The two transports lifted, vibrated, and appeared in Opuwa using some science fiction term or other. Jumped? Warped? Folded? Every word has been used by now. Summoned? Pulled? Twisted? They twisted into Opuwa, intent on their mission to investigate the suspected pigeon headquarters and, if necessary, give the denizens a stern talk about customer relations.

“External team. Try to memorize your skill descriptions and color palette, because I'm taking her up.” The loudspeakers relayed that admonition as Rachel Donovan steered her Consolation through and above the eerie clouds in order to avoid wandering bands of pigeons or possibly pickets of pigeon scouts. The organization of the enemy ought not to be underestimated, the attack planners had concluded based on their analysis of hours of footage showing a bunch of idiots running around while being blown up by little birds. The greatest minds of every game spent all day watching it. They simply could not get enough.

The Solidarity climbed as well, and the marines riding both ships mocked one another for turning 144p or blue as a way to ward off the uncanny atmosphere of upper Opuwa which almost overwhelmed them with the sense they were not welcome, much as when Bel Felicitous Fasde entered the roster during a Night Shift Lynissia rateup.

Even while Throne and Power exploited the leveling circumstance of cloud glitches to sass SSR Gabriel on the basis that his head had deserted him, they and all their fellows kept their vigil. No foe would surprise them, they had resolved, and therefore they acted without hesitation when a flock of pigeons burst out of the gray carpet below and chirped straight at them. Birds flew in front of the marines to impair their vision while the beaks of avian rescue crews started to tug at the tiny little ropes crisscrossing the transports.

“Stop those pigeons!” Quircy shouted. From inside, since she took no steps to reposition so as to do any pigeon-stopping herself. The other expedition members inside followed her example of unshakable trust in the external teams.

Those high-flying heroes rewarded all that confidence with an impeccable transport defense. The Angels punted the landed pigeons before taking to their wings for aerial interceptions, while the ranged types kept their feet planted and their bowstrings twanging, their lenses focused, and their blasters hot. Vice President Lane shot two birds at a time. True Beryllia kneeled, calculated, and fired a space rifle blast that pierced three targets in a display which would have driven students in a culinary school specializing in shish kebabs to envy. Sindze's exuberance spurred her to do the sorts of tricks she pretended not to know, such as alternating hands with each shot. The attackers, on the other hand, brought numbers and not much else, which doomed their assault from the start.

Through chirping beaks and flying feathers, the transports pushed onward to their destination. They never turned back or swerved, though sometimes they bounced around when birds struck them or Viktor fired a gigantic anti-materiel rifle intended for use against fighter craft launched by an Okpo-class carrier, tanks rolling out of an Elbe-class transport, and Lennart when he got a little too full of himself. One possible cause of that sort of behavior occurred then, when he and Rachel Donovan maneuvered their commands successfully despite intense opposition not covered in captain class.

“Y make it harder to reroll???” A vertical running log of player complaints appeared ahead, and the transports did not turn aside when their captains saw it. The pigeons, the few remaining, fled a losing battle, Angels returned to their posts, and all aboard prepared for impact by hugging the deck when they realized their preferred approach of conducting slow, delicate tests lacked the consensus approval they had imagined. They first suspected a different opinion prevailed inside the ship when the yahoos beneath them started yelling “Wooooooo!” Those suspicions became stronger when that woo continued. As for the clinching piece of evidence, that came when the transports slammed into the wall pigeon-first at the maximum speed the captains could manage.

The transports shattered into pieces on contact, killing all aboard. That was what they deserved, but instead they passed through some guy's rant about shard systems into a world undreamt. A well-birded sky, as though the artists had nothing better to do than copy-paste winged models all day, greeted the ships, and more than just pigeons inhabited those crowded blue plains above. Crows, geese, cardinals, thrushes, macaws, myriad varieties, and some on the ground as well, like flamingoes with their silly stilt walk and penguins possessing various levels of nobility.

As for the land, what advertising brochures could have been printed featuring such a scene as that! Grasslands, hills, flood plains, and every other terrain C*********** lets your cities exploit supported countless animal species suitable for photographs such as elephants, both the bigger ones and the littler ones, gorillas, Bengal tigers, dachshunds, orangutans, lemmings, moles, brown bears, black bears, white bears, and non-bear pandas. Some scamp may have tried to slip dachshunds in there without acknowledging the Labrador retrievers, Dobermans, beagles, spaniels, really just a lot of dogs altogether, but such a scheme had no chance of success.

From the view ports, the expedition noticed something the hypothetical brochures would doubtless have omitted. “They're just lying there,” Vice President Lane observed. “Not in a Sit Snug, lunch break way. It's depressing.”

“Adigail Zem's head would explode if she saw such, uh, inert dogs,” said Luerre Voine.

The creatures of that strange country did appear to consider lassitude the highest of the virtues. That level of head drooping typically attended hyped gacha banners, spotlights, hatchers, and showcases, and then only for the players. The ground-bound animals lay around when they might have been up grazing, chasing grazers, or searching for the next big thing to graze or chase, and the sky-ranging birds glided with hardly a flap, content to drift where the wind wanted them.

Before they saw the transports, anyway. Flights of birds banked to surround them, but not to test their mettle against the topside marines. They circled the ships, passing closer and closer, till they spread out again and started squawking heartfelt squawks that startled their compatriots below, who all rose or rolled over in order to look at the sky.

Animals got up. They moved. They bounded! Packs, herds, and angsty loners scampered after the shadows of transports swooping over the vast and pleasant terrain, offering the world a contrast between dark and sun that dispelled the monotony that otherwise suffused the world. They followed those ships on a tour over river-watered plains, ice floes, fenced pastures, and verdant valleys.

“They aren't taking any hostile action. The birds, that is. Those dirt-huggers couldn't do anything to us if I dropped a complete technical readout and gave them a month to study up,” Rachel Donovan reported, or perhaps editorialized.

“Yeah, I'm bored,” Quircy Rau said. “Want to land? See if they'll give us a fight? I want to get a closer look at those bears anyway. So majestic! Strong and tenacious, too!”

The Consolation slowed while descending in an ever-tighter spiral over the flattest ground a captain could hope to see without the intervention of human artifice. Animals lined up at a considerate distance from the ramp Rachel lowered even as Lennart pumped the brakes to drop the Solidarity with the grace of someone who just remembered he had class that day and needed to get there in six minutes. Expedition members stepped on the transport's ramp equipped, wary, and ready for a ruckus, but the natives waited, claws unbared, maws shut and far from slavering, in ordered ranks, turtles over there and leopards thataway.

The troops descended, unsure what action to take. Without a word, they forced Quircy Rau to the front using a series of pokes and shoves that joined together like dots and lines to communicate the message, “We accepted your claim to leadership in order that you might lead.”

She stumbled forward, regained her balance, stuffed her hands in her pockets, took them out again because she wanted to project confidence, and considered her audience. A bunch of animals sitting on two legs or lying on four, staring at her, tails wagging on those that had them. “Hello. I'm Quircy Rau, supreme empress of the pan-ludic dominion. Wanna play catch?” She pulled out a Draconic Bone, threw it, and the animals ran. Oh how they ran.