The revelation that the General was sending the boss right at us shocked me into motion and I looked over in the direction of the other group. I saw nothing. A hill blocked line of sight and our groups were a good distance from each other. In hindsight the fact that our groups were so far separated should have clued us in that something was wrong with the battle plan. A shorter line is easier to hold and reinforce, after all. Even if we did want to pull back this is where our static defenses were, and abandoning them wasn't an option. The simple barriers weren't a lot, but they absorbed the blows from a few of the single horned rabbits. I wouldn't want those attacks to hit flesh instead of wood.

Still we needed to do something. "Ralph, Mindy. Start putting up barriers on the left side, back towards the General's camp. Even if it means leaving the current barriers unrepaired." I yelled out. They stopped to give me a look but I snapped at them and they jumped to comply. It didn't lessen the confusion on their faces any. "Donnie, I need you to start throwing traps between us and the approaching enemy. I don't care if you have to cannibalize our defenses to do it, just give us a safety buffer."

He gave me a look of bewilderment but didn't move. People started moving around us. Some of them had heard what was going on but most were worried and confused. Donnie just looked lost. Seeing the betrayal had shaken him. Part of me wanted to give him time to rest and process. Part of me knew that the boss would be coming soon and we needed every advantage we could get. I don't know if it makes me a bad person, but the pragmatic part won out.

I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder and looked him in his eyes. "Survival first, figure the rest out later."

He looked back at me, his resolve visibly firming, then moved off without a word. I didn't know if he was all right. I didn't have time to care.

Instead I turned toward the rest of the group and yelled out to be heard. "Everyone, keep attacking the enemies." I began, trying to keep order as I spoke. "There have been some developments. The General betrayed us. His tactics were meant to divert the majority of the attackers right at us. Now he sends this round's boss at us too. I'll be pulling some of you off the front line and putting you on the new defenses. Anyone new who shows up needs needs to come to the side. Remember, if we get overwhelmed on either front than we loose. I'll let you know when we have more information. For now, we need to get to work."

People reacted in a variety of ways, from shock to anger to begrudging acceptance. Some of the hope for the battle seemed visibly drained, as up to this point we hadn't had any serious injuries. The only bright spot was that the indecision had disappeared to be replaced with a resolved focus.

I glanced over into the distance, afraid the boss would appear at any second. There was nothing I could do about it now, I just had to get everyone ready.

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The first appearance of danger from the direction of the General's camp came in the form of a quartet of mercenaries fighting to keep a small horde of animals at bay. These weren't the elemental bunny rabbits that had come before, these were a couple of Foo Dog looking things the size of two men each and a dozen mountain lion sized cats. The dogs were armored and moved forward with utter implacability but it was the cats that caused the most problem as their quick movements and ability to walk on air allowed them to attack from odd angles with very little notice. The mercenaries were covered with a bubble shield that defended the entire group, which seemed odd considering that it did nothing to impede the mele attackers, but that shield proved invaluable when an orb of light from beyond the hill ricocheted off of it and into the sky.

The mercenaries had been backing up in our direction at first but then started making their way farther south, toward the spaced out horde of rabbits. The smaller creatures, when they did approach the mercenaries, were killed so fast that they barely registered when confronted with the high powered weapons. The change in their direction came as at least one of our mages fired an attack that bounced harmlessly off the shield. Our stance was clear: you are not welcome here. I recognized two of the mercenaries, 'Caps' the demolitions expert who had been in charge of the back lines until Mack took that job back over and 'Trigger' the gun fanatic, but the other two were unknowns. Unfortunately a number of the beasts immediately started running at our group as soon as they noticed us.

Then the boss himself passed the hill at a slow stroll followed by almost half a dozen dogs and several dozen cats. Upon seeing us he sent out half his swarm in our direction and I had to call people over from the main line to compensate, leaving the side of our fortification facing the hundreds of rabbits in a desperate situation of its own. The dogs were slow, only moderately outpacing their master, but were all but invulnerable from the front. The cats were less hardy, though still far more sturdy than the rabbits, but were also harder to hit. Their hit and run tactics were causing a fair amount of confusion in our front lines and there had already been one friendly fire incident. The cats never stayed with one target long enough to kill, but neither did they stay still long enough to be killed either. The boss continued lazily walking in our direction, swinging a glowing sword with one hand and firing a rifle with the other. Fortunately the energy weapon fired large golden orbs that were blocked by our hasty fortifications, but the power behind them was enough to shake the battlements with each hit. The few of our shots that did make it to him bounced off what seemed to be a forcefield surrounding his body. Also, he could heal the cats and would do so whenever we failed to put one down permanently.

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This was too much. How were we supposed to fight this? Then I had a traitorously cruel thought: this wouldn't be too much if we had machine guns filled with high-powered armor-piercing ammunition. The boss himself wasn't offensively focused and his pets were either vulnerable to massed fire or slow enough to be avoided. If we had heavy military grade weapons than this battle would be nothing more than a decent challenge. The General and his people had those types of weapons. While the rabbits were a challenge and a constant strain on us, they were beatable. The boss, however, hadn't shown up to attack us; he had first shown up to attack the people who had the weapons that could deal with him. Our group wasn't equipped to deal with him; we needed help.

The choice was clear: I had to choose between victory and honor, which may decide this part of the battle. And I had to do it before the boss made it all the way to our position. Do I prioritize the enemy who had betrayed us to die or the one that would only kill us without betrayal? It wasn't even much of a choice and I made my decision without hesitation: I chose the option that might give us a chance to survive, possibly even win. Immediately I ran to the front and got them to hold fire against the mercenaries. It took a bit of odd gestures to wave them down in the midst of the chaos of battle, but I did manage it eventually. Soon we were joined by four more allies of convenience, each with military grade weapons and paramilitary fighting experience. Was it the right choice? I didn't know. All I knew was that it was the only choice that might buy us time.

And it worked. One mercenary was able to hold half the line against the bunnies by himself, freeing many of our better fighters to face off against the boss. The grenades were too slow to hit the cats, who were smart enough to jump away, but they forced the dogs to back off or take major injuries. The boss also kept his space from the thrown grenades despite the fact that they didn't visibly deal him any damage. Even the cats were less of an issue now that they had to avoid high caliber burst fire weapons. The boss could also heal the dogs with a touch, so it looked like a stalemate at first glance, but in reality it was a battle of attrition in our favor.

Then good luck and bad hit us all at once, resulting in chaos that broke our careful strategy at its core. It started when our group's leader, Mack, showed up with a dozen more people. As soon as this happened the boss sent his reserve force out and around the sides as if to surround us, though some ran off in other directions. Mack and his people, not knowing the defensive capabilities of the boss and seeing him alone, charged the enemy head on. This prevented us from using explosives on the boss, which was the only thing even slowing him down, and he took full advantage of it. But instead of shooting the attackers with his gun, he instead started taking the group apart with his sword. Mack was the only one to take more than a single hit before falling to the ground, proving his sturdiness far and above the rest of the group. He used that time to grab the boss, somehow unimpeded by the shield, even holding them steady for a few moments so that those nearby could attack with impunity. The others that got nearby were not so sturdy.

The boss, however, used the cover from the attack to close the distance to our fortifications. This allowed him to get too close for grenades and negating our one true defense against him. This caused one of the people in our group, a smaller guy who was more of a crafter than a fighter to try to run. That's when we found out the true power of the gun that the enemy carried. The projectile may have been large and obvious, such that taking cover hard countered it, but in an open area it almost seemed to home in on its target. The first shot took the crafter to the ground. The second left him badly injured and completely still. The third seemed completely unnecessary. A handful of seconds later he faded away. We had taken our first death.

It wouldn't be the last. Several others hadn't learned from the example of their comrade and also tried running, with identical results. Everyone else he left unconscious on the ground, at his mercy to dispose of as he chose. He picked his targets by their danger level unless someone chose to throw themselves at him. Soon the mercenaries fell and the dozen of us left were the least combat capable of the group. At this point he seemed to be just going after us according to whomever was closest. Convenience and all that. The only good thing was that most of the rabbits had also gone off to hunt more capable foes, and the few that remained were mostly destroying our defenses.

In my desperation, I started to try anything that I thought might work. I grabbed one of Donnie's mechanical mines and threw it at the boss, but that only slowed him for a moment as he looked at it curiously before ignoring it. Seeing that be usable but fail I tried one of the weapons of another nearby person. It took me a bit of fumbling to realize that it didn't have a trigger and must be activated by one of his cybernetics, but at least it didn't disappear from my hands. A thought occurred to me that if I had even one more level in my class, that I could probably have used my computer to make it work. Then I tried one of the mercenaries, specifically Caps. I was only a bit surprised when grabbing a grenade from his jacket didn't result in it disappearing again, but I figured it must be more complicated than I had been led to believe. A plan started to form. If our good old leader was able to grab ahold of the boss by getting in close, than why shouldn't that work for the rest of us?

"Everyone grab the boss, if we can disarm him than we can win. At the very least we can go down fighting together!" I called out to the group. There were just over a dosen people, but only three others stepped forward. We rushed over together, each of them going for one of his arms and weapons. I went for his left leg, the side where he carried his gun rather than his sword. Unsurprisingly he went after those going after his arms first leaving me free to grab onto him, reaching through his forcefield shield and depositing a gift into his empty gun holster. Then I jumped away just before his sword could come down on me. Immediately I tried to hide behind the body of one of the mercenaries, hoping that it would give some protection from the blast. I didn't need to bother.

The grenade's explosion and shrapnel did not penetrate the Boss's forcefield, but rather remained completely contained. A look of shock and confusion crossed his face before he fell to the ground. For a moment I thought we had won, but then I saw him healing in real time like it was nothing. Quickly I grabbed one of the mercenary's guns and finished the job. There was silence for a few moments as we waited to see if even that would work. Slowly he faded away and the animals nearby went into a frenzy, but it was an undirected frenzy compared to the purposeful coordination of before. Those who were left grabbed one of the Mercenary's weapons and got to work on clearing up what we could. Eventually the unconscious people started waking back up.