Alright, I was intending on posting something last week, unfortunately this site seems to hate formating outside simple things like bold, italic and underline, so to get the profiles of the two main protagonists up to the point the fic starts, you're going to have to head over to " forums spacebattles com/threads/wild-winds-and-sea-spirits-kancolle-multi-cross-au-oc 848461", just copy the URL between the quotation marks and replace the spaces with full stops and you should get it. They're on the 'Informational' threadmark, and the (at the time of writing this) second and third last post.

With regards to accents… I'm not exactly good at writing them and while I could probably use a website for it, I doubt you want to slog through badly written English to get a person speaking with a French accent, so I'll stick to the few bits of Google Translate other languages.

Chapter 11: French Boats

Miles of ocean surrounded the trio of shipgirls that skated over the waves off the west coast of France at a steady thirty-five knots. Blonde hair streaming out behind her, Robyn frowned at the ping from one of her sensors.

"Hey girls," she started. "Just picked up something near Brest, two metal anomalies, moving around five knots heading away from the port," Robyn continued, frowning at her sensor. "I think… my sonar operator is reporting faint engine sounds in that direction, possibly surfaced submarines."

Sally frowned, consulting her own sensor operators just in time to see the anomalies duck under the surface. "That's probably Dauphin and Ajax, unless they had visitors there," she said.

Robyn cocked her head slightly, 'looking' in the direction of Brest. "I wonder if they're going out on patrol or if they're supposed to be our escort…" she commented, checking with her navigator. "We're about an hour out; if they know our ETA they might have sent them to find us."

"They're probably expecting us to cruise," Susan commented. "Most British ships cruise around twenty knots and you said earlier that we were looking at seven hours or so, right, Sally?"

Sally nodded. "Most ships I know of are ten to twenty for their cruise, unless they're submarines or sail driven," she confirmed, scanning the area with her sensors. "Keep eyes on them, once we start getting down to about twenty-five miles from them we can check with active sonar if our passives haven't already figured them out," she ordered.

Robyn nodded back, shifting slightly. "Hope it stays this quiet for the run back," she commented, getting nods from the others. "What do you think will happen on that run?"

Susan shrugged from where she was at the back of their formation. "No idea," she responded. "I don't really know much about this sort of thing to start with," she admitted.

"Most likely we'll hit Brest, hopefully get a bit of time to eat and find out who is who of their group and if any of them have any experience with this sort of thing before reversing our current course with them and the ship or ships we're supposed to protect, then they'll head off elsewhere," Sally replied. "Hopefully the only noise will be the waves, wind and us talking," she added after a moment's thought.

Dauphin kept one eye on her sonar as she and Ajax swam towards the group of what they hoped was British shipgirls. Certainly the trio were following a rough course that would take them to Brest, and it was rare for abyssals to show up in such small numbers, but damn was it hard to keep the shipgirls on her sonar.

"Are we sure these are the Brits?" Ajax asked over her communicator, looking over at Dauphin, her sky blue hair clouding in the water as the currents tugged individual strands. "I can barely track them with my sonar."

Dauphin sighed, letting out a few bubbles of air as she glanced at Ajax. "Ajax, this is the group that came up with sonar and sonar communicators, the same ones that scared the heck out of the Germans who did what we're trying to do. You think they don't have counters to something they pretty much invented?" she asked, kicking her legs. "I could barely hear the pair's props when Zephyr carried me, heck I could barely hear her turbines, if she even had turbines, and I was being carried bridal style. Their music was louder than they were right up until they opened fire on the abyssals chasing me."

"So we're stuck guessing until we're practically on top of them?" Ajax asked shrilly. "Is that idiot admiral trying to kill us?"

"Do you really want an answer to that?" Dauphin asked, causing the blue-haired girl to start muttering under her breath. Reaching over, she patted Ajax's back. "Hey, I doubt they went off the deep end of the memory issues thing, like most of the Chinese shipgirls, certainly the destroyer-girls and Devonport were decent folk," she pointed out, shivering at the memory of what few reports had come out of the PRC. "Besides, Britain's ships are the ones protecting most of Europe right now, if anything, they're the ones most likely to be protective."

Ajax grimaced before letting her head drop for a moment. "Dauphin… I was sunk by a British destroyer, I… even if they're friends, what happened back then still has me waking up in a cold sweat some nights," she admitted. She shivered, letting the brunette hug her. "It's bad enough with those big depth charges the abyssals use, but the British ones… you barely hear them, you don't dare use your sonar and their ships are that quiet, then there's dozens of explosions around you or worse, something clunks onto your hull and then there's pain as it blows through your skin and several compartments in an instant."

Dauphin paused, giving Ajax a comforting hug. "You know, we can turn back, let them come to Brest," she offered. "They'll probably beat us there anyway, so it's not like it wouldn't be plausible that we couldn't find them and they missed us."

Ajax sighed, letting out a stream of bubbles from her mouth. "I wish we could, Dauphin, I really do," she admitted, leaning into the hug and closing her eyes. "Even just letting them meet us at Brest though, or trying to stay out, you know the admiral will force us to meet them or will just have us on patrol well past the point we should be turning back." She sighed again, shaking her head. "The guy is a fuck-wit who hates shipgirls, particularly us subs."

"He's also got something planned…" Dauphin said, frowning. "I don't know what, but we don't need to do this, they could have taken the baths and the fluid through the Chunnel and round. It'd take longer, but a truck is a lot cheaper than a ship, much less making Devonport send all three of their ships here and making our surface ships go back with them." She closed her eyes briefly before checking her sonar, frowning at the near silence from it. Before she could swear about it, her communications officer caught a transmission.

"Dauphin, Dauphin, this is Zephyr, do you read me, over?" Zephyr's voice sounded in both their bridges.

Dauphin gave Ajax a hug when the other girl started. "Zephyr, this is Dauphin, I read you. I wish I could say I could hear you, but my sonar's got nothing. Where are you? Over," she responded. A few moments later her sonar detector lit up like a Christmas tree, causing her to look up as her crew scrambled.

"Dauphin, Zephyr, does that help?" Zephyr asked. "We're about half a mile away to your north-west, bearing 335 degrees true, distance 800m from the position my sensors are saying you're at, over."

"And you'd stopped, not that it'd matter much," Dauphin muttered to herself. Huffing out a sigh, she tugged on Ajax's arm and started draining her tanks to make her way to the surface. "Zephyr, Dauphin, we're coming up now, over and out."

A few moments later, she and Ajax were standing on the water's surface, looking north while the British trio coasted over. "Okay," Dauphin muttered, watching them. "The blonde's Zenith, Zephyr is the girl with the same type rigging and the black hair and it's just the shipgirls so Minotaur must be the older girl," she murmured, hugging Ajax.

"Hey Dauphin," Zephyr waved as she coasted to a stop near the two subs. "You made it back alright I see," she continued.

Dauphin nodded. "Yeah, Devonport's people fixed all the holes and the welds held fine on the way back, even for rush jobs."

"Good to hear," Zephyr responded. She frowned slightly, cocking her head at the other submarine. "Is this Ajax?" she asked, getting a nod from Dauphin. "You have a rough time with some of us during the War?" she asked Ajax.

Ajax nodded hesitantly. "At Dakar, both me and Persée… y-you're not going to depth charge me again, are you?"

Zephyr sighed. "I'm not planning on it, but we all need to keep training… or get the training in the first place, so we might end up training against one another. If that happens, it'll be paint charges not proper ones."

"We should probably keep going, ladies," Minotaur cut in. "We're not too far from Brest so we might as well talk properly there."

Zephyr nodded, frowning at the horizon. "My navigator is saying we're about twenty nautical out, that's around two hours for you two, right?"

Dauphin waggled her hand. "An hour twenty at my top speed on the surface, Ajax could manage it in between an hour and an hour twenty," she replied, "Though… that's us pushing top speed."

Zephyr nodded, frowning slightly. "What do you think, Minotaur?" she asked, turning to the cruiser-girl. "Should we try seeing where your max speed is?"

Minotaur frowned. "The last time the Commander had me run for speed, I was clocking not much shy of forty knots," she replied, making Dauphin gape at her. "Granted I'm not sure how much being loaded down slows me down."

"If you were at or near full load on the test, you probably won't get much, if any, extra speed short of overclocking your engines," Zephyr said. Turning to the two sub-girls, she arched an eyebrow. "So do you two want to sail under your own power and we stick to your speed or do you want a lift back?"

"It'd be faster," Ajax admitted. "Though… I'm not sure I want to, there's something about our admiral that's… off…" she trailed off closing her eyes, only to open them again at the feel of a hand on her shoulder.

Zenith arched an eyebrow at Ajax when the sub-girl turned to look at her. "How do you mean 'off'?"

Ajax let out a breath. "I don't know… beyond him not liking shipgirls, particularly submarines, there seems to be some things that just… I'm not sure. I do know we were supposed to be getting some others joining us, but all six of us were out the day they were supposed to arrive and nobody saw them." She huffed and scowled. "We were told they didn't show up. He also keeps trying to force everyone to church and I'd swear some of the people that have been to his office have come out acting off, like drunk or drained or robotic."

Zephyr scowled, cupping her jaw. "Did anyone else that you know of not show up on a day when you were all out or any visitors get called in and disappear?"

Ajax shrugged.

"There might be some…" Dauphin said slowly. "A couple of German submarines joined us about two months ago, U-96 and U-522. A week later they were called to the admiral's office in the middle of the night; we were told the next morning that they had gone back to Germany."

"That's sounding like something's off alright," Susan commented, getting nods from the destroyer-girls. "It sounds almost like a vampire, but things don't fit the stories."

Zephyr nodded slowly. "Vampires or fallen angels are the obvious ones, but we need to check and soon." She moved next to Dauphin. "There's others though, some probably a match for shipgirls, and if they're forcing us to escort this cargo, they might be trying a lure."

Both submarines shared a look as the destroyer-girls picked them up and started towards Brest.

"So this is Brest?" Robyn asked, looking around as she set Ajax down. Quite a few of the military slips seemed to either have no ships docked or had wrecks docked at them.

Ajax nodded. "Oui, this is Brest, unlike you English though, our ships did not stand up to the abyssal attacks and we lost most of the group docked here before they could sortie," she said. "We were lucky not to lose the Charles de Gaulle to them."

Dauphin snorted softly, looking around at the wrecks. "I don't think any nation was expecting abyssals, though Ajax is right, most nations don't have ships tough enough to shrug off battleship rounds at similar ranges to battleships or closer in some instances." Scanning the docks, she pointed to the one still floating ship docked side on to the land near where they came ashore. "That's the ship you're supposed to be escorting, the La Tour du Pin, built off modernised Victory-class freighter designs."

Sally frowned, looking the ship over and trying to remember what the Victory-class was like. "The more information we get, the less I like this set up," she muttered. "Keeping even a fifteen k-ton freighter locked to a port without it being loaded or unloaded is just wasting money and the Victories could manage about the same speed as you, Dauphin," she said, turning to look at the brunette.

Dauphin shifted slightly. "Well… that ship is closer to twenty thousand fully loaded, and supposedly around twenty knots." She shrugged. "Given how much of a loss a large cargo ship is, they started going back to smaller ones, at least for crossing the main oceans." She glanced over at the British trio before waving them towards one of the buildings. "Come on, the base is this way, we should at least check in with the others."

"So where are you girls based?" Susan asked as the group made their way towards what looked like a train station.

"We're in Le Château on the other side of La Penfeld," Ajax replied. "Normally we'd dock there, but… it's probably a bit safer to have you girls come in on land, though… you might want to dismiss your rigging," she continued after a moment.

With a series of bright flashes, the British girls dismissed the bulk of their rigging, leaving them wearing their working uniforms and the boots. They followed the locals to the station, taking the train around to the former castle.

"Oh thank god," a pink haired young woman exclaimed in French at the group entering the back area of the castle-turned-museum. "Katia, Sonia, have you two seen Nikita or Colette around?" she asked before blinking at seeing the other three shipgirls. "My apologies," she said in English, "I wasn't expecting you to be here so soon… there's a bit of a crisis."

Dauphin and Ajax both shook their heads at the other shipgirl's question. "We only just got back from… 'escorting' the British shipgirls down the coast," Dauphin replied. "Though I still don't know why we were sent out given how slow submarines are comparatively."

"What happened?" Sally asked. "Who is missing?"

"It-it's Nikita and Colette… uh… Vauquelin and Le Malin," the woman started. "Not long after Dauphin and Ajax were sent out, the admiral called them and Le Mars to his office, only Le Mars came back out that I've seen and well… look for yourself." She gestured to the open door next to where she had been standing.

Stepping through the door into a well-furnished room, Sally blinked at the sight of a short-haired brunette girl with dead eyes sitting on a chair, if one could call her slumped, near boneless posture sitting. Moving into the room, she studied the girl, who was wearing what looked to be a very frilly or lacy pink dress, one that might have been at home during the Second World War.

"Somehow, I doubt that's something she chose for herself," Robyn muttered. Moving closer, the blonde waved a hand in front of the French girl's face, getting no response.

"It's not," Ajax confirmed. "Mars normally wears much more boyish clothes," she said. "I mean, they're still girl's clothes, but more a guy's style, like jeans or shorts. She's not one for dresses." She frowned. "I don't like this, those others I mentioned… they had the same lifeless eyes," she said, indicating Mariette's blue eyes, eyes that looked more at home on a corpse with the whitish film covering them.

Galissonnière grimaced. "I don't know what happened; she's been like this since she got back."

Susan frowned, watching Sally move to check Mariette's neck. "I don't think I can help much right now unless you want someone searching," she said before indicating Sally. "Sally there is the one that knows the most about weird things."

"More or less the same boat," Robyn added, looking back. "And since we seem to be using human names, I'm Robyn Stevens, HMS Zenith," she introduced herself. "Sally Jones, or HMS Zephyr is tending your friend and our 'minder' is Susan Wright, the HMS Minotaur."

"Katia Hachette, or Dauphin," Katia responded. "Ajax is Sonia Mallette, La Galissonnière is actually Christine Descombes and that's Le Mars, or rather Mariette Soyer," she introduced her group. "We're missing Le Malin, who used to go by Colette LaRue and Nikita Vernier who is Vauquelin."

Sally frowned, half listening to the others as she checked Mariette. The boarding party her crew had sent over were reporting a heck of a lot of nothing, very much like the reports from several ghost ships.

"Several of the living quarters have strange plants overrunning them and her fuel bunkers are practically empty," one of the boarding party reported. "Empty except possibly more plants, and some of the ones in the quarters seem to have bones in them."

"Come back, but purge anything that might have been near those plants, I don't want to be infected myself," Sally muttered, turning Mariette's head gently to find some sort of vine curling out of her ear along with what looked like puncture marks on her neck. "Susan," she called.

"Yes?" asked Susan.

"You're part dryad, right?" she asked, getting a nod from Susan. "How much do you know about weird plants?"

Susan shifted, frowning. "Not much really, I mean I might be able to tell something unnatural, but I don't know much. Why?" she asked.

Sally motioned for Susan to take her place, collecting her crew as she moved away and pointed out the vine. "That right there," she said. "My crew also found a lot of what looked like plant matter inside her, plants that they said might have consumed her fuel and crew." She pointed out the two holes on the girl's neck. "There's also those, which look like a vampire bite, but even a few millimetres of metal should at least hurt a vamp's teeth."

Susan looked at the things Sally had pointed out, biting her lip. "I don't think that plant is natural," she said after a few minutes. "And the holes look like they were made by a machine… there's some sort of divot in her skin like something bounced off a few times."

"Is-is there any way to help Mariette?" Sonia asked.

"Flamethrower, hopefully, though I'm not sure what it'd do to her fuel tanks and boilers," Susan replied. "That combined with getting a new crew somehow or having her old one regenerate." She shrugged, tapping Mariette's cheek and getting no response. "Other than that, maybe killing the source, provided that it's got a connection to these, or some form of weed killer."

Sally scowled at the floor of the room. "We don't know the source for certain," she said. "The most obvious one is the local admiral, but that's not confirmed. We also don't know that she's not reporting on us," she pointed out, indicating Mariette. The other shipgirls shared worried looks at that point. "I like things less now than I was before."

Nobody had a response to that.

"So what do we do?" Robyn asked as the silence stretched on.

Sally closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath and letting it out slowly. "Katia, Susan and I will try hitting the admiral's office and see if he's there, if he is, we'll see what we can do. Robyn, Sonia and Christine… try the admiral's quarters if they're on base, if not, Robyn try using that magnetic anomaly detector Susan found we've got and see if you can pick up any ship hulls where they shouldn't be."

"What about Mariette?" Katia asked. "Do we leave her here?"

"It's about the best I can come up with, unless someone knows where we can get reinforcements and weapons quickly," Sally replied helplessly.

All five other girls grimaced at Sally's response.

Robyn paused at a corridor meeting point, frowning at the wall. Behind her, her sensors were telling her that Sonia and Christine had stopped as well while somewhere above she could 'see' the brighter glows of Susan and Sally along with the duller one indicating Katia. There were others, one she was certain was Mariette given it was alone, but the confusing mess below… or the two above separate from the rest she wasn't sure about.

"So what are you actually looking for?" Sonia asked, drawing Robyn's attention to the blue haired girl.

Robyn grimaced. "I'm not entirely sure," she admitted. "I'm still getting used to the 'normal' stuff, let alone the 'interesting' bits." She sighed, shaking her head before taking a breath. "Okay, you two know about magnetic fields and anomalies, right?"

Both French shipgirls nodded. "You're looking for things that don't seem to belong in the magnetic fields around here?" Sonia asked.

Robyn nodded. "Pretty much," she agreed. "Some things are more magnetic than others, like ships or large metal objects or the like. I can… sort of tell where Sally, Susan and Katia are because of them, particularly Sally and Susan. There's another two 'metal objects' up there, and more below us somewhere, though I'm not sure what any of them are outside of the two of you and our friends."

"How many more things are you seeing below?" Christine asked curiously.

Cocking her head to the side, Robyn consulted her sensor chief, frowning at the reports back. "The three of us here, three that are probably the others and two more above which I'm guessing are the other destroyer-girls, one other on this level that's roughly where we left Mariette and…" she trailed off, frown deepening. "At least two, possibly up to eight/ten below. They're kinda hard to read even this close."

Sonia blinked several times. "There shouldn't be that many things below us," she said, a scowl developing on her face as she looked around the white brick, stone and plaster lined corridor. "Unless it's stacks of museum pieces or something in a basement, since they dumped a lot of artefacts down there when the military reclaimed the castle for use as a shipgirl base."

Christine frowned, biting the corner of her lip. "Your friend wanted us to check the admiral's quarters, but I don't know where they might be." She looked at the others. "Should we try to find whatever Robyn is picking up?"

"At least the way to it," Robyn said. "Though… do either of you know how to fight at all?"

Sonia waggled her hand back and forth. "I know a bit," she admitted, "but it's only what Mariette taught me. We barely see anyone aside from the admiral around here and the school I went to didn't teach any martial arts."

Christine shook her head. "Never learned," she replied.

Taking a breath, Robyn let it out as a sigh. "Alright, if we have to fight Christine, try to fall back and let Sonia and I do the majority. We'll try to fall back towards the others since Sally at least knows how to fight," she decided. "And we try to find something to fight with if possible." She got nods from the others. Looking between the two of them, she sighed again, clenching a hand into a fist. Much as most people might say this wasn't their problem, she could no longer walk away, particularly not from the need of other shipgirls. "So where do we go?" she asked.

Reaching the admiral's office, a gold coloured plate the only thing that distinguished it from every other door in the off-white corridor, Sally paused for a moment, frowning. What were they even going to do inside?

They needed to do something, the masses of metal – now she had her magnetic anomaly detector working – almost had to be the missing destroyer-girls, but how to approach a possible hostile when none of her weapons were suitable, or at least none of her ranged weapons?

Reaching for the door, she paused again, freezing in indecision.

Before Susan or Katia could ask anything, a muffled scream rang out from behind the door.

Grabbing the door handle, she tried to open it, only for the door to jiggle in place.

Another, even more muffled scream, high pitched like a girl's, sounded from inside.

The door, built to withstand humans hitting it, exploded into a shower of splinters as the shipgirl slammed into it.

Dagger already in hand, Sally scanned the room.

On the desk immediately in front of her was what looked like a much leafier and emaciated Poison Ivy crossed with some sort of stretched out greyhound.

A human arm waved helplessly in the air from under it, and a curtain of red-streaked white or pale pink hair fell from the desk.

Pressed into a corner of the room, between a filing cabinet and a window stood a white haired girl, her uniform hanging like something had torn it from what could be seen around the much taller man in front of her.

The man, grey haired, wore what looked from the back like an officer's uniform. What he was doing with his hands, Sally couldn't see, but he obviously had no concern for the monster on the table.

Ignoring the monster for the moment, Sally darted forwards, grabbing the admiral's head and slamming it into the filing cabinet with a bong.

Shifting as he staggered, she slammed him into the window hard, sending broken glass flying out followed quickly by his body. Not what she had intended. Hopefully she wouldn't need to explain that one.

The girl yelped when Sally turned to her, covering her bare breasts with a ragged blouse. "Come on," Sally ordered softly, offering a hand. "Let's get you away from this mess, then we can get your friend free of… that," she said.

The girl nodded slightly, taking Sally's hand, she was quickly led to the door and passed to Katia.

"Any ideas what that is?" asked Sally.

Katia shook her head. "Never seen it before," she admitted.

"T-the admiral s-said it was a-a dryad," the white haired girl answered softly. "He also said something about getting rid of shipgirls or using them for dolls or something."

Sally groaned, shaking her head. "Great… my sister would be better suited to this," she muttered.

"Somehow, I don't think most dryads would act like that," Susan commented. She frowned at the monster.

Shaking her head, Sally turned at a choked sob almost covered by a growl. The 'dryad' had pulled away from its victim to glare at them. "Katia, get your friend out of here. See if you can find out where ugly's tree is and destroy it," she ordered.

Kicking a half rotted corpse away from her, Robyn grimaced at the sound of its skull splatting against a wall, releasing yet another cloud of fungus spores.

A loud crack and a boom that shook dust from the ceiling alerted her to her companions' plight.

Spinning around, she brought her turrets up, the 40mm guns roaring.

Several mobile mushrooms exploded into clouds of toxic green gas.

"Whatever's down here had better be worth this fight," Robyn muttered, watching Christine and Sonia's backs, the pair running to join her.

"What the hell is going on?" Christine whimpered.

Robyn shook her head, firing another burst from her 40mm guns at another group of fungus covered people. "No clue," she answered over the roar from her guns. "Got to be a reason though," she continued.

"Where are we going and why are you using your anti-air guns?" Sonia asked.

Robyn frowned, checking her sensors before pointing down a corridor. "That way by the looks, and because the last time I used my main battery we lost the way we came in," she pointed out.

Both French girls grimaced at the reminder. Christine's three and a half inch anti-air guns just about managed to not bring the roof down on top of them from the concussion and over pressure, anything bigger tended to cause collapses.

"We're lucky the building is holding with what we're using," Robyn pointed out as the three of them took off down the corridor.

A few minutes and several squashed fungus later; they arrived at a large metal door.

Speeding up, Christine and Robyn hit the door with a rending crash of metal on metal, sending both sides smashing into the wall before collapsing to the ground.

Skidding to a stop, Robyn looked around, her triple-A batteries rotating to scan for threats, only to find a large, natural looking cavern around them. In the centre stood a massive tree trunk that broke off into numerous roots digging into a sandy pool.

"What the hell?" Christine whispered softly. "How'd this get here?"

"Don't know," Robyn responded softly, shaking her head. "I'm getting magnetic spots though, ship sized… in there," she pointed at the tree.

"Girls… get lights on the tree," Sonia whispered.

Sharing a look, Robyn and Christine activated the search lights on their rigging, swinging them onto the tree only to gasp at the sight of several bodies sticking out of the tree trunk.

Sonia gulped, staring at the tree. "I think we found the reinforcements we were meant to get…" she said, looking up at the people, unfortunately the lights were too bright to make out details.

"Well fuck…" Robyn muttered, staring up at the tree. "Either of you have any ideas for getting them down?" Getting no response from the others, she sighed, raising a hand to her ear. "Zephyr, Zephyr, this is Zenith, do you read me, over."

"Zenith… Zephyr… again?" came Sally's voice.

Robyn scowled as her radiomen checked and tuned her equipment. "Zephyr, this is Zenith, do you read me, over."

"Zenith, Zephyr, reading you five by five. What's wrong, over," Sally answered.

"Zephyr, Zenith, my team have found a giant tree holding what looks to be several shipgirls prisoner. Repeat; we have a giant tree holding shipgirls prisoner. Any ideas on how to proceed?" asked Robyn.

There was a minute's pause before Sally responded. "Zenith, Zephyr, suggest you try to free the girls and burn the tree. I say again, burn the tree. We have at least one hostile tree spirit up here, Minotaur is currently engaging it, but while the tree survives it can regenerate, over."

Robyn stared at the tree and sighed. "You've got to be kidding…" she groaned. "Roger that, Zephyr. Can you and Minotaur hold on? We're not equipped for tree burning, need to improvise."

"We can hold for now, hurry though, we can't fight forever, out." Sally ended the conversation.

Looking up at the tree, Robyn scowled. "How do we destroy that without hurting the others…" she wondered out loud.