Em Finity fought through the early hours of the morning. She smote the Ninjadilloes, hip and thigh, until, finally, there were no more (live) Dilloes in her yard. Most of the attacking force, peasants and Ninjadilloes, had let slip this vale of ingears through her tender mercies. They lay now, quiet and peaceful in the predawn, not yet revealed in the grotesque postures of the violently departed.
"That'll show 'em," Em announced, though the they to be shown were no longer able to detect the refraction of light off tiny, monochromal eyes. If light there had been in this starless night.
What is it about the end of a great battle that brings heavy rain? Ancient lore says a deluge washed the Spartan bodies at Thermopalye. Meade could not chase (Lincoln said "would not" chase Lee) after Gettysburg because of the apocalyptic floods. Now, with Dilloe carcasses strewn about her yard, Em noticed star-blotting clouds, ebony a-glower in the grim night, not still-black as the moonless eve, but shining, pulsing black, the kind of clouds to frighten the day and send a traveler to the nearest inn.
The clouds were there. The thunder could not be far behind.
"Great," Em said to one in particular, as the first rain drops fell. "Now, it's a yard full of dead dilloes and me picking them up in the rain." She thought again of Brem, her absent husband. The word "payback" echoed through her feminine mind.
Back in the command burrow, the surviving Dilloes did revenge planning of their own.
Well, after a fashion.
First, they must engage in damage control. It is amazing how quickly defeated warriors become felicitously feline in their thinking, more like politicians or preachers, perhaps, or worse, television executives who mistake the thirst of the masses for one more (un)reality show about effeminate men and bossy women who are really fragile, deep inside, and just wan to be held really, but cannot find the guy who will bring out the pretty flower under the compost heap society has built over the female gender all these centuries, like when she has to wear things that flatter her form but she would really rather just be covered up, and she wants to be pleasant and the kind of woman a guy would like, but not trashy and the fashion people simply did not seem to get it and what was she supposed to do, sew her own?
Blame would have to be fixed, excuses given. The buck must be passed.
"I think it more discreet not to mention the magnitude of our losses to the Grand Master," said Haiku-Dilloe, nursing a damaged front paw, now missing two talons. He could scarcely bear to look down at the stump he now had for a tail. The others had not yet mentioned his ears to him. The left was now markedly shorter than the right, and not so well formed.
"The Grand Master can count," Ginzu-Dilloe announced. "Do you think the Grand Master got to be the Grandmaster so easily?"
"We could say the serfs went back to the fields," Haiku replied, lamely.
"And what do we say when they do not return? The earth swallowed them? The serfs like working in the fields so much they will not come back to the burrows when the freeze comes?" Ginzu was getting hot.
"They applied for stimulus protection and opened a bank?" he added.
"We are agreed, then, the Grand Master must be told," Bozo-Dilloe joined in, good naturedly, as always. "There is nothing to do but decide who will offer our apologies."
There was general gulping. The huddled survivors had escaped possible death under cover of darkness. The Grand Master would not be so forgiving of their failures.
"You tell the Grand Master," Haiku said.
"After you," Ginzu insisted.
"You guys are a couple of clowns," Bozo announced.
It was going to be a long night.
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