The towers were all placed in their usual positions. Dog towers up front with one near the back to protect the greenhouse. Archers between the front and back. Cows near the front where the chokepoints were to maximize on their AoE damage. Bees near the back in what looked like the most useless tower position since positioning wasn’t as important for them.

As for the heroes of the battle, Clawdia and Lavi. They were already in position in their respective lanes near the front where they’d be able to help out the dogs.

Everything was ready and the battle could officially begin.

And I could not have been more disappointed than I was when I saw the first enemies.

Running down the lanes toward our front line… were none other than more cats. Seriously, more cats, as if we didn’t already get enough of them. I didn’t even like horror but I was expecting zombies or something! Or at least skeletons!

Well, to be fair, the cats were skeleton cats. But that made it even worse. Not only were they cats, and I was already tired of fighting cats, but they were cats without any fur.

What was the point?! Why should a cat even exist if it has no fur?! They were as pointless as those furless cats that look looked like a giant sack of wrinkled skin!

Life was cruel. The world was cruel. Existence itself was cruel.

“Master! Look!” Delphi said, standing at my side with arms full of bones. She even decided to use the new volume of her chest to hold some bones between them, leaving only half of their lengths sticking up out from her cleavage. That… was a pretty nice sight, so maybe everything wasn’t as bad as I thought.

“Good job, you found a ton,” I said.

“Mhm, mhm! Guess what I’m gonna do with them?”

“What?”

“I said guess!”

“Play fetch? Bury them?”

“Nope and nope!”

“Alright, you win. What?”

“I’m gonna make a bone broth! For soup!”

I really, really, really should have been able to guess that.

Then I realized something.

I put my hands on Delphi’s shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes, causing her stare back at me and blink a few times. “Delphi. I’m a failure.”

“E-eh? Master isn’t a failure!” Delphi was quick to reply.

“I am. I know how much you love soup… but I’m not growing anything to put in your soup. I need to start a vegetable farm as soon as we’re back. And I need to grow some herbs. Delphi, I’ll make sure that you have every single ingredient you could ever ask for for your soup! As long as it grows from the ground.”

Delphi’s eyes lit up as she dropped the bones in her arms to instead wrap said arms around me for a tight hug. That on its own was nice. Then she started bouncing, rubbing her chest up and down against me. That should have been nice. Instead, because of the bones she had stored in her chest… every time she bounced, they were thrust upward and smacked into my chin. “I’m so excited, Master! You’re still not a failure but now I’m really really really excited! We’re gonna make so many soups! I’ll collect the bones and make the broth and you can grow the vegetables and we’ll mix them together and it’ll be amazing and even better because it’s made with love! And if we make it together then that means there’s twice as much love put into it, so then it’s full of super love! Wait! Master! The more people we make help us with the soup… the more love there’ll be in it! We need to get millions – billions – trillions of people to help us with the soup! That’ll mean there’s trillions of love in it!”

She kept bouncing the entire time she talked. Even though she was going to leave a bruise on my chin from thrusting bones into it, I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt her when she was so excited.

I had another reason for why I didn’t stop her. It might have been a little bit manipulative, but I thought it was innocent enough to go along with.

And my plan went into action as soon as she stopped her bouncing and noticed the bruise on the underside of my chin. When she looked down at her chest and remembered all the bones sticking up, she put it together pretty quickly. “I – I’m sorry! I hurt Master!” she whined with tears in her eyes.

“It’s alright,” I said. “You just have to—”

But then I cut myself off.

My plan was to say something like, “You just have to lick it a lot later to make it feel better,” but how could I actually say something like that? The moment it came to actually saying it, I: one, realized just how horrendously cheesy and stupid it sounded; and two, I realized that even if it was something innocent like that that I couldn’t even slightly take advantage of Delphi when she felt so genuinely bad about my bruise.

I wanted to try and be smooth but had no idea how to.

Being smooth just wasn’t meant for me, so I gave up on the idea and placed my hand on the top of her head to pet her instead. “I’ll be fine, but a kiss might make the bruise go away faster.”

Delphi’s ears perked up as she knew what she had to do, and that thing she had to do was look straight in my eyes with fiery determination in her eyes, grab my cheeks, and hold my face still as she leaned up to kiss me over and over again. They were quick, soft kisses delivered in a rapid flurry that never even gave me a chance to kiss her back. A series of unending kisses that carried her best attempts at making the bruise go away faster.

And when she was finally done, she looked at the location of the bruise and smiled. “There! All gone!”

I figured that she must have just been acting cute, but when I reached up to touch where the bruise should have been… I couldn’t feel anything.

“Kisses can heal any wound!” Delphi proudly declared.

I looked over my shoulder at Vala who was still enjoying games in her new, webby hammock. She flashed me a quick thumbs-up without ever taking her eyes off the screen.

Apparently, kisses really could heal anything now.

“And since Master is gonna make soup with me, I’m going to try finding even more bones! Let me know if you need any more kisses, Master!” Delphi said before picking up her previous pile of bones and running off with her wagging tall as excited as ever.

“Smooth, Master,” Cami said, standing next to me all of a sudden.

“I wish,” I said and turned to face her… and then jumped. “Where – where’d you get that?! And why?!”

The where was obvious, but it was still the first question that came to mind. Held within Cami’s hands was none other than that skeletal hand she was previously playing with. “He’s my pet. I named him Handy.”

“But… but why?”

“I’m going to train him to clean and stuff for us. That way Handy is handy. Get it?”

“But… wasn’t he trying to shoo you away before?”

“I told him I’ll let Delphi turn him into soup stock if he doesn’t listen to me.”

“You can’t just go and threaten skeleton hands into being your pets!”

“Why?”

I tried to think of a reason why. I really, really did. But nothing came to mind. Not only that, but her method clearly worked. So, I sighed in defeat.

“He can help you with gardening,” Cami added on.

“You should have said that sooner,” I said. Needless to say, that completely changed my mind about the situation. “Good thing about being an undead hand is that we won’t need to feed him or anything, either.”

“Yeah. Low maintenance pets are the best. We can tell them what to do then forget about them.”

“Are… are you sure you’re not thinking about slaves instead of pets?”

“Same thing.”

“They’re really not!”

“Then why were there a bunch of master and slave videos when I looked up master and pet videos to see what I should do with you? All the sites put them in the same categories.”

“What kind of sites were you looking at?! And you’re my girlfriend, not my pet!”

“I’m both.”

It was hard to argue with her when her face and tone almost always remained the exact same. She was like an uncrackable wall full of determination who could tear down even the most complex of arguments with a simple “no.”

More importantly, I was really concerned about what sort of sites she was searching for those terms on.

If you’re done flirting can we focus on the actual battle now?

“There’s a difference between flirting and being concerned,” I said.

I hope you flirt with me that much on our date >_>

“It’s going to be a seriously lame date if that’s what you think flirting is! Also, it’s weird when you admit to easily to hoping that I’ll flirt with you on our date. Shouldn’t you be blushing and poofing away or something?”

At this point I’m so excited for it that my brain isn’t able to process things like shame and embarrassment. It’ll probably all come flooding back to me after the date is over and then I’ll hate you for a while and refuse to be seen, but you can expect me to be super cute and friendly during the date. You know, like I always am.

“Uh-huh.”

Window smacked her body into my side before floating to the front of my vision and showing what she was supposed to show back when I first saw the skeleton cats.

WHOSE FAULT DO YOU THINK IT IS THAT IT TOOK THIS LONG TO SHOW YOU? I COULDN’T JUST INTERRUPT ALL THE FLIRTING AND BANTER.

Ahem.

New Enemy Discovered!

Skeleton Cats

Threat: ★★

HP: They’re, you know, dead, so they’re not exactly tanky, but blades are pretty weak to them so you have to use hammers if you really want to easily beat them.

Damage: 5

Defense: 5

These skeleton cats were once brave warriors of the Pawsitively Feline Empire. However, after a horrible person basically nuked their kingdom and stole their queen for himself, these cats were abandoned and left to die with nowhere to go (spoiler alert: they didn’t actually die and started off like this and enjoy being skeletons, but we have to make it sound dramatic for the flavor text). That was when the zombie queen found their bodies and brought them back to life as her skeletal soldiers, and now they loyally follow her and will sacrifice their unlives for her!

“Don’t you usually stick to white for the new enemy screens?” I asked.

Of course that’s all you’d have to say. And yeah, but I decided to switch to my usual color scheme now. Consistency instead of tradition.

“Fair enough.”

Turning my attention back to the battlefield finally, I saw Lavi and Clawdia making quick work of all the cats trying to attack. Lavi and the dogs took a while to kill the skeletons considering that they only had bladed weapons rather than anything blunt to bash them with, but Clawdia was able to use the giant, mechanized fists of her ro – of her “mecha” to smash the skeletons into dust. The cows were also insanely useful there as each attack from their tower instantly killed any nearby skeletons, but the slow cooldown between attacks meant that everybody had to put up a good defense for a while.

Then there were the archers and bees. Unfortunately, they provided next to zero help as their attacks barely managed to inflict any damage.

However… they weren’t going to be left out of being useful for long.

The next new enemy revealed itself, and it was one of my most hated enemy types when it came to tower defense games.

Flying enemies.

New Enemy Discovered!

Escort Bat

Threat: ★★★

HP: They might have low health and defense, but they’re quick and great dodgers!

Damage: 9

Defense: 3

These bats fly in large squadrons and serve as the primary defense of Bomber Bats. They engage in aerial dogfights when they spot enemies in the sky, and their quick speed allows them to dodge most attacks that might reach them from the ground. Also, they come mounted with machine guns on their backs.

“Why do bats have machine guns on their backs?!” I shouted.

Because they’re basically fighter jets and they don’t have stingers they can shoot like the bees.

A squadron of seven escort bats began their flight toward the greenhouse. Of course, even though they could fly, they still stuck to flying directly over the lanes instead of ever going off the “map” like the bees were able to.

And then, coming over the lane right behind the escort bats was another new enemy. One that was already foreshadowed in the previous enemy’s description.

New Enemy Discovered!

Bomber Bat

Threat: ★★★★

HP: These bulky bats might be slow, but all the extra meat on their bones means they can take a lot of damage!

Damage: 15

Defense: 10

Bomber bats are rarer than escort bats, but their high health and defense keeps them alive until they can reach their destinations. Once they’re over their target, they drop explosive bombs that deal huge AoE damage to all of their enemies caught within the blast radius! Oh, and they deal three hearts worth of damage to the greenhouse if they ever drop bombs onto it. So it’s an instant loss if you ever let a bomber bat reach the greenhouse. Oh part 2, they never fly alone and getting to them will be tough when protected by escort bats.

I already thought the escort bats were big since they were the size of dogs, but the bomber bat was especially fat. It looked like it should have been far too fat for its wings to actually carry it. Not only that, but those heavy bombs held by its feet looked like they should have weighed it down from how huge they were!

I was tempted to complain about how she couldn’t just bring in machine guns and bombs into fights that have been traditionally fantasy-focused in terms of technology, but then I remembered Clawdia and her mecha. And me and Valkyria.

I didn’t get to complain.

And now it was time for the bees to have their first aerial dogfight.

The instant the bats came over the lanes, the bees diverted their attention from supporting the ground troops to the bats.

There was good news and bad news about the bees versus the bats. The bad news was that the bats seemed to have greater range than the bees with their guns, allowing them to shoot at the bees before the bees could even shoot back. The bats were also faster. However, the bees had significantly greater maneuverability in the air. The bees were able to turn and change direction almost instantly, and the rate of fire on their stingers was much higher. This meant that when engaged in close combat, the bees had an advantage and could easily stay behind the bats to continue peppering them with stingers until they went crashing into the ground. However, since each bee could only handle a single bat at a time, and we had six bees going up against seven escort bats and one bomber bat, that meant the bees were outnumbered which allowed one escort bat free reign to help out the others.

Normally in tower defense games, multiple enemies wouldn’t get caught up against a defensive unit. One dog could block one skeleton cat, for example. If there were more cats than dogs, the extra cats would just run right on by while ignoring the dogs.

But it seemed like that would be different when it came to aerial battles. Instead of flying past, the spare escort bat engaged the bees and fly in patterns taking every shot that it could.

Every shot fired from the bats, by the way, was nothing like an actual bullet. Instead, what left the machine guns mounted on their backs looked like some sort of magical orbs of dark energy. So, at least it was still a little bit fantasy.

Then we had another problem.

While the extra escort bat might have stayed behind for the bees, the bomber bat didn’t. The bomber bat passed them up and moved over the front lines… where it got to drop its payload directly onto Clawdia’s mecha.

Both the mecha and all nearby dogs were wiped out in an instant. Clawdia was left bruised up hanging halfway out of her mecha while the dogs all needed the emergency dogs with stretchers to come out and help them.

“You alright, Clawdia?!” I shouted despite knowing the answer.

Clawdia was too out of it with spinning spirals in her eyes to answer.

Worse news was that the archer tower couldn’t take down the bomber bat in time.

The bomber bat had free access to the greenhouse unless the bees were able to hurry up and finish their fight. They were winning, but they weren’t winning fast enough. Especially considering that the next wave was on its way which included even more escort bats.

There was only one chance left to hope on despite it being extremely unlikely to work.

“Lavi!” I shouted. “Can you do anything about that bomber?!”

I doubted that she’d be able to considering that she was a ground unit with nothing but a sword…

But Lavi smiled at me and shouted back, “Leave it to me, Master!”