"Carrie, I'm leaving you in charge," I said as I flew after the Queen and the Harpies that followed her. I didn't hear her answer, but I knew she'd handle what was left.

The Queen and her Harpies noticed I was following them pretty easily after I sent a high-explosive grenade into the middle of the flock and sent nearly a third of them to the ground in a rain of blood and Scourge pieces.

Screeching in anger at me, the Queen flourished her wings and turned to grapple onto me as we flew above the ground. In an attempt to drag me down as she clawed at me, she folded her wings behind herself and allowed me to bear the full weight of her and myself. All she did was make me use more of my gravity drives to hold us up.

Realizing that her plan wasn't working, and that I was able to hack at her with the hatchets in my hands, the Queen kicked off of me and sent herself higher into the air before catching herself with her wings. The Harpies took advantage of the disorientation the kick gave me to surround me and began to bite, claw, and scratch at me with all the ferocity of the feral toddlers they resembled. I used the advantage of their surrounding me to hack and chop with the hatchets and send more than one of them falling to the ground screeching with broken and clipped wings. As the Harpies fell screaming to the ground, I wasn't able to see what the Queen was doing or if she was escaping.

"Cai, pulse," I ordered and he sent a pulse of electricity outward from me and into the Harpies that surrounded me. Another toy from Kiv-mel that was extremely useful in more than one situation. While the Harpies that had clung to me suffered sudden strokes and heart attacks from the sudden shock that had flooded them, the others fell for a moment before catching themselves and shaking off the numbness. I was already chasing the Queen again as they looked around for me and barely noticed the grenade I'd sent upwards that detonated in their midst.

While the remainder of the Harpies chased me, I chased the Queen and was quickly gaining on her. Seeing me, she hissed in anger and dove to weave through the pillar-like rock formations that we had been passing over. I chased after the Queen doggedly as the Harpy swarm that was left moved to surround me again. Just before they could reach me, I sent another grenade over my shoulder and I felt the heat and force from the explosion bloom over my feet as it pushed them back away from me and I redoubled my efforts to reach the Queen and end her before she could hide and work to rebuild the Horde on this planet.

The Queen realized I wasn't going to be shaken and swung around one of the pillars to blindside me and pull me higher into the air while she scratched at me with the talons on her feet. As she clawed me and pulled us both higher and higher, I pulled my last hatchet from my back and swung it up into the thigh on the leg that the taloned foot gripping me was attached to. Screeching again from the sudden pain, the Queen dropped me and as I fell into the reduced mass of Harpies I watched as the hatchet I'd left in her leg exploded and turned the Queen into a fireball that began to fall from the sky.

"Time to end this and get back to my people," I said as I flipped around in midair and took control of my descent to dive into the Harpies, sword-first. It took me longer than I wanted to finish killing all the Harpies that surrounded me and once I had the last one impaled on my sword I began to fly back the way I'd come from.

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"Horseman Applewood says that there are no Scourge left at the previous battlefield," Cai told me.

"Good, make sure that shuttles for the wounded are sent quickly," I told him as we came into sight of the Scourge corpses and the Nephilim moving throughout them to bind wounds and check for any that were playing dead. I moved to set down beside Carrie as she wrapped a bandage around a paralyzed Paladin's leg and the obvious claw wound a Rampager had made.

"Did you get the damn thing?" she asked as I knelt and held the leg steady to make her efforts easier.

"I did," I told her. "Sorry about leaving you guys out to dry with the Rampagers."

"We all know that if the choice is a Queen or a Guardian you're supposed to chase the Queen," Carrie waved my apology away. "Besides, you killed two of them before she showed up and left the other two in a fight with one another which let me and the Wing focus on them after giving orders to the Paladins that took over after us. You get all the Harpies?"

"I did. It's what took me so long," I answered as we moved on to the next wounded Nephilim, a Knight. "Those little shits are all too damn small and too damn fast for their own good."

"At least you got them all," Carrie said as I wrapped the stump of the Knight's missing arm. "If you hadn't then we'd have to keep an eye out for the rest of them and then we'd never get through this."

"Maybe, but it still isn't right that I left like that," I said as I checked a pauldron for a name of the dead Knight we had approached. "I'm supposed to lead, not chase glory."

"If you spent more time riding a desk while you sent Nephilim to take back planets, then I'd be angry with you," Carrie said. "You being in the field inspires everyone else and makes them all fight harder. If you started to spend more time in your office, even if you were sending out orders and saving more Nephilim lives with careful planning, they'd all start to hate you a little."

"You're right," I sighed. "I just wish I'd had someone else that could have gone after the Queen at that moment. It feels like I'm failing them all when I up and leave like that without finishing what I said I would or giving further orders. I know I'm not their parent, but some days it really feels like I am."

"That's because you know how badly things can go," Carrie pointed out as the shuttles began to appear. "You already do more to prepare them all for the times you aren't around, and that shows, but you also can't let your own fears of what happens when you aren't around stop you. The Queen needed to die and you were the only one that could chase her and not lose her. So you went, and I took control. That's why I'm there. To take control when you can't anymore."

"And if I didn't have you, then I'd probably make more mistakes and be lost," I said as the shuttle that would ferry us to the next fight landed to the side.

"Aw, keep sweet-talking me like that and I'll make you buy me dinner," Carrie teased me as she walked toward the shuttle. I followed after a moment shaking my head before speaking to Cai.

"Where's the next worst concentration of fighting?" I asked him.

"The western ocean where Wing Applewood and her forces are fighting," he told me. "I have already informed the pilot."

"Looks like we're going to see your sister next," I told Carrie as I began to re-tool my kit for the aquatic fighting that would soon take place.

"I hate swimming," Carrie complained as she exchanged her axe for a trident and her shield for a net gun.

"You secretly love it and you know it," I teased her as I grabbed a harpoon pistol and a bandoleer of loaded barrels. "Why else would you have spent so much time learning to swim on Rallypoint."