heads to the side as if trying to figure out what sort of thing was standing before them.

"I'll say it again bugger off!" Ali almost growled at the horned rabbit like creatures.

They didn't move.

Ali didn't move.

Then after a long moment of staring each other down one came forward from the apple trees in the distance first Ali could only see the horns....antlers, full sized antlers that wouldn't look out of place on a stag but stood unnervingly balanced on the head of the largest of the rabbit things, a pale blue monster nearly twice the size and length of its smaller brethren, it pulled itself out of the shadows of the trees into the cloudy day's light, the wrongness of the creature sent a shudder through Ali.

Then they came.

Two dashed forward in sync using some unknown signal and were met with a swinging bat that blasted one futher away than its companion still groggy from the bat's impact.

The other that ran at her got a well timed punting kick to its body also launching it back, into the still glaring pack mates.

Ali tensed for another rush that didn't come.

The creatures eyes were just locked on to her, even more of them turning their heads to a side as they studied her, perhaps trying garner insight into the strange woman standing before them.

Four more rushed forward keeping low but moving swiftly, the first to reach her met the bat, which was hammered down cutting to the side of the nearest one in a quick hit, she didn't have time to hit it with her full power like the others and only sent it rolling back into its group, then with a short step back Ali used the momentum of the bat to hit the one on the other side off its course towards her, sending the horned rabbit tumbling off to the side.

Quickly setting the bat before her into the ground as a barrier to block the path of the third.

Ali again reverted to her old school ways as she kicked the fourth one just under it's wicked horns, sending it flying high into the trees.

"Alright, let's get this done." Ali said as she leaned in for another kick this time aimed at the stunned third creature that ran into the grounded bat.

"................" the largest of them seemed to vibrate for a moment and then as silently as they came out they went back into the orchard hidden by the trees.

"And don't any of you dare come back here!" Ali yelled.

"Oye, crazy boss woman!" The yell from behind her caused Ali to flinch.

"Alice Thornhill, ye daft cow, what in all the idiocy do you think you are doing?" Mary said standing with a cricket bat in one hand and one of the knives her 'saint' father gave her in the other.

She did not look pleased.