Baa-Ram-Ewe!

-Equus, Ponyville, Hayburger, Rainbow Dash-

“Spitfire is still angry at you for last time Jade.” I had two Abyssinians I was friends with, I hang out with both of them and all between my duties to the Wonder Bolts.

“Yeah, kind of figured.” Jaded commented with a grin, at least she wasn’t trying to destroy Saddle Arabia at the moment… or was she? Even I had been told by everyone else to make sure Jaded doesn’t go on a rampage. “At least Spitty seems friendlier to the idea of chasing me these days.”

“Yeah, because she’s going to leave me with the job of chasing you. Don’t really know how to feel about that…” I state blandly, sure chasing Jade would be fun, but it’s more the fact that it’s why Spitfire wants to retire early. She still has like twenty years of excellent flying in her.

“Look at it this way, at least Jaded promised to keep the thieving down as long as you give her a decent workout.” Capper Dapperpaws the Tom Abyssianian was eating with us at the table and I thought it was a little strange he live around Ponyville now. Not much fish on the menu around here unless it’s Pegasus run, but apparently he gets fish jerky on mail order from Kuril’s restaurant and I kind of liked the taste of fish jerky myself. I wonder what he and Rarity are getting up to recently, in any case it’s none of my business really. “Also, please don’t give us Abyssinians reputations for being thieves.”

“I think it would be a better reputation than all the other stuff Abyssinians are known for.” Yeah, Jaded wasn’t wrong, I can kind of imagine Abyssinians oddly overly obsessive love for large cardboard boxes would weird out most beings considering not even regular cats get that into it.

“I can kind of see it, I mean the ‘Evil Sorceress Mirage of Saddle Arabia’ is definitely one for the history books and some think it’s a tall tale. If I wasn’t currently having lunch with her, I wouldn’t believe it either.” Capper had to be a thief to get by, nowadays he actually had a job around here and was trying to improve himself. “Uh… what’s that noise?”

We all heard the screaming sound of someone and suddenly a one eyed red furred cat wearing a blue robe and wielding a pocket watch was seen flying through sky screaming as a triangular black jet blasted him with missiles and what looked like cement cannonballs. Pegasus Ponies were steering well clear of that mess.

“Just the history books being written.” Jaded said flatly. “Don’t worry about it, Time Turner will fix it in editing when the CBD gets around to it with SMILE.”

“Huh, haven’t seen a jet like that since I beat Star Scream and Screaming Star in a guitar riff contest.” I said with some pride. “Rarity really knows how to jam apparently.”

“What even… when did something like that happen?!” Jaded stated while looking at me curiously, her ears erect in surprise and shock.

“Hey, other people have weird lives too you know. The only reason why I mentioned it is because Screaming Star wouldn’t stop talking about his hatred for Spiny’s called Normans and that you did something with a guy named Hollow Heart… really wasn’t paying attention to the entire tirade. I would have invited you to help with it since you seemed to know the guy, but it happened in the general ‘spur of the moment’ weirdness that occurs in Ponyville.” After that we continued with our lunch, discussing comic books and other things we’ve been up to lately.

It was a quiet day aside from the evil time traveling undead Abyssinian being defeated by two of the coolest cats I’ll ever get introduced to.

-Moon Cell Realm, Midgar Upper City, ???, an hour later, Pom-

“Okay so we found the limitations of Hi-Potions… I really don’t know how we’re going to tell mom about this.” Wha… that was Dormarch.

My eyes snapped opened and I found myself once again being used as a pillow, at least it was for Shanty. I noted that her front legs were splinted with what looked like the legs of a wooden chair and bandages. My head was resting on a pillow on a bed in a rather quaint looking if highly orderly room.

“What happened?” I asked softly and Dormarch froze as he watched me glance at the bloody bandages on Dolly’s body with wide eyed worry.

“Well you survived another explosion for one and basically went into mental shock immediately afterwards where I was barely able to keep you moving until we were somewhere safe and not in an immediate threat to our lives. While we were getting to this place, Shanty fought Lu Bu and apparently eviscerated him from existence with some kind of magical equivalent of a destructive vacuum wave of inverse cutting arcs. Unfortunately Shanty shattered both her front legs doing it and there were her other injuries. Already mostly taken care of though.” Dormarch was not panicking, good to know that I shouldn’t be panicking either. “Also Dolly got shot a few times while protecting Shanty on her way here, I was guiding her in and had to go out and help her lose her tails.”

“Wish I could have kept them, I’d use them to fly. Yeah, yah, I know what you meant and yes I did make sure I wasn’t followed beyond that. I thought it would be the helicopter gun drone things that would get me, but the soldiers on the motorcycles were the real threat.” Dolly stated with a smile to me and a wagging tail as her helmet, skateboard and the stone bone sat nearby. Her pink scarf and band collars notably weren’t around her neck currently. “It’s not as bad as it looks, just two and a half solid hits. Most pain I’ve ever felt in my life honestly, but a few potions fixed me right up! … I’m kind of feeling naked without my collars or scarf.”

“Do you want them to be clean or do you want them to still be caked in your coagulating blood?” Dormarch stated with a sigh and a flat stare at his big sister.

“What was it you said about the limitations of potions?” I asked for clarification, because I simply couldn’t let that go without at least some knowledge. I wasn’t being loud in case I drew some EPs to wherever we were. “Also where are we?”

“Okay Potions cure small flesh wounds, several would have the same effect as a Hi-Potions which cure bigger flesh wounds… unfortunately they can’t cure diseases, sicknesses or apparently fix bones which Shanty shattered in her front legs. They won’t fixed completely decimated organs either, but they will heal organs that are damage at least. Sitrus Berries can cure broken bones and most forms of physical injury, but they won’t fix permanent forms of damage.” Dormarch pointed to Shanty’s head resting against my side with a claw, Shanty was snoozing peacefully at least. I thought she would be in a lot of pain with broken legs and wouldn’t be able to sleep. “It’s just another reminder that I have an entire hospitals worth of medical knowledge lodged in my body. Thankfully our host has helped with medical assistance.”

“Hey, that knowledge helped you perform surgery on Pom and that’s why she’s still alive after all her organ failed a math test in Quaint Placard after she used Shock Ram.” Dolly removed bandages showing some recently damaged areas around her left hind leg where projectile tore through it, there was a hole through her torso around her right side and a grazing wound on the upper left side of her neck near her the back of her jaw.

One of those had to have been an artery… but Dolly still seemed rather chipper and I didn’t feel any pain coming from her. Must be just flesh wounds then, according to what Dormarch just said about how potions worked.

“Saint Canard is the name of the city Dolly and that’s the closest mom’s been to never getting up… also I wouldn’t expect or trust any barely a month old being to perform field surgery without the experience necessary to pull it off successfully with a limited medical resources without a fully stocked and up to date trauma kit.” Probably shouldn’t bring up the fact that Dormarch is a miracle worker or the whole Crest of Miracles thing right now. “I’m just surprised you can remember what Shock Ram is.”

“Dormarch, there is no way I can forget something like that which could kill... yeah…” Yet you can’t remember the name ‘Saint Canard’ Dolly? She looked my way and smiled a bit, she wasn’t looking at my left hind leg for… oh… the golden wool start an inch into my left hind leg… okay. “So… we’re currently in a small indoor mall.”

“Why does it sound like there’s bad news?” I groaned while rubbing my right hoof against my forehead and tried not to disturb Shanty’s rest while doing so.

“Not bad, it’s just that we don’t currently have the fighting strength to actually press Shinra Tower and Shanty’s currently not in any condition to fight until we can get her some alternative healing or Sitrus Berries. Getting to Shinra Tower from below is a no go considering all the aerial EPs and the defenses in the way that would gun down anyone climbing up to or flying towards the place.” Dormarch Leaned back against the wall. “Also we’re in the one place nobody in their right mind would ever go to in an emergency or help unless they had no choice, we’re basically surrounded by EPs and the only thing keeping us from going unnoticed are the dubious at best NPCs that live around here.”

“Are we in a laundromat?” I asked after a half second of thought and a single sniff of the air.

“See, told you little bro, score one for the big sister!” An exuberant Dolly said, while holding both her paws out at me while standing on her hind legs.

“Yes, you did say she would say that as a first guess.” Groaned out Dormarch matching his mood to how I currently felt as he placed his big goofy claws over his muzzle while shaking his head.

“Anyway Rue Blue bit it, don’t honestly know why Shanty didn’t go all liquid giant on Cue Fu and went with that odd attack like she did.” Kind of had a possible idea on that one Dolly, but can’t really confirm or deny that until I could have a talk with what was my young pirate goat.

Just reminding myself that the family Shanty had was me, Smolder, Ocellus, Dodo… and most recently Dolly and lastly Dormarch. She had the Cooper Gang as well, but only while it lasted and I dragged her away from some really wholesome guys and my odd doppelganger.

“Ah, hello there. Nice to see our guests relaxing while the streets are swarming with assault programs out to get them. If I were you I’d highly be stressed as all get out.” We all turned to the bipedal black cat wielding a megaphone, wearing a small crown, brown boots and a cape. He seemed like a particularly plucky little guy. He sounded fairly intelligent too, given he had my number and was staring at me when he said that and had a familiar accent to me. “I’m your host Cait Sith lass, hope you don’t mind but I have this ones collars and scarf coming fresh from the wash. Whatever business you have with the assault programs is no business of mine, but you can stay here as long as they don’t find out I’ve been keeping you hidden. Would be fairly problematic for me should they find out about this… ‘uncontrolled glitch’… if you will.”

“Makes me wonder why Moon Cell has so many simulated realms, but can’t control all the programs or actual people in them.” It was a curious thought Dormarch.

“That’s an easy one to answer. Moon Cell records everything about a civilization including times of death, those who lived for a long time or only last for a few seconds, how they died, how they lived and everything that happened on a single planet a thousand times over… a lot of civilizations fell to it already and not because it was that capable on its own. Unfortunately it has two targets to kill off at the same time, said civilizations need to start working together or they are toast. At least Moon Cell can’t summon its civilization destroyers as it seems to be, thankfully enough, entirely separated from those systems. It can’t go against what its creators hard coded into it and eventually Moon Cell would have failed due to data overload… when it copied an entire universe’s worth of one planets many histories and changes over a heat death of the universe amount of time. That would have taken a few multi-trillion years or some other impossible to fathom number of civilizations being destroyed, it is probably the most advanced computer that ever was… but it’s still following its programming and that’s why you’ve gotten this far. Getting to Moon Cell’s brain is going to be the hardest thing you’ll have to pull off, doing good work so far otherwise! Moon Cell is forced to recreate simulations of the soul of a world around the central theme of a particular time and also souls in the forms of NPCs… some NPCS though, they do actually have souls in them and it’s noticeable when you see one that does, but it can’t really dictate personalities the NPCs will have. Said Soul can’t really do anything to fight Moon Cell though, kind of sucks to be alive again in some way with that thing keeping everything orderly and stuck in a form of ever looping stagnation. I wasn’t cat in life, but my goodness did I get a lot of mileage out of becoming what was my favorite mask… probably why I’m here now as I am.” Cait Sith, the black kitty, spread his arms out wide and grinned at us. “My soul was… flexible to say the least. I had the ability to instill life into inanimate things and machines and actually become that life I instilled or I could just let the life go on its own way and connect back to it later. The world at the time of this particular realm was really weird and magical… also dangerous and full of monsters that come out of the mist. Still, being an NPC feels really off you know? Knowing I’m a remnant doesn’t help the feeling either. I can’t go too far outside my programming and apparently I run this laundromat that was a front for my organization when my soul was still alive, also this NPC came with my favorite Magitek Moogle Monster so I’m not complaining about my lot in life. I just can’t fight Moon Cell directly even if I really wanted to. To think I always wondered what caused the several ice ages Hojo said the planet went through, don’t need to guess what caused those or why that meteor was a thing of legend in my time… anyway my civilization is not important as it’s already gone, dead and buried, this city, Midgar, just an echo of a city that almost destroyed the world and it was grand in its heyday at least. Until you realize that we were siphoning souls from the stream of life and death and using it to power lightbulbs, really messed up stuff that and little wonder why things got so twisted. That Hojo guy was still plenty insane, but reality being a simulation was one of his better guesses… only the guess is real for me at the moment.”

“Indirectly though?” Dormarch queried with a raised ear.

“That’s why you’re not dead. Believe me, I would rather stay away from trouble as I currently am as far as living goes… but in this occasion I might be able to give you some help directly if you can give me control of a PLANT. I mean, what if I were to say… have a way to make you some very ‘Questionable Intelligences’ in the form of Berserker Moogles like the one currently doing laundry for other NPCs in the shopping mall downstairs? Not that you’re really interacting with the NPC layer very much what with all those assault programs running about that you definitely don’t want to notice you in your states. Doubt you’ve seen many NPCs at all.”

“Why did I hear the capital letters when he said questionable intelligences?” Okay that had me thinking about it as well Dolly.

“Since I put those capital letters there on purpose lass, yes I understand dogs since I kind of was one for most of my life until I turned things around after my seventh or so living cat robot, if you need to ask my ninth life is going perfectly fine… for a specific distinction that I really can’t go anywhere or do anything of importance here, also can’t die so there’s that existential horror. Anyway, the Magitek Moogle Monsters I’m offering are fairly powerful. Only they follow orders in a borderline ‘as literal as you can possibly get’ manner, if you’re very specific about what you want them to do they are smart… ish.” At least Cait Sith seemed to get some form of understanding from Dormarch, my mind is feeling sluggish from all the stress knowing Dolly was hurt at some and that Shanty’s front legs are currently broken. “I’d say they are quite questionable in the regards of taking things too literally or not literally enough.”

“So nothing overt, but you’re doing Dolly’s laundry for her. Can’t ask for anything nicer really as far as the obvious actions you can take unless we can give you a minor territory so Moon Cell can’t use you against us if it takes notice of your… particularly ‘aberrant’ behavior.” It seemed Dormarch understood something more than I did in this moment and I’m usually smart about things. At least we had another NPC friend, one that currently couldn’t act openly as Welch, Cid, Torneko or Patch Cabbage could.

Cait Sith nodded slightly with a silent grin to Dormarch as a large white thing with tusk sticking up out of its lower jaw and bulky arms stomped into the room. It seemed, actually kind of cute in an ugly way and… did it actually radiate a sense of dumb muscle or was it just me?

“If you’re getting the distinct feeling of dumb muscle… yeah, that’s exactly what I was talking about. Okay you lug, place cleaning order, on floor, near Dalmatian.” After Cait Sith ordered the white mechanical beast around with megaphone, the large white thing stomped over to Dolly and placed the cleaned collars and scarf on the floor near her. “Go watch the front and help the customers until otherwise ordered, but don’t leave the premises like last time. You’re helping them in the building and the building cannot be destroyed or damaged in the act of helping someone nor can you leave the building or do illegal things.”

“How dumb are we talking again?” Asked a fairly concerned Dormarch as he watched the large bulky white thing stomp out of the room and back down the stairs. I got to see the small wings sticking out of the Magitek Moogle’s back.

“Exceptionally so, yet smart enough in so many other idiotic ways!” Cait Sith said brightly while hanging his megaphone off his right shoulder and waving his left paw at us. “Still, you’re going to need them and more if you’re attacking Moon Cell’s inner realm… or at least Shinra Tower. I’ll at least make sure they can follow attack and defend orders, though your mileage may vary drastically.”

“That thing made me feel like a genius just by being in the room… well now I know how Dawkins feels around me at times.” Well you’re not exactly dumb Dolly, though it’s hard to tell when you were playing dumb and could honestly use your cleverness far more often than you currently do.

… Did I uplift all the dogs on Dolly’s home world just by being there? I… really shouldn’t be considering those implications at the moment when I have several much bigger problems on hoof.

“Anyway, welcome to ‘Mog Wash’ for the time being. If we can’t wash it at Mog, then it’s definitely a hog!” Cait Sith said the silly sounding slogan that was apparently for this place as Dolly put the three collar bands and Pecha Scarf back on.

“How did you get those blood stains out?” Dormarch asked and Cait Sith just grinned.

“Trade secret, but I did use to be an agent for the somewhat blatantly evil Shinra Corporation, said corporation would have killed off the entire planet we were living on and the holy land said corporation was trying to find was actually being destroyed by it if you interpret things in that manner. Glad I turned on the corporation, because this city was quite excessive if you couldn’t already tell before Moon Cell modified it into a fortress that has stalled you out pretty well all things considered. If you were wondering… my job… wasn’t exactly the cleanest and I had to know how to get blood out of clothing.” Cait Sith obviously had a lot of guilt over it judging by the look on his face and the slight shivers of his body. “Moon Cell can’t capture or use every soul that ever existed… probably why there are a few outliers like me, only specific souls that become ‘servants’ tend to be either strictly under Moon Cell’s control or something else entirely. I shudder to think if you were to come across a SOLDIER with some Materia without my handsome and devilish aid.”

“Materia? Like what we stored away in Dolly’s skateboarding helmet?” I spoke up out of curiosity.

Yeah, strong stuff coming from a messed up source… magic kind of ran rampant when you were part of an effort to squeeze the power out of souls and managed to condense concepts into raw power. It’s why monsters were everywhere and always a problem, it was an obvious sign that things were going entirely wrong given the increasing frequency of monsters. Safe to use, but I wouldn’t keep them around for too long after learning what they can teach… that is you if you can even use them at all.” So from what Cait Sith said before he started to leave, let Dolly learn the magic and then don’t use them for much of anything afterwards got it. “Don’t want to go digging up old problems now, be careful with those…”

“So what are we doing now?” I asked, because I didn’t have a plan for anything at the moment. In fact my mental state was a pile of barely living mush and I’m fairly certain Dolly and Dormarch knew that intrinsically… they had the front row seat to me.

“We rest, you’re the one that needs it most mentally.” Calmly stated Dormarch as he clambered up onto the bed and held his front paws wide open, I hugged him to me.

“Yeah, I could use some of that too… good thing I’m good at power naps.” Dolly cuddled against Dormarch and me and hugged us both.

“I guess when we’re ready to move, we’ll quickly go out to grab a PLANT for Cait Sith.” I just laid back snuggling two dogs and wondered what everyone else was doing right now. I was not mentally sound… but it was going to take someone who could get into my head to actually see it. That would mean that Ocellus, Shanty, Dormarch and Dolly would noticed I’m not mentally fit for a fight at the moment.

-Midgar’s right side frontline, Lucha Mundo-

“So… we need to not only get to the upper city, but we need to get to the tower in the middle of it all.” Artoria stated and I nodded. “I’ll create an opening through the wall for our forces to come in through and we’ll try to come at the tower from below. See what you’re Castle Alexander can do in the meantime to distract any attention off of us and we’ll see about being there to help you with the problem within the tower itself. I don’t care who the servant is, every servant of Moon Cell needs to be quickly freed from their servitude.”

“Look we can figure out how to bypass the wall from our position, don’t worry about that.” Mash added on looking concerned about the information I delivered to them.

“I can guarantee that we’ll be as distracting as possible at least, it is quite hard to ignore a moving castle.” I nodded to Artoria and Mash and then started making my way back to Castle Alexander with the news.

I flapped my wings and flew back as quickly as possible with the news.

I’m glad I was able to warn them about Fou, Artoria seemed afraid and Mash just seemed to be… oddly upset.

-Castle Alexander, Ocellus-

“We’ve managed to successfully withdraw everyone from the lower city.” Though the Skein Flyers are still taking huge losses to the aerial EPs. Our Skein Flyers were still cost effective, which is if you can pay such a cost. At least we got our friends out with the skiffs we sent in. They’ll take a break while we transfer in the PLANTs they captured and start figuring out how to get a production going. “Okay… huh? Unknown transmission… it seems to be… Berserker Magitek Moogle Monster? A new Allied Program design, who could be sending us this? It looks useful at the very least… sending it to Cid and Torneko to see what they can make of it.”

“You do realize that Moby Dick can still stop us from getting up there right?” That’s what I’m hoping doesn’t happen Smolder, we’re barely getting limited flight in to hover high enough to reach the edges of the upper city. If Moby Dick attacked us… well at least we had a lot of missile trucks that can barrage the whale.

-Skies above Midgard, Copen ‘Slayer Dragon’-

I body checked the shark and blaster it to atoms that couldn’t do anything with a charged shot of my gun and then rocketed forward and up into a jelly to shoot it as well. I had a protective field of battle pods handling most of the small fry like the jellyfish.

Did the whale honestly think it could stop the slayer? It was only helping me reach it faster!

I blasted to the side and kicked off the top of a Knifefin, the small knife shaped fish was destroyed and I launched ever higher as my eyes focused on my goal as it opened its mouth to fire its laser at me.

“Bigger things than you have tried!” I started while my jetpack blasted me forth and my gun was charging up for a powerful blast.

“And the smaller things could never get by me!” Lola stated a second later following me with the drone swarm of battle pods that combined into hard light drills that protected me from a volley of flying knife fish, dissolved flying zombie sharks and kraken missiles.

The whale better learn fear quickly, because I was almost on top of it and I would not stop until it fell from the sky and was destroyed.

-One massive collapse portion of a wall, Fou-

“Roarrrrrgghh!” Fou leapt on the first round fireball looking thing, it exploded in his face.

Fou was extra angry now, draw some angled thick black eyebrows on him as he starts to tear apart every living Bomb before they could explode.

-Ransei Region, Mystery Dungeon in Aurora, Geoff-

The mystery dungeon exploded violently and I went flying out to face plant against a mound of dirt.

“Yay, that ouch!” I said dumbly as my scrambled brain reoriented itself.

We were winning as far as I could tell, Team Harmony was really bringing it together even without Pom around and she wasn’t going to be around forever for me to try and woo....loo.

To that end I was defeating these dungeons as fast as I could, so I could get to helping Pom and her friends and be rejected even more!