Act 20: Battle for Sandstone (P1): Hold The Line

Every member of the guild quickly made their way to Sandstone, once they arrived they start getting in position. Pokémon with crossbows (and some bombs.) getting up on the wall above the gate to prepare to shoot when given a signal while most of the fighting force on the ground (Luca and Ranii included) prepare behind the gates which are closed. At first the guards were confused about what was going on but some explanation clued them in on what's about to happen.
"They are coming!" One of the mon on top of the wall said, as he could see the enemy army approaching. "Alright, get ready to fire!"
Luca has his two swords drawn, he is just more familiar with this, but he still brought the shield on his back anyways. "Let's hope the first line of defense can soften them up..."

"Yeah..." Ranii says, her spear in her hands. She holds it above her head. It appears she intends to throw the thing, just like back at the ship, but throw it over the wall. "I'll do my part on that front too."

They begin hearing the approaching sound of the grove army, their footsteps against the sands as they run and the shouting.
"Alright now! Shoot the crossbows!" The firing signal was heard, and from the top of the wall bolts were fired down at the enemies. These weapons are working well, shooting at soft targets without armor, it's easily killing what it hits. "Pull the strings back! We got a big chance here with them getting stuck in the sand!" Overall, for what can be heard coming from up there, the enemies just came into firing range.

Ranii throws her spear over the wall. It flies over the wall, along with the next barrage of arrows and bolts, its magical speartip flying through the air. If an outside observer didn't know any better, they would say the spear was speeding up as it flies true towards whatever poor sap it decided to seek out as a target. A moment later, the spear reappears in Ranii's hand, it's tip green with the blood of another. Apparently, it has hit a grass type. Though where, she can't know.

Luca keeps his gaze focused at the door, he can hear that the enemy is getting closer and closer...
Soon enough the gate starts being struck, it's made out of wood and it's not very thick so the Grove soldiers are attacking it with their Iron weapons.
"Quick! throw the bombs!" It looks like the unit up on the wall is preparing to throw down some explosive. But an issue comes up to them... "Wha...! Some of them are climbing this fast?! Quick! get your swords before- AAAARGH!!" Things already don't sound like they are going well up there.
"Damn it!" The Lucario would consider helping them, but getting from down here to up there isn't something he can do quickly...and it appears the gate may fall at any moment. So he can only curse the fact that he can't help his allies on the wall.

... But Ranii can. 
She spreads her wings, and with a leap she is up in the air, spear in hand, the height of her leap easily reaching the wall's top. 
Indeed, one of the mons, a sandile crossbowman is in the fight of his life with a nuzleaf. The sandile tries to hit the nuzleaf with the butt end of the crossbow, but the nuzleaf slides their sword underneath it, and knocks it away.
"For the Grov-" It yells as it raises the blade above its head, ready to strike down the guild sandile, who has its hands in front of it trying uselessly to shield itself from the inevitable blow.
One that never comes, as a golden spear flies like a missile right into the chest of the nuzleaf.
"URK!" it yells as it grips the spear in its chest, dropping its sword as it grips the spear. It stumbles back, and right over the edge of the wall, the grass 'mon dying before it hits ground. However, the relief is short lived, as more mons are crawling up to replace them. 
"Ranii!" The sandile yells to her. "I can't hold them off, there's too many of them!"
"Sans get down, you can't do anymore good up here." She says as Sans grabs the blade. "I'll hold them back for a while up here." She declares as Gungnir reappears in her hand.
"... Sorry." Sans says as he leaps down, joining the defense on the ground.

Close by there are another couple mons locked in a scuffle as they steadily approach where the Avali is.
It's a Pachirisu from the guild, she is called Pachi. She holds a crossbow in one hand and a lit bomb on the other. She is stepping back to avoid being slashed by an iron weapon from the enemy. "Stay away you four-armed bastard! I'm not letting you destroy my home!"
A Ledian is hovering towards the electric squire swinging a small sword left and right as he tries to cut this electric squirrel. "Gah! just hold still and die already!"
Pachirisu's eyes look at the blade as it goes left and right, the timing of this bug type gets predictable enough that she could thrust the from of the crossbow against the Ledian's chest before pulling the trigger to fire the bolt and point blank range, It pierced all the way through with enough momentum to keep flying.
Yelling in pain, the bug type falls dead right at her feet.
Pachi kept walking back, and looked back to see that her back was not too far away from Ranii's "This place is getting too dangerous!" She says to her.
Down there the Grove forces have managed to get through the gate, they cut a crude hole big enough to serve as entry. But Four Eyes guild mons have made a defensive line to face them. The two forces are now engaging in melee, with Luca having to deal with Grove Bayleef armed with a spear.

"Pachi, throw that bomb before it goes off in your hand!" Ranii warns her as she seems to have forgotten about it.
Her thought process is interrupted as another mon grabs her foot.
"I'd be more worried about yourself, upstart!" A male frogadier yells as he tries to pull Renali down into the crowd on the other side of the wall. "We're gonna enjoy ravaging you when we take this town-"
Ranii responds by thrusting her spear into his face. 
"Ravage that." She growls as she kicks him back down.
She looks and sees that they have broken through the door. She looks over to where a few more mons are scuffling with wall boarders. A guild Dedenne, having been robbed of their crossbow, is trying to fight off a spearow by using a sword. Ranii grasps her spear, and throws it towards the spearow, the magic spear flying towards its target like a missile and knocking it out of the air for good.
"The gate has been breached!" She yells to the defenders. "If you have any remaining bombs, light them, toss them down and then reinforce the walls!"

Pachi yells and flings the bomb out of there, towards the side of the wall where the enemy is at. The bomb struck an enemy Pansage in the face just as he had finished climbing the wall, so it knocked him down and exploded with him down there. "I'm gonna go down there!" She has no bombs on her person to throw down, so she picks up the sword and leaps down to join the defensive line in the fight. They are gonna need all the help they can get because they have lost a few mon already...
The fire type defenders are using all of the bombs they can in as quickly as possible before retreating. One Magby lights a fuse with a small ember from his breath, buts the bomb in a bag of bombs, and ties up the bag as much as he can and drops it over the wall down at the enemy.
Luca is fighting two opponents at once right now, The Bayleaf is still one of them and another one is a Pangoro with an axe. With all the yelling and fighting going around him, the Lucario is focusing all of himself on fighting these two right now, his sense making everything else sound distant like background noises.
"DIE!" With a battle cry, the bear jumps and tries and brings his axe down like he wants to split his opponent down the middle.
Luca jumped back to avoid this, instead the axe struck the ground and kicked up sand.
And from that shortly lived sandcloud comes the Bayleaf charging with his spear. "Get out of our way, scum!" He yells as goes in for stab with his weapon.
Before he could be struck by that though, Luca used one sword to swat the spear's point aside and then swung his other sword against the shaft of the spear, right below his head, severing the blade off of the weapon. While the grass-type was surprised the Lucario was going to go in for the kill but that was not meant to be, that brutish panda pokemon was coming at him again, swinging his axe, thus Luca was forced to block that attack with his swords and it was almost enough to knock him down.
If he were using his old weapons just now they surely would have ended up shattering against such a mighty blow.

Ranii stays upon the roof a while longer, taking the Dedee and Pachi's place, throwing her spear at a pidgey and a spearow. A Treeko climbs up and over, and attempts to sneak up on Ranii while she is waiting for her spear to rematerialize.
The treeko pulls back its blade, and thrusts forward-
Only to hit dead air as the not-hawlucia skillfully dodged out of the way.
"Too loud" She hisses as she grabs the Hapless Treeko, and throws him back off the wall, the grass type landing on the sands below with a thud, and soon being trampled upon by the next mons trying to scale the wall.
The spear reappears in her hand as she twirls it around, the spear tip facing in, as she thrusts it behind her, easily stabbing a toxicroak that also tried to sneak up on her.
As she pulls her spear back, and lets her victim fall off the wall without even looking back, Luca's situation soon catches her eye. She sees he is having some trouble.
She looks over the wall again, and sees mons still coming up.
While she is tempted to stay and fight, she knows at this point the wall is all but lost. So she leaps down, her speartip pointed directly at the panda's unaware head as she descends back into the fray below, determined to rejoin her partner's side.

Just when the Pangoro was about to raise his weapon to prepare for another swing, he got pierced through the top of the head by a golden spear.
Luca watches as his dead opponent falls to his partner's surprise attack. "I was getting a little worried." He says to her. Then he noticed, or rather sensed, the Bayleaf coming behind him. He turns one of his swords in his paws to grip it in reverse so he could thrust the blade behind himself, the pained screamed he heard right behind him was enough for him to know he hit his target.
The Bayleaf coughs up some of his green blood. The blade piercing his stomach gets pulled out of it as he falls to his knees as he drops the tip of the spear he was about to use to stab the Lucario in the back. Then his head got separated from his neck by a strong sword slash to his neck.

"For me, or for you?" She says as she tries to pull the spear from the Pangoro's head. Failing that, she simply lets it go, letting it vanish and then reappear in her hand. She takes her place behind her partner's back, holding the spear out and protecting the Lucario's rear.

"For you, of course." He would stand here to fight besides her, back to back, as partners.
But both of them begin hearing Guildmaster's Stic's voice in their heads again. "Luca, Ranii. The Sandstone guild has begun mobilizing to assist the Grove, they are making evacuation difficult and might help the enemy into the mansion. I need you to go into Sandstone to assist Aceo and Elec. After that go to the mansion to check if it's under threat within, and finally eliminate the nobles."
"What about the mons we have fighting at the front?" The Lucario says his thoughts out loud.
"I will then fall back to a more defensive position in due time. The faster the evacuation is done, the faster the mons helping with it can reinforce our main force."
He nods. "Yes, I understand."

"Weird how he does that without nanites." Ranii comments before turning to Luca. "Well, we better go then."
She gives her spear one more toss over the wall, the magic spear flying over, then turning upward and zooming towards a surprised Pidgeotto, robbing it of its precious element of surprise... and its life.