Already the cats were in full retreat, their strong instincts to charge to their deaths overridden by the maid's show of force. Fubuki stopped and tapped two forefingers to the temple of her head. She checked on Ichi, just in case. Her fears were confirmed as she saw images from Avalon in her mind. Ichi appeared on the verge of making another stupid decision.

For Ichi's sake, Fubuki had bugging magic on his shirt. She was always watching him through magic white moths that would blend in on his white shirt that Fubuki dressed Ichi with herself. Fubuki found herself in the position of correcting her young Master's mistake yet again.

On the field of battle the robot maids milling herds of cats to bits saw Fubuki's form blur.

Ichi lazily crawled in a state of undress towards the cockpit. He felt a sharp pain in his neck and blacked out. Fubuki made sure that Ichi was within the cockpit itself before she ended his errant desires with a sleep aid performed by her hand. She decided to have some choice words with Ichi after the battle.

Fubuki teleported back to her maids, glad to see that they hadn't broken ranks in the couple seconds she was gone.

Her joy at her good work soon went to waste. The sun glinted off an orb of water floating in the horizon. Fubuki frowned. That was Wavr and Hifu's magical combination. They were returning from Prsuka. She didn't require backup, especially from the likes of Wavr and Hifu. Fubuki didn't have much of a choice in the matter since killing them would be against her strongly held beliefs as head robot maid.

She calmly turned her attention to the battle at hand, snapping a bakeneko's neck that got too close. It was time for her to act. Before Wavr and Hifu would have a chance to make a mess of her cat cleansing, she'd finish up.

"Aggressive stance, break ranks! Squads Alpha through Delta, clean as you will."

The robot maids were overjoyed as they broke off in packs of five and fanned out over the cat herds. At Fubuki's side a katana taller than her appeared and floated, as if waiting.

She dashed off into the forest surrounding Danberu's fortress, disappearing in a flash grey and appearing in one of the hundreds of spots she marked the night before. Each spot had a white moth she placed there to monitor the bakeneko's movements.

Fubuki appeared next to a group, and turned her head to the sword beside her and nodded. The sword unsheathed itself, floating as it swept down on a cat herd bisecting them from the waist up. The sword whipped backward through the air neatly sheathing itself.

It took barely a second, but as Fubuki disappeared only cat corpses were left littering the forest grounds.

Back near the fortress Danberu in his Elder Kraken form sluggishly put the cage holding Avar to the ground. The maids ran out of his view when he wasn't looking, so he took the liberty to shift back to his tanuki form. Danberu acknowledged he feared that the stern grey haired maid might come over and snap him in half if stopped for a rest in her sight. He sat on the ground hard next to Avar's cage, sighing among the bakeneko squished under the bulk of his Elder Kraken form.

Danberu's mental faculty began to return. He assessed the situation as he sweated from exertion .

His force of tanuki were struggling against a small pack. They were already showing sluggish movements. His unwillingness to follow the maids into battle felt like the right decision at the time, with the boon of Avar's ability to turn the enemy into allies he thought that he would have enough of an advantage to progress to Danberu's lofty expectations.

Danberu only had those expectations because Avar agreed to order his newly acquired bakeneko troops fight against their own

However, Avar only ordered the cats to run to the mountain, despite being told repeatedly by Danberu that he should ask them to fight their own. Danberu eyed Avar, causing Avar to glance back at the Tanuki Lord. The Bakeneko Lord stared back unamused as he shifted his eyes to the battle at hand.

Danberu considered that enough of an answer, tired as he was from maintaining the Elder Kraken form for so long.

They made significant headway, Danberu acknowledged the efforts of his men, but it was nothing like the field of crimson to his north where the maids used to be. He spoke to Avar, fruitlessly he thought, but he was the company at hand, so Danberu figured he might as well.

"Enjoying the fight?"

Danberu pulled out a sealed flagon from his pack, tossing it at Avar's cage, just out of reach.

Avar turned and gave Danberu another stink eye as he drew his katana, nimbly flicking the tip under the bottom of the flagon. The flagon shot into the air vertically as Avar sheathed his sword and caught the drink in his other paw.

"Thanks. Yes, this will be useful. Your tanuki are making for a poor performance today, my lord. Perhaps it is better to be a bakeneko and dead, rather than to live as a tanuki and fight like this."