"Opposing, equal powers always have to match up against each other eventually."

"Well, now that Raja Sugriv has officially acted like a doofus," Hanuman began jokingly, before his face turned serious in an instant. "The war will begin. I don't know from which way Ravan's armies will come, but we'd better set up camp on this side of the battlefield before they do. Healing tents and such, as well as food and water storage, and a discussion tent. They could ambush at any moment."

It was then that Lakshman spoke up. "It's kind of awkward, here." Ram raised an eyebrow. "I've always been so used to other people troubling us, marching on our Ayodhya, that being on someone else's land with our own army makes me feel weird." He looked around. "It also makes me feel uneasy. They know more about this place, they've forgotten more about this place that we'll ever learn. They have the advantage."

A horrified silence set upon the army, as they finally understood the toll of this war. Their chances. They were in the homeland of Ravan, Lankesh, whose stories had kept them up shivering and shuddering in the middle of the night when they were children. They were waging war on an army backed by magic and weapons from the gods themselves. They were waging war on Lanka.

"Remember what I told you about the pep talk part?" Ram muttered to Sugriv, before shaking his head. "No matter if they have the advantage in terms of this land, who cares? Who cares if they have the advantage there? It does not matter, because we have enough to defend from all the sides! We are skillful warriors, and we will defend ourselves, and our camp! That is, if we manage to set up our camp in time." Ram paused, his eyes twinkling once more. "Do you not believe in us Lakshman?"

Lakshman straightened up, and shook his head. "No. I believe in us." Monkeys dragged tents over, and began to set them up. Large orange and tan colored cloths were positioned painstakingly on top of wooden rods. Pots of Earth were set down and filled with water. Containers full of gathered herbs were placed on bedsides, with fresh sheets and bark. Breaths were taken, lasting glances were sent at each other, and hugs were exchanged, enough to last if they never happened again.

But for a few hours, Ravan did not attack. What had happened to him, no one knew. Perhaps he was still sitting on his throne, shocked at how he had almost been defeated in a wrestling match by the younger brother of Vali. Perhaps he had realized that it was useless waging war on Ram's army, and was contemplating returning Sita. Perhaps he was still ordering his unprepared army. All very unlikely. Ravan had an ego enough to swallow the entire world if it was not stroked every now and then. If it ever was insulted, then Ravan would show that he had a rage, enough to light fire to anyone in his way.

The vanar sena began to calm down, Ram brought out his maps and set them down on the table. Raja Sugriv began to warm up with his mace. The armies set down their weapons and began chattering with each other again, hastily made jokes which barely served to make them laugh. "You know bhaiyya," Lakshman began, trying his best to be optimistic and apologize for his earlier statements. "Maybe they'll never attack, and we can go on offense. Maybe we can secretly invade the city at night and take Maa Sita and go...." he trailed off. "That wouldn't be enough for me, of course. I'd kill some."

Ram laughed. "No. No, they'll attack. Ravan wouldn't be able to stand it if he just let us live, and we invaded his golden city for the fourth time, and this time actually took Sita along with us. Maybe not today, though. Maybe today Ravan has realized that we'll be prepared. Maybe Ravan will attack tomorrow. The early dawn is settling, and now it's truly morning. Ravan might not play fair game, but even he appreciates when a true war should begin; at the first call of the rooster, when the first ray of light touches the clouds."

-----O-----

A few minutes passed, and the chatter even had stopped, when the noise of fright came. The thundering sound of elephant feet. Ram stood up immediately from his boulder, his hand grasping even tighter from his bow. "It appears that Ravan has realised that we have surrounded his Lanka with all our monkeys. But where is he coming from?" Ram looked around, before he finally noticed the giant dark mass approaching from the Northeast side instead of the Northwest, where Lanka was located.

Right here, it is important to let you know where exactly this was happening. Lanka was a golden city with a large golden gate around it, a circular gate, surrounding all the sides. Ram and his army were crowded around this gate, ready to siege the city and anyone who came out would immediately be killed. Ravan knew this, so he came from their Northeast side, where his army could, essentially, crowd the monkeys against his own walls and kill them off one by one. It was a genius plan, in hindsight.

However, Ram wasn't a hermit with no fighting experience. A few moments of thinking, and it all clicked in his mind.He whispered something to Sugriv, and the monkey king's eyes widened. "MOVE BACK!" roared, and the entire army began to run back, the ones at the ends scampering to avoid being trampled. The tents were quickly moved with the entire moving mass. It was a sight to behold, the full population of apes and bears in the world moving towards one goal. The army assembled right where Ravan's was charging.

"RARRRR!" the demons at the front yelled as they ran, waving cleavers and weapons and astras. Some rode chariots which shot arrows, and others had flying ones. Some were on top of elephants, who could reach down and impale anyone who could pass them with the gleaming tip of a spear. Ram squinted, and thought that he could see Prahasta, the war general whom Angad had warned him about. He commanded the strongest legion of Ravan's army, and rolled his well-oiled shoulders like some sort of wrestler.

The beautiful silence in between of horror and gore existed like the thin line between obeying and disobeying. What happened in this silence? The weapons which had been dropped were picked up harriedly, final glances were sent, and hands were shaken out. 

"CHARGE!" Hanuman's strong voice hollered, and with a loud war cry, the monkeys started to run too, led by the army generals. Ram's hair whipped in the wind as he watched the distance being closed between the two monster armies. And then they met, and they mixed, and Ram closed his eyes as the shrieks of pain and death filled his ears without delay. Behind him, he thought he could hear lakshman quickly inhale, the air around them being sucked in like a vacuum.

His younger brother walked forward to join the fight, but Ram quickly pulled him back by the arm. "Not now," he hissed, and shook his head to affirm his words.

 Hanuman had found an opponent, the demon Jambumali. Jambumali was the son of Prahast, the army general of Ravan's best legion. He had large tusks like an elephant, and a long, crescent shaped bow, and appeared as horrifying as any demon did.

But Jambumali was huge, towering over half the army. And the only one who could match that hugeness on their side, and who wasn't currently being held back by their blue brother, was Hanuman. Hanuman quickly grew 50 times in size, and now towered over Jambumali as well. The two giants went into a brawl, punching each other, and pushing each other this way and that with fists.

For a single moment, the entire army stopped to watch the spectacle, two mights from each army wrestling to the death. Prahast bared his shining fangs proudly before running through another monkey with his spear, splattering blood and other things on the ground. This act of mercilessness jump started the war again, as if someone had lit a spark of a fire in the middle of a dry jungle.

But at that moment, nothing could be truer than the fact that the demons were winning. And they were winning well. Vanars, on the very first day, were being killed. The rakshasas were equipped with heavenly weapons, those that could confuse a monkey, those that could impale thousands at one time. Vibhishan winced from where he sat, each time that he thought he heard the scream of a vanar, but never when he heard the one of a demon.

Sugriv still hadn't entered the fight, but was with Ram and Lakshman as they watched from a distance. He took in a deep breath and turned his head away as he was provided with a bird's eye view of his own being slain. He quickly pulled out the maps of the field upon which they battled on, and even as he did, the shrieks of both demons and monkeys alike filled the air. "To think that this all could have been prevented." he murmured.

"We have no battling style, currently." Ram hissed, spreading the map out even more, his eyes narrowing. "We're just a block style, aren't we Laksh?" Lakshman nodded. "Yes. The demons have better infantry. We fight with trees and rocks and boulders, and mountains. But so far, we have slain many." Ram crossed his arms. "We need to better match up the generals to the demons. We have some of the weakest at the front for some reason, while Ravan kept his best men, amongst them, Prahast, Shatrughn (Not Lakshman's twin, though Lakshman was startled for a second), and Virupaksh. They are killing the monkeys with lesser fighting power, and once they finally reach the mightier ones who can defeat them, half our army shall be dead. Order our army, Raja Sugriv, to keep Nal, Neel, and Hanuman at the front to defend against them."

Sugriv quickly called a messenger and said this, and the messenger ran off, waving a large flag. Immediately, the course of the army changed. It looked as if they whirled around, and for a moment, Prahast laughed almost victoriously, before his eyes widened. At the front were the vanars with bigger muscles, maces and swords, and bared teeth and bristling fur, rolling their shoulders and swinging their weapons violently.

Now the clashes were even. The smaller monkeys drove their sharpened twigs and stakes through the rakshasas, who had never seen such weapons before. While the demons fought a more traditional war, the monkeys were relentless, almost uncivilized in the way they fought. They had no system of organization, no legions, no nothing. Nothing to breach. Some whipped around boulders and crushed the demons underneath them. Others waved around tree trunks and threw them so that they collected demons for miles on end and finally crushed them against something.

It was then that Indrajit finally got up from his sitting position on the balcony of his father's palace, and narrowed his eyes. "BRING MY CHARIOT!" he roared, stepping into his flat. There, he found his wife, Sulochana, standing there with a praying plate ready in hand. Somehow, his face lightened, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from it. "You must understand I-" She simply smiled lightly, and revolved the praying plate three times around his face before grasping his sword. Indrjait watched as she cut her thumb without flinching as she had done so many times before, before making a tilak on his forehead.

"You shall come back victorious, no doubt. I will never flinch as I do this, and my hands will never tremble. Come back, Indrajit, having killed those two hermits and then all of Lanka shall be chanting your name." Indrajit smiled, and grasping his sword and the keys to his flying chariot, walked out of the door. Sulochana simply stared at his back, her face impassive. No one could ever defeat her husband. No one.

A/N-So, a lot of you wanted more Sulochana and Indrajit, and "the other side". And since this definitely isn't a traditional retelling of the Ramayana (e.g. ISta, Ram=Ravan, Lakshman is funny, Angad loves yeeting people, etc.), I guess we did just that. I think that Angad is @Ramayana_lover's speciality, however, and Sulochana is @lakshmila4ardi's, so I don't want to do much of that. What's my speciality?
Do we have any inside jokes among us, guys, aside from the Ashok Vatika Tree thing? I don't think so. We should work on some inside jokes sometime!

OH GOD-we're so close to the end of this story, I can practically breathe it.

If you all have bhakti friends, can you advise them not to read this story? They may think that I'm humanizing the characters too much. 

I'm surprised we got through this without me adding any curse words into my writing. The only ones I included are "damn" and "dammit". But trust me, there are some times when I have this urge.....